Shoals United Methodist Church caught fire in a classrooms and office area in the back of the building before it spread to the sanctuary, eventually engulfing the entire building by the time firefighters arrived on the scene.
Shoals Volunteer Fire Department responded at 2:23 a.m. Saturday and spent more than two hours trying to contain the blaze in order to prevent it from spreading to a neighboring house.
“Around 2:30 this morning it caught on fire and this is what’s left,” said Adrian Wall, chief of the Shoals VFD, gesturing to the ruins of the structure. “It started over in the classroom and office area and spread quickly from back to front. When I got the truck here, it was burning everywhere but the porch.”
Juanita Moser, who lives across the street from the church, called in the blaze. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom and noticed it was bright outside her window. Upon closer investigation, she saw that the end of the church was on fire.
“It’s just hard to look there and believe what has gone on,” she said Saturday morning. “It’s a lot of memories. We can build a building, but the memories we have there will never be in another church.”
Moser and a majority of the congregation of the church gathered in a field across the street around 3 a.m. to watch as firefighters from Shoals, Pilot Knob, Pinnacle, South Surry, Fall Creek, Franklin and Old Richmond volunteer fire departments and King Fire Department worked for around six hours to extinguish the fire.
“We got a phone call and came out. When we got down here it was gone,” said Mary Marshall, a member of the church. “You hear about things like this on the news, but it’s different when it hits home. You just keep telling yourself it’s just a building and everybody’s safe.”
Joseph Fulk just started as the preacher of the church on July 1. He will hold his first service this morning at 11 a.m. in the field across the street from the church.
“He met most of his congregation for the first time out in the dark in the field. Most of us had on our bed clothes,” said Marshall.
“It felt like a death call. We live a good 10 minutes or so away and it felt like 30 minutes,” Fulk said of the drive to the church in the wee hours of the morning. “The church folks had gathered and we had a prayer together and we shared together.”
The church would be 110 years old this year and the community had planned renovations to build on a choir loft and add to the fellowship hall. Workers were two weeks into the new construction. The age of the building helped the blaze to spread quickly because the timbers were dried out.
Despite everything, members of the congregation are ready and willing to move forward, saying they will rebuild the church.
“We’re a farming community and the people are very resilient. We don’t like change but we deal with it,” said Marshall. “We are going to rebuild.”
“We’ve got a lot to be thankful for,” said Moser.
“It’s something they can fix. Reflecting back, it’s one of those things with the Lord’s guidance and help we’ll come back. The Lord’ll provide,” said Fulk.
As the members begin the process of rebuilding, they will hopefully have some relics from the church to take with them. Firefighters were able to recover the church’s bell and also found the cross from the communion table and one of the candles. Firefighters also found pages from a Bible that were burned around the edges but not in the middle which they gave to Moser who plans to try to preserve it.
There was also a fire-safe filing cabinet which seemed to be intact though they had not yet looked inside. The cabinet contains information on the church’s history. When church members began cleaning out the church in preparation for the renovations, they stored materials, including a collection of old hymnals in a trailer across the street. The congregation will make use of those hymnals during this morning’s service. Rev. Sam Moore, the district superintendent for the region, will be at the service as well.
The fire marshal and a representative of the State Bureau of Investigation were on the scene Saturday morning but had no information at the time.
“I’m not really sure of the cause yet,” said Wall. “I just want to thank all the departments that responded for their help.”
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