Editor’s note: Sunday, Nov. 9, is Orphans and Widows Sunday in the Southern Baptist Convention.
MADISON, Miss. (BP) – Albert Archie’s cancer diagnosis came first, followed by his wife Valerie’s, and then their daughter Kimberly’s. Six years into Albert’s battle, and 52 years into his marriage to Valerie, she was the first to be called home.
Albert believed God’s loving providence and persevered when Valerie died of an aggressive strain of triple negative breast cancer in July 2023, two years after her diagnosis. His rare blood cell cancer responded well to treatment, and Kimberly’s triple positive breast cancer diagnosis came early in 2023 before Valerie died.
“When my wife passed away, my faith grew because I knew that she was better off,” Albert, now 78, told Baptist Press. “And when I looked at it, I had to think, well, you’re selfish to want her back here.”
But at times, Albert retreats to his 240-acre tree farm north of Canton, leaving the home he and Valerie shared in Gluckstadt, just north of where they worshiped at First Baptist Church of Madison.
There in a deer stand one morning several months after Valerie’s death, Albert said, God told him to begin a cancer ministry.
“It’s almost like God was in there with me and I couldn’t think about deer at all. It was, ‘I need you to start a cancer ministry.’ And He didn’t say it out loud. It was in my spirit,” Albert told Baptist Press. “I knew it. I knew it. I mean, there’s just no doubt about it. And I got out of the deer stand right then.”
It would take more than six months before the ministry came to fruition. The outreach has helped as many as 55 members of First Baptist Church of Madison who have battled cancer, including bladder cancer survivor Cliff Smith and Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler, diagnosed with cancer a year after her husband James died of brain cancer.
But Albert, a retired Kinesio therapist and Veterans Administration (V.A.) executive, assumed such a ministry would be in a hospital, similar to inpatient ministries he had conducted at the V.A. He spent six months trying to make it happen before the proper setting became clear on Easter Sunday 2024.
God “wanted a church ministry,” Albert said. “I found that out by walking into the church service Easter Sunday. And a lady that’s in my Bible fellowship class, a wonderful Christian member of our church, said, ‘Albert, why are you looking at inpatients when we’re surrounded here by cancer members?’”
Kiely Young, First Baptist Madison’s congregational care and senior adult pastor, welcomed the ministry.
“Albert, we can use you here,” Albert said Young told him the very same Sunday. “The Wednesday after that, now this is Wednesday after Easter last year, I walk into church service on Wednesday night. He comes straight to me and says our pastor, Dr. Breck Ladd, had approved the ministry. He handed me a list of nine church members who had cancer.”
Albert shared the ministry concept with 28 Bible fellowship groups at First Madison and launched the ministry with a core committee of 19, including an eight-member board in charge of finance and administration.
The ministry has grown to a team of nearly 50 active members, all of whom are cancer survivors. Three cancer patients have died, Albert said.
Butler, who has served as Madison’s mayor since 1981, sensed her health need as she cared for her late husband James during his battle with brain cancer. Diagnosed in 2024, she cites the ministry’s prayers as most beneficial.
“The wonderful Prayer Warriors of First Baptist Madison Cancer Ministry are praying me through this journey. They reached out to me immediately after my diagnosis with love and special gifts,” Butler told Baptist Press. “The members are cancer patients and prayer warriors who believe in the power of prayer and know the Great Physician. Our Father heals today as He did when He walked on this earth. By His stripes, I will be healed.”
Prayer is perhaps the most appreciated aspect of the ministry, Albert said. Currently the ministry is serving four people actively battling cancer. The ministry prays for them, sends cards, provides care packages including inspirational books and special sweatshirts, gives them handmade blankets that seamstresses prayed over while making, gives them handmade stuffed animals, and does yardwork and other practical services as needed, Albert said. Donations pay for travel costs to cancer treatment centers.
Smith, who attends First Baptist with his wife Charlotte, is Albert’s prayer partner and a close friend. Smith battled cancer about six years, first in Jackson, Miss., and then at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, before getting the disease under control.
“Last August, they declared me cancer free,” the 84-year-old Smith said. “I got to ring the bell (at M.D. Anderson). It was quite an experience.”
Smith also appreciates the prayers.
“The main thing they do is we pray for each other, on a daily basis. Albert, I talk probably two or three times a week,” Smith said. “And that prayer really lifts you up and it makes you feel so good. And we get calls, we get visits, and I think they’re sincere. It’s really something to have everybody praying for you.”
Smith keeps the handwritten cards he has received from Ruth Martin, whom ministry members describe as gifted in writing encouraging messages in the cards she frequently sends. He still has the prayer blanket the ministry provided, which he and his wife say is well-made and warming.
“Cancer, that’s a word nobody likes to hear, but our faith is strong, and the Lord, He’s going to do what’s right,” the couple said. “He doesn’t make mistakes. We just trust in Him.”
Albert references John Piper’s book “Don’t Waste Your Cancer” as pivotal to the ministry.
“Use what you’ve got. Use what you’ve experienced. Use it for His glory,” the book encourages. “And that’s what I’ve tried to do.”
His daughter Kimberly DeLoach is surviving cancer, having had a double mastectomy like her mother.
“And, of course, I had to watch my daughter go through the same thing,” Albert said. “And she told me a couple of weeks ago, that she feels better than she’s felt in a long time.”
Albert encourages other churches to launch cancer ministries, and offers to help through his email, [email protected].
“It’s not complicated; it’s just getting it started,” he said. “I would love to see other Southern Baptist churches do what First Baptist Madison has done with this ministry, have the people be Jesus’ hands and feet. And that’s what we are. We’re Jesus’ hands and feet to the cancer members of our church. And they realize it and they know that they’re being prayed for.”
Smith agrees.
“You would never guess that so many people at one church would be affected by the cancer ministry,” Smith said. “I can’t imagine a church where nobody else had cancer.”
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