When Hank Fulk talks about coming home to Du Quoin, he speaks with the warmth of someone who knows what it means to belong to a place — not just geographically, but spiritually. But if his story is one of return, the larger story he points toward is nearly eighty years old. It began long before he pastored his first sermon, long before he rediscovered his faith, long before he graduated from Du Quoin High School in 2006. It began in 1947, when a group of local pastors created the Du Quoin Ministerial Alliance — a coalition built on unity, service, and the belief that communities rise by lifting one another.

Today, Hank is one of the ministers continuing that mission. But he’s the first to say he’s just one voice in a much wider chorus. “There are at least a dozen of us actively involved,” he explains, and even more churches participate when a need arises. What defines the Alliance isn’t any single leader — it’s the collective instinct to act. “If there’s a need,” Hank says, “most people in this community will step up.”

One of the clearest examples is the Weekend Warrior program, a community-supported effort ensuring students have food from Friday night through Sunday. Churches collect donations, prepare bags filled with easy-to-heat meals, and deliver them to the school each week. For years, around one hundred bags went home with students every weekend. This year the number has dipped to around seventy-five or eighty — a hopeful sign that needs are being met. Still, the commitment remains steady. “It’s sad in some ways,” Hank says, “but when it comes to ministry, we should see issues in the world as opportunities to serve.”

The Alliance’s work reaches far beyond the backpacks. On home-game Fridays, member churches rotate feeding the DHS football team and offering a brief devotional. Ministers take turns praying before school board meetings. They provide two annual $500 scholarships through the school’s scholarship foundation, helping ease the path for graduating seniors. And beyond school walls, their reach continues: support for transients, financial assistance to Western Egyptian Economic Opportunity Council, and devotional services for nursing home residents — each effort small in scale but significant in spirit.

Taken together, these acts form a web of care that has shaped Du Quoin for generations. That’s why the Alliance has endured: its purpose is simple, its structure humble, and its heart consistent. “Unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace,” Hank says, quoting scripture not out of habit but conviction. “They’ll know we’re Christians by our love.”

And yet, to understand the Alliance fully, it helps to understand the people inside it — people like Hank, whose life has been shaped by both faith and the lived experiences that preceded it. After graduating from DHS, he studied video production at SIU, imagining a career behind a camera. But life had a different rhythm in mind. During his senior year, in a single conversation, faith became real to him in a way it never had before. “One minute I didn’t really want anything to do with the Lord,” he says. “The next minute I did. I just can’t get enough ever since.”

He spent ten years in Murphysboro working maintenance for the Jackson County Housing Authority; meeting people whose struggles deepened his empathy. He was ordained through a Carbondale church, then unexpectedly called back to Du Quoin in 2021 to serve as lead pastor at Liberty Church — a moment he describes as pure providence. “Sometimes the Lord has other plans,” he says with an easy laugh.

His wife, a Murphysboro native, felt the same calling home. Their family now fills the familiar streets he once walked as a child, though they homeschool their four children — Amelia (12), Johnny (10), Athalie (8), and Rosalie (5). “It’s a choice,” Hank says, “and it’s good that we have those options. We still get to support our community and our schools.”

But the story isn’t about Hank. It’s about the community he returned to serve — a community where churches work side by side, where needs are noticed quickly, where responses are swift and generous, and where the Ministerial Alliance has quietly stood for nearly eight decades as a stabilizing presence.

Every week, every meal, every scholarship, every prayer offered before a meeting reflects a simple truth: Du Quoin takes care of its own.

And for Hank Fulk, that truth is both the reason he came back and the blessing he carries forward.