MonticelloLive

Charlie Morris of Clarksville (left) and Jimmie Cobb of Rossville, Tenn., operate a table saw while building the new Baptist College Ministry at UAM.

Nailbenders for Jesus raise the walls for the new BCM building at UAM.

Professional contractors are not constructing the new Baptist College Ministry at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.
Instead, a group of 19 volunteers from the Arkansas State Baptist Convention who call themselves “Nailbenders for Jesus” are doing much of the work.
J.D. Harrison of Jacksonville estimates that “Nailbenders” has built 157 churches and other church-related structures since its inception in 1987, although this is the group’s first college ministry building. “We give each project two weeks a month,” says Harrison. ‘We work March through June and September through November.”
Harrison’s crew, which is currently living in RV’s parked at Monticello’s Calvary Baptist Church, is framing the building and will add roof trusses and roofing to put the building “in the dry.” They will also hang sheet rock. A second crew will come later to complete the trim work inside.
All the workers are volunteers and come from all over Arkansas as well as Tennessee and Mississippi. The current crew hails from Clarksville, Dover, Arkadelphia, Paragould, Biscoe, Jacksonville, Hot Springs, Ashdown, Alton, Mo., Rossville, Tenn., and Natchez, Miss.
So what makes a group of guys, many well past retirement age, spend time away from their families to do rigorous physical labor?
“We love the Lord,” said Jimmy Cobb of Rossville, Tenn. “There’s a need for churches and buildings like this all over Arkansas. We’re just working for the Lord.”