Fire nearly destroyed their church but couldn?t shake their faith.
A Friday afternoon fire displaced members of the 140-year-old home of the New Light Church on Highland Avenue. But at a Sunday service at the Community Action Center on Bank Street, they vowed to press ahead and refused to give in to despair.
“We?re gonna keep on keepin? on,” said Charity Shields, 84, who co-founded the New Light Church.
“It may look dark right now, but God is able to light up everything.”
Shields came to the service Sunday despite a bad fall, which sent her to the hospital last weekend with injuries to her face.
“I was trying to go see what happened to my church and I fell,” she said. “But I?m still here, scraped up nose and all.”
Instead of focusing on the loss, the 150-member congregation celebrated new life Sunday with the baptism of Andrea Patterson, a 5-month-old from Dundalk.
“No matter what, we?re still a family,” said Andrea?s mother, Kokeeta Patterson. “We feel blessed.”
The Rev. Benedict Dorsey, the pastor, said the members have pulled together and will continue to meet throughout the week at several temporary locations for choir rehearsal and community outreach.
“Some of the members were crying, because they are hurt by what happened,” Dorsey said.
“We?re a small congregation, and we paid for that building over seven years, not through fundraisers, just by members giving out of their own pockets, and because of that we?ve been living month to month.”
Dorsey said repairs to the church would take at least six months.
“It looked like Hurricane Katrina in there,” he said.
No cause for the fire has been confirmed, but Dorsey said it began just hours after roof repairs that involved a torch. The roofing company stayed the required hour after finishing repairs to make sure a fire didn?t result. But by 4 p.m., flames had engulfed the top two floors of the church, Dorsey said.
The church has received support from many local pastors, and Dorsey was encouraged by the number of members who came to worship just days after the fire.
“We shall rise again,” he told the congregation.
“Amen,” came the thunderous response.
