By Mark Maynard
Kentucky Today
The Salty Dog Saloon in Covington was once a community bar where everybody knew your name.
For the last 20 years, that same location has been a place where everybody not only knows your name, but it has introduced many to the name above all names – Jesus Christ – as it ministers to the urban community in Covington.
That was always the goal for former Southside Baptist Pastor Harold Pike, whose church building was physically connected to the bar on the corner of Linden Avenue. He laid his hand on the building for the first time in 1967 and prayed for 33 years that someday the church would own that property.
“He prayed that God would give the church the bar to use for the good of the people and glory of God,” said Amy Wilhelmus, the director of the Moore Activity Center for the past 20 years. “God started working on the heart of the bar owner’s wife. She felt burdened not to be open when the church doors were open.”
Brother Pike’s dream
Bro. Pike never faltered in his belief that one day the bar would be part of the church. He fervently and faithfully asked the Lord to answer that prayer day after day after day.
“He had a dream of what God was going to do and truly believed it,” said Wilhelmus, who grew up on the other side of the building with her mother, a missionary.
Pike’s niece and nephew came for a visit and gave him a check for $100,000 for when the dream came true, Wilhelmus said. “They had no understanding that the bar was about to be offered (for sale).”
Pike convinced the bar owner to take $20,000 off the asking price “as a donation” and the church raised a couple of thousand more on one Sunday morning to have enough to purchase the bar, Wilhelmus said. They signed to buy the Salty Dog Saloon on April 1, 2000. God’s perfect timing.
“What a more perfect time for a church to buy a bar than April Fool’s Day,” Wilhelmus said. It also happened to come on Bro. Pike’s 65th birthday.
“The building had a lot of issues, but it was an answer to Bro. Pike’s prayer,” she said. “Even that check coming in, it was all in God’s timing. They had no idea it was going to be offered.”
Wilhelmus was in seminary at the time in Texas and had been away from home for nine years and served some mission time in New York through a US2 missionary program. She said she prayed “send me anywhere, just don’t send me home.”
Her mother had been running the activity center and Amy said it was always her thought that she was going to be taking her mother’s job one day.
“When I left, I started learning about ministry and I didn’t see how I could fit into home and fill my mother’s shoes.”
But Wilhelmus graduated in May of 2000 – God’s timing strikes again. Her thought was to come home for a month, earn some money and then see where God was going to lead her. One of the studies for her seminary degree was community ministries.
“Talking to a professor and praying about I and talking about it, he said, ‘Isn’t this exactly what God prepared you for to look for some unique ways to share Christ and lead Bible programs?’ As I began to pray about it, there wasn’t a question I was coming home.”
She has been director of the Moore Activity Center (MAC) since July 4, 2001.
A legacy of serving the underserved
Jim Woolums, the Associational Ministry Strategist for the Northern Kentucky Baptist Association, said the MAC Center “is a key foundational element to reaching families in our urban area. Amy just continues to do an extraordinary job following in the footsteps of her mother.”
Wilhelmus, he said, is frugal with what she is given and is continuing a legacy of serving the underserved families in the urban area of Covington while meeting needs and sharing Christ.
“She can rub two pennies together and get more out of it than anybody I’ve seen in my life,” he said. “God’s favor is all over this place. Everybody who works with the MAC comes away with that same kind of expression.”
Woolums said the NKBA Woman’s Missionary Union has been instrumental along with the church partners. “Our pastors and churches recognize the gospel presence and gospel-centric ministry she does there.”
The center has been a godsend for the urban community, providing programming and feeding and seeing to needs of thousands over the years. Wilhelmus’s mother, Helen, has since passed away but she has carried on her work and multiplied it.
They have programming on Thursdays for children from age 3-12th grade along with adult Bible clubs, day camps, Backyard Bible Clubs, tutoring programs to develop math and reading skills and building relationships with many in the community.
The center was planning a big Easter celebration with 6,500 eggs packed with candy but because of the coronavirus that didn’t happen in-person. So, Wilhelmus and her husband delivered 70 Easter baskets – a gift from Immanuel Baptist Church in Somerset – to 30 households this week.
The 70 churches in the NKBA are linked closely to the ministry. Every Tuesday a different church comes and provides Simply Dinner and help to serve a meal to anywhere from 60 to 100 people.
“Any food left over is put in containers with messages of life written on them,” she said. “We load them into my car and deliver them. We can get rid of 50 in 10 minutes during the summertime.”
’Mercy ministry empowered by the gospel’
Woolums said churches in the association have rallied around the MAC because of how it shares the gospel with so many. “It’s a mercy ministry founded and empowered by the gospel. They see people coming to Christ on a regular basis.”
The center also has huge Back-to-School, Thanksgiving and Christmas giveaways, Wilhelmus said.
Southside Baptist Church and the Moore Activity Center have the entire block while serving the Covington inner-city area. The activity center is a separate 501(c)(3) organization but “Southside is very engrained in who we are,” Wilhelmus said. “I’m a member there.”
The local association and Eliza Broadus state offering helped support the Moore Activity Center, which is named after the couple that provided the $100,000 gift 20 years ago.
“There was a lot of community street bars in our area, one of every other corner,” Wilhelmus said. “It was a popular bar and some people were not happy their bar was being closed. On the last day the bar was opened they had taken down some pictures one person came up to me and said ‘I used to drink at the bar.’ I said, ‘Now we minister to a lot of people and we’d like to minister to you as well.’”
And that’s exactly what Pastor Harold Pike intended when he began 33 years of praying for the bar to become part of the church.
Now 85, Bro. Pike is a fulltime pastor at a Baptist church in Dayton. He recently learned how to use Facebook Live from current Southside Pastor Kevin Murphy so he wouldn’t miss a Sunday delivering the Word of God.