A Dream Comes True in Appalachia

Railroad in Logan County, West Virginia. Photo by Chris Leaman

Pastor Michael C. Hartwell is a jolly, talkative man who likes to tell funny stories, do impersonations and preach the Scriptures to the broken and needy who live in the heart of Appalachia in southern West Virginia. A former coal miner, he was given a copy of the New Testament one day while he was deep in the bowels of the earth. He read Jesus’ words and they immediately became so real to him that he made a decision to follow Christ. Later, he was called to the ministry to work among the miners there in Logan County.

In the wake of his first wife’s death, Pastor Michael Hartwell looked for a way to fulfill her life’s dream. Her desire was to create a facility that would serve as a beacon of Christian compassion and truth among the poor and needy in Appalachia. Fueled by this wish, he founded the aptly-named Appalachian Dream Center, a 40,000-square-foot food and clothing distribution center in Logan County, donated by the A. T. Massey Coal Company. The Center provides thousands of hot meals a month (and delivers food to shut-ins), and finds housing for those families who have lost their possessions during natural disasters. In essence, the Dream Center was everything Hartwell’s late wife had envisioned — it hosted regular Sunday school, worship nights and a counseling center. But something was missing: an effective Scripture outreach program.

Now remarried, Hartwell and his new wife did not have the resources to impact the surrounding communities for Christ with any success. That is until the American Bible Society began its Bread Today™ program, providing outreach Bibles and study tools to the Dream Center in December of 2008. “I’ve been praying for thirty-some years, ‘I need some tools, I need some backing, I need a foundation that is reputable,’” stated Pastor Hartwell. “The American Bible Society’s Bibles have proven to be this very foundation.”

Pastor Michael C. Hartwell and Malcolm Floyd Jr. head up the ministry of the Appalachian Dream Center. Photo by Chris Leaman

Spreading the Word of God effectively is a tricky thing in Logan County. A deep schism is present in the church — an unspoken rift between old and new. Members of the older generation in the region are attached to the King James Bible. However, the younger set struggles to grasp the language of the KJV, resulting in a general indifference toward faith and Scripture.

As director of the Dream Center, Pastor Hartwell is now at the forefront of the effort to mend this divide. The Contemporary English Version translation, provided by the American Bible Society, has been his tool of choice in bringing the Word of God to people on both sides. “The American Bible Society is providing me with various translations, and now people are able to sit down and say, ‘Pastor, I now understand the Word of God.’” The Scripture is quickly permeating the communities surrounding the Dream Center in what Pastor Hartwell describes as the “most effective ministry” he has been a part of in his thirty-plus years of service to the area.

“Our Lord went out and found the outcasts,” he says, commenting on the transforming power of God’s Word as it spreads throughout Appalachia. Humbled, Pastor Hartwell still holds dearly the New Testament that first led him to the Lord — with its pages caked with soot and coal dust. And, he holds just as tenderly the many stories of hope and faith that have emerged from this broken region because one woman dared to dream.