History
(Short Version)

(click to read fuller details)

Mountain Top began in the mid nineteen seventies as one of the early community outreach projects of MUST Ministries, a faith-based organization in north Georgia dedicated to providing services to persons and families in crisis.  Two college roommates, Wayne Williams and Rex Kaney, were the first directors of MUST.  They began working with at-risk youth in Cobb County who were either wards of the Cobb County Department of Family and Children Services or the Cobb County Juvenile Court system and identified a need for the establishment of a residential program for at risk teenage boys.

They soon obtained the use of a parcel of five hundred acres of mountain property near LaFayette, Georgia, which had previously been purchased and paid for through the leadership efforts of Dr. Candler Budd, the great Methodist visionary, and which had been deeded to the Atlanta-Marietta District of the United Methodist Church with the intention that it was to be used as a camping and retreat facility.

 The facilities in 1980 included a four bedroom home.  The home had only a wood stove and window screens as air conditioning and remained that way until 2004.  The water still comes from a spring up the side of Chestnut Mountain.

 

The home was converted to use as boys’ home with modifications to the upper level bath and later the addition of a rest room and shower wing.  Though the home was not originally designed as a group home, it at times had as many as twelve boys in residence.

In 1986 Lillian Darden, Dr. Budd’s daughter, convinced Tom Murphey, Speaker of the House of the State of Georgia, that Mountain Top could keep boys in a better setting and cheaper than the state’s prison system and obtained state endorsement and support.  At that time our boys were all wards of the Juvenile Justice system.  They were adjudicated to Mountain Top, a tranquil mountain setting with no fences and no locks.

Mountain Top employed a school teacher to assist their passing the G.E.D. exam.  They were all proud of that accomplishment, and they think of Mountain Top even today as though it were their high school.  In 1998 funds were raised to build a school building that today is used for our offices on the upper level and a twenty-six bed bunk house with small kitchen on the lower level.

In 2000 a wood shop was built and opened to the boys, the equipment was updated, and an outstanding vocational education program was installed.  The school operated until 2004 when we began taking boys from the Department of Family and Children’s Services, which allows our boys now to attend public school.

We then embarked on a program to upgrade Mountain Top’s facilities and services.  We located other organizations providing similar programs, interviewed them, and looked at their facilities to see what we could learn to better our program.  We learned of a new model called the loving couple family model.  This model creates a family atmosphere through a loving couple as house parents.  Each family home provides residence for eight children and their houseparent couple.  House parents are responsible for the daily care, nurturing, and teaching of life skills to the children in the family home.  The family units receive additional support from a trained Director and additional management staff who give support in medical, psychological, and financial needs.  Most important is the house parent couple who, through their example, show the boys how healthy relationships can work.  These boys all come from dysfunctional or nonexistent family structures.  We want to imprint how love, discipline, and consistency can create a comfortable and effective atmosphere.

Late in 2004 we designed and built our new Dogwood Lodge that is based on this model.  It is what many now consider to be a state of the art boys’ home.

The lower level of the old school building was turned into a bunk house that for two years lodged many week-end mission teams and nineteen week-long teams from over the entire U.S. who helped with the construction of the new facility.  Mountain Top was alive with the passions of missioners and volunteers from Seattle, Denver, Kansas City, Dallas, upper Michigan, upper Kentucky, farm country of Ohio, and most of our southern neighbors.  They all felt the Lord’s spirit on the mountain, and as a result, we have at Mountain Top the opportunity to mold our boys into better future fathers.

Recently we have expanded the program to create programs to coach and advise the parents of these boys and to intercede in the lives and visions of other children selected from inner city living.

(If you wish, you can view a more detailed recap of our history)

 

This page was last updated July 23, 2009.

This is the official web site of
Mountain Top Family Services
For questions regarding this website, contact the Webmaster