It all began with a youth group trip from the Evangelical Covenant Church in Springfield to Philadelphia to work with Tony and Bart Campolo and their ministry in Bartram Village. The students returned home with a desire to share the love of Christ in their own community. Mary Lou McElmurray, as one of the adult leaders on that trip, contacted Major Anita Turlington at the Salvation Army Church on Hunter Place, and in the spring of 1986, a tutoring program was started with teen tutors from both the Covenant Church and Foster Memorial Church.
In the fall of that same year, Alan Johnson learned about what was going on at Hunter Place and contacted Mary Lou to talk about a similar program in Chicago called CYCLE. Others who were eager to be involved in some meaningful outreach to the city of Springfield met and prayed together with Alan and Marylou for a number of weeks at the McElmurray’s home in Longmeadow and felt like God was leading them to develop this tutoring ministry with the hallmark being a one-to-one relationship between tutor and student. ACTS was incorporated as a faith-based non-profit agency, and a Board of Directors was established. The first Board of Directors consisted of the following:
Others who contributed to the birth of ACTS include Rev. Miles Crawford, Phyliss Cuffee, Girlie Davis, Sharon Weinhold Davis, Kristi Hagstrom, Linda Howell, Carol Kuhn, Peter Levanos, Christine MacGregor, Bill McElmurray, Bill Pudlo, Janet Hakanson-Stacy, Russ and Dot Weinhold.
Carol Bushman, a member of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, was hired as the first Program Director. The Evangelical Covenant Church of America provided a grant of $10,000 to launch the program.