For all of its beauty and joy, love can also be brutally cruel. When wielded by those with callous hearts, love can become a destructive emotional force, leaving only ruin in its wake.

They were once known as the “un-churched” — that category of Christians who didn’t go to church, maybe because of a crisis of faith, a congregational disconnect, doctrinal differences or simply because they got out of habit.

Call it the opposite of a church split. Rather than derision serving as its foundation, Oxford’s new Redeemer Church is the result of a partnership between Anniston Bible Church and Grace Fellowship Church, whose pastors — Bob St. John and Carlton Weathers — began discussing and praying over the possibility of a church plant more than a year ago.

A lone person, lost and seeking hope in a moment of spiritual crisis — this is the image that has sustained a movement. There is no way of knowing when such a desperate moment will arise — perhaps in the solitude of an otherwise empty hotel room, in the chair of a doctor’s office waiting room, amid the joyful chaos of graduation, or the loneliness of a nursing home with only memories for company.

Jake Brown first felt the call to the ministry during a Disciples Now weekend at Colonial Heights Baptist Church in Kingsport, Tenn. When Jake returned home, he told his father, Roland Brown, who has been pastor of Golden Springs Baptist Church in Anniston for nine years. Roland — known by all to be a straight shooter — offered some hard-won words of wisdom.

Phyllis Jennings concedes it’s not an especially attractive plant growing in a pot on the front porch of her Anniston home — save for one night in late summer when it blooms into a thrilling display of serene beauty.

Edward Wood is used to telling his life story, and for good reason. The 85-year-old Anniston resident was the subject of a recent documentary by filmmaker Stan Arthur.