Construction of Fayetteville's Outer Loop makes access to church more difficult

By Catherine Pritchard Staff writer

It used to be easy to direct people to Mount Moriah Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church.

Just turn off McArthur Road onto Jacob Street or Jossie Street, then to Benjamin Street. You couldn't miss the church, which sits on the short road beside a cornfield.

Now, because of construction of the Outer Loop, Mount Moriah is accessible only by a street with no name.

Bulldozers had to tear through Jacob and Jossie streets to build the interstate, which cut off the easy access to a handful of houses and the church at the far end of the area. A new access road was built at the back of the College Lakes subdivision.

But the access road is nameless. It's a windy path that GPS systems are not acquainted with, so it takes good directions, luck and perseverance for strangers to make it to Mount Moriah these days.

It proved too much for many recently when the small church held its annual barbecue to feed all comers for free. Usually, more than 100 people show up, said James Williams, an elder whose wife, Geralene, leads worship at Mount Moriah. Fewer than half that number found their way to the church this year.

Williams says that's because it's so hard to tell people how to get there.

He paid for small directional signs, which he planted at key intersections along the way - at the intersection of Chesapeake and McArthur roads, then another showing the left turn off Chesapeake onto Shoreline Drive, and another at the end of that curvy residential street showing a left turn onto Saddle Ridge Road, and another past Buck Court at the stretch of nameless blacktop on the right, and another at a new intersection where there's only a pole-less stop sign stuck in the ground and a small Mount Moriah sign that sometimes topples over.

Around a wooded bend, finally, is the church.

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Construction of Fayetteville's Outer Loop makes access to church more difficult