Baptist church members relying on their faith to rebuild after fire

The Berean Baptist Church congregation knows all about the type of faith and hope that comes from the highs and lows of a tumultuous week.

In the early morning of Aug. 20, lightning struck the church near 13th and Zoo Boulevard and is considered the cause of the fire that destroyed it in a matter of hours.

On that weekend, Pastor Gary Carty and his wife, Judy, were out of town visiting their daughter’s family in Orange Park, Fla., celebrating Judy’s and their grandson’s birthday.

Firefighters called and spoke to Gary Carty. He could hear over his cellphone the fire crackling in the background.

The congregation had the building at 1230 N. Hoover Road insured – but only enough to cover the mortgage debt, Carty said Sunday.

A week after the fire, the small church congregation now faces building a new sanctuary – without going into debt.

Carty said the church plans to move its sanctuary into the recreation center and to create a new sanctuary out of the metal building by Oct. 11 in time for the church’s annual camp meeting which brings in 30 to 40 pastors from across the nation and more than 200 people during that week.

“We serve a great God, a good God,” Carty told his congregation on Sunday. “It is good to be in God’s house. It doesn’t have to have a steeple on it to be in God’s house. When God’s people get together – if two or more are gathered – ‘there will I be.’ We bring him to church with us this morning, we will take him home with us this afternoon, and we’ll take him to work with us in the morning, or school or wherever you are going.”

He told the congregation it may take a miracle to build a new sanctuary in six weeks.

All the church hymnals were destroyed in the fire. There were no church bulletins.

But some things could be saved. Some of the chairs from the old church could be salvaged and cleaned.

An old piano that had sat 15 years untuned in the recreation building served as accompanying music.

As the service began on Sunday, the congregation sang “Amazing Grace” and “Set My Soul Afire.”

The pastor joked about a purple mark that spread above his right eye.

“To set the record straight, Judy did not hit me on the forehead with a skillet,” Carty told about 50 parishioners. “On Monday night, I could feel my shingles coming back. And they say stress has something to do with it. I call that lack of faith. We don’t have stress around here. We pray for that. Aren’t you thankful just being able to worship together?”

The congregation had run into some difficulties in the past few years, Carty said. Tithing had been down.

“We had to make some choices last year,” he said. “Four years ago, we had a large insurance claim with hail damage. It ruined our roof.”

The church had been paying $3,400 a year for insurance to cover the buildings.

“Next year, it went to $7,400 a year. Last year, it jumped to $14,000. And in January of this year, we got a premium notice that they wanted $3,800 down and $1,100 a month for the next 10 months, some $14,800,” Carty said. “We just couldn’t afford it because the offerings were down, we couldn’t afford that and maintain our mission giving or the ministries we had around here.”

So the insurance was dropped down to only what the church owed on its mortgage.

“The Berean Baptist Church is now out of debt. We have been praying for that. But that’s not exactly the way I had in mind for the Lord to fix that,” Carty said. “But God knows what he is doing. ... We are going to reach into our pockets and go back into our savings.”

The new sanctuary, Carty said, will double the seating of the old – to 300 people.

The church fire, said member David Moore, seems like a bad dream.

“It was real bad, but we realize we are fortunate,” Moore said. “The people here are real close, like a family. We will survive here. The building burned down, the church didn’t burn down. The church is the people. It is just fortunate it burned down when it did and not when there was a service or people inside.”

This story was originally published August 30, 2015 at 9:41 PM with the headline "Baptist church members relying on their faith to rebuild after fire."