“We intentionally chose to keep the class small,” said Tanner Guidry, IBC’s student and young adult pastor, of the Pace church’s selective initiative for students in ninth through 12th grades. “It’s designed to go deep into building personal relationships while learning more about God’s word and growing in relationship Him. We want to do life together.”

Half a century later, he feels called by God to revive the program he said helped shape his life.

It is reserved for men of the congregation and their male guests, but the meal and worship take place at the church, 8897 Byrom Campbell Road.

“I monitor a couple of sites – weather.com and weather.gov – to keep track of conditions. If the forecast is below 40, or even if it’s below 50 or so but windy and rainy, we’ll open the shelter,” Turman told the Press Gazette earlier this month. “We’re usually open 35-40 nights in a normal year.”

“Our first inkling that something was going wrong was when we were about to stop for lunch in Jericho, which is under Muslim control,” Lewis told the Press Gazette last week. “Our guide leaned forward to the driver and told him to keep going straight.”