GLASTONBURY

On September 21, 1938 one of the worst hurricanes to hit Connecticut left a path of destruction across the state. One of those victims was the First Church of Christ's church along Main Street. On Feb. 27, 1939, The Hartford Courant ran a story on the congregation's decision to rebuild.

The headline read: "New Church Planned In Glastonbury; Structure To Be Erected On Site Of Edifice Destroyed By Hurricane In September."

"The congregation of the First Church of Christ in Glastonbury meeting at the high school auditorium Sunday afternoon unanimously voted to build a new church on the site of the hurricane-demolished church.

The proposed church will be of the 1810 to 1825 Colonial period design with a 116-foot steeple, 40 feet shorter than the old steeple. The seating capacity of the main floor will be 276. The balcony will seat 50 and 60 more may be seated along the church aisles if necessary. The destroyed church had a seating capacity of 600.

The new church will be of brick construction and the rearranged chapels will be of brick veneer. The old church was a wooden building. A chancel wll be built in the front of the church and will be 20 feet deep.

There will be rooms for the Sunday School departments, a woman's parlor, a kitchen and men's room. The main auditorium will have a slate roof. The interior of the church will have columns four feet from the church sides to support an arched ceiling.

A large vestibule will be built in back of the pews. It will be the fifth church building since Colonial times. The style is of the same period as the Town Hall. The church was designed by Dr. Hobart Upjohn of New York City, a national authority on church building.

A third meeting house was erected in 1837 on the present site. This one was destroyed by fire on December 26, 1866. A fourth meeting house was erected on the same site within a year and was completed in 1867. The steeple was blown off by a gale in 1881 and was restored at once.

The hurricane on September 21, 1938 wrecked the last church. A spectator related that the steeple was lifted from the church and was dropped on the ridge leaving the church almost a complete wreck. A special committee was named soon after the catastrophe to plan for the future of the church.

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In The Hartford Courant 75 Years Ago: Glastonbury Church Rebuilds After Hurricane Of 1938

Tour St Joseph #39;s new church construction project
Join the Rev. Lawrence Frazier, pastor of St. Joseph-on-Carrollton Manor, for a look inside our new church. A lot of work has been done since this was filmed...

By: St. Joseph-on-Carrollton Manor Catholic Church

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Tour St Joseph's new church construction project - Video

An architects rendering of what the new Ada First United Methodist Church will look like. Construction on the project is expected to begin on March 17 and continue until February, 2015. Enlarge Published: Tuesday, 2/25/2014 - Updated: 18 hours ago

BY VANESSA McCRAY BLADE STAFF WRITER

ADA, Ohio A new Ada First United Methodist Church soon will rise from the ashes where the congregations 113-year-old church burned in 2012.

Two years after a March, 2012, fire destroyed the church at the corner of North Main Street and Highland Avenue, construction will begin on its replacement, a two-story, brick-and-stone building designed with nods to both the past and future.

Weather permitting, work is scheduled to begin March 17 on the new church. A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for noon March 30, and both church and community members are invited. Construction is scheduled to end in February, 2015.

Robert McCurdy, chairman of the churchs building committee, said specific details remain to be worked out, but parishioners would like to worship in the new building by the fires third anniversary.

The decision to rebuild on the same site as the old church, located at one end of the Hardin County villages downtown area, was welcomed by those outside the 300-member congregation as well.

We hear that all the time from townspeople, Oh, Im so happy that the church is going back there, Mr. McCurdy said.

The congregation still needs to raise $300,000 to $400,000 for the $6 million building project, to be paid for with contributions from church members, donations from other churches and supporters, and insurance proceeds.

The 25,000-square-foot building features a second-floor sanctuary that will seat 240 people and a commercial kitchen and fellowship hall on the first floor. Theres also room for childrens ministry and Christian education programs.

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Ada church rising after fire

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OAKDALE (CBS13) A church volunteers death on a nature trail in Oakdale has fellow churchgoers yearning for answers in a suspected homicide.

Juan Calvillos body was found on a trail in a nature area in what deputies are calling a homicide, though they have no motive for the killing.

Construction crews were busy working to transform a church basement into a Sunday school room. But the man who volunteered to lead the project wasnt there.

They realized there was a problem when Calvillo didnt show up for the first day of construction. The last time anyone at the church saw the father of five was during a potluck.

A trio of fishermen made the gruesome discovery days later when they came across his body on a nature trail.

Deputies say Calvillo had been shot to death in a possible murder.

With no motive and no arrest in sight, church leaders are trying to make sense of the loss, and are hopeful closure comes soon.

The church plans on helping with Calvillos funeral.

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Homicide Suspected In Oakdale Church Volunteers Death

MORGAN COUNTY More than a decade of dreams, plans and prayers have paid off for the members of The Sanctuary church.

The new building for which they had been raising money and saving up is now a reality on The Sanctuary campus west of Fort Morgan along Highway 34.

"The big push was to get in by Christmas," Pastor Gary Meadows said. "We weren't sure we'd make it after it blew down, but we made it."

Construction suffered a pretty big setback last summer, when extremely high winds one day in August literally blew down the building's wooden frame.

But the contractors and volunteers got it built back up, and work continued to get the building ready for a big church celebration at Christmas, Meadows said.

"All the contractors did excellent work," he said. "A lot of people gave generous donations of time and materials."

Their efforts are more than just what shows in the final product, though. Some of their prayers and thoughts became part of the building's structure, Meadows said.

"As this building was erected, we had folks write scripture on the studs, and on the boards under the carpet," he explained.

Parts of the building that were finished earlier were rented out at times, including to Centennial Mental Health Centers for a training. Among those who went to that was a grieving grandfather whose baby grandchild had been stillborn. Meadows said he wrote a long Hebrew verse on the door frame for the cry room in the back of the new church's main auditorium.

"Now, he called me back and they will be back for another training," Meadows said. "He wants to furnish the cry room."

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The Sanctuary settling into new home

TAMPA Of all the good works that churches do day in and day out, at home and in other countries there is one area where many fall short:

Reaching out to those with special needs.

According a recent Barna Group study, nearly 10 million families and caregivers lack the support they need from their local church.

You cant fault the church entirely for this. It takes money, knowledge, resources, commitment, space and education to deal with the wide spectrum of disabilities out there.

But, occasionally, a church gets lucky. An angel like Eileen Hafer comes along.

Hafer is a member of Palma Ceia United Methodist Church. With 17 years experience as an Exceptional Student Education specialist with Hillsborough County Schools, she has a passion for this population. She understands that every person with mental or physical disabilities has individual needs and challenges; she knows how parents must make dramatic life changes as caregivers.

So when she left teaching to be a stay-at-home mom, Hafer wanted to devote her time to a project that involved her faith and her professional background.

Lucky for her, she belongs to a church that encourages its members to do just that.

I went to my pastor with the idea, and he said, Go for it. He gave me the blessing I needed to get started, she says of the Rev. Bruce Toms.

That blessing, however, didnt come with a budget.

Originally posted here:
Church makes services more comfortable for families with challenges

First visit to new church site
Christchurch congregations first visit to church construction site at Oakfield Drive on Summer 1999 (Video captured from VHS 2014)

By: Christchurch Carrickfergus

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First visit to new church site - Video

by Joseph Masilamany, reporters@theborneopost.com. Posted on February 23, 2014, Sunday

THE old rugged Church of St James which sits on a hill in Kam-pung Quop, no longer sings a liturgical song.

The muted sound of its now choirless sanctuary is deafening. Its once thunderous pulpit from which sprung fire and brim-stone is desolately silent.

But there is something mesmeric about a derelict old church building as St James. There seems to be a certain kind of compelling charm about it. In its woodwork, its tabernacle in the numerous crafted decorative embellishments and its lone stained glass, the old St James still retains a palpable aura of its erstwhile epiphany.

On the same hill, next to the old St James of 1865 is the new St James built in 1986 and consecrated in 1987. A new wellspring from the fountain of old, the new Church of St James, blessed with an exceptionally talented choir, continues to shine with the Anglican brand of missionary zeal while the old rugged church, now mellowed in its quaint and sublime hallowedness, has become a sedate piece of arcane history.

A prefabricated building made of belian wood, it was among the few such churches built in Sarawak during the early years of Anglican fervour to nurture the gospel in the state, and is the only one still standing.

According to a page from the past, the assembling of the prefabricated parts for the church started in 1863. The components were assembled in Kuching, 20km away, and transported upriver to Kampung Quop via the Sarawak and Quop Rivers.

The construction of the church was initiated by Fr William Abe, a pioneer missionary who, among others, pastored the rising new Anglican community of Kampung Quop in the 1800s. Renowned carpenter TA Stahl supervised the carpentry work.

A souvenir magazine of the parish published in 2010 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Quop parish community reported that the heavy pre-fabricated woodwork was borne by villagers on their shoulders.

It was carried from the jetty at the Quop River through dense jungle to its location on the hill. It was an arduous task as belian wood (ironwood) is heavy and burdensome.

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The old St James the epiphany of Quop Hill

Curtis Johnson / The Herald-Dispatch

High winds ripped off the roof and steeple from Open Door Baptist Church shortly after 1 a.m. Friday, Feb. 21, 2014, at the intersection of 19th Street West and Madison Avenue in Huntington.

Feb. 22, 2014 @ 12:00 AM

HUNTINGTON Justina Adkins spent time decorating her church for a sweetheart banquet Thursday, hours before high winds ripped off the building's roof and steeple causing hundreds of thousands in damage and a broken heart for the woman who called Open Door Baptist Church home since 1985.

"This is amazing, this is sad," said Adkins, of Lavalette. "It's just hard to believe."

Cabell County 911 received word of the incident at 1:25 a.m. Friday as a frontal system swept through the Tri-State with heavy rain and gusty winds. That combination brought down trees, knocked out electricity to thousands and caused increased water levels on Fourpole Creek at Ritter Park in Huntington.

But no where was the damage as significant as it was at Open Door Baptist, located at 19th Street West and Madison Avenue in Huntington.

The peeling away of its roof left the church open to flooding and subsequent damage, said Chase Ward, an estimator at Classic Construction. He estimated 3 inches of water stood in the basement as the church's walls retained pockets of water and its ceiling started to buckle.

George Adkins, 65, lives two doors from the church. He listened to the howling wind early Friday as tired to fall asleep. He heard a loud bang, followed by a moment of quiet, then interrupted by the sound of fire trucks that stopped instead of passing by 19th Street West.

"I didn't dream the church's roof would come off," he said. "It's been there forever. You can see that's solid wood. It was constructed good. I guess it caught it just right."

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Church hit hard by powerful storm

When the Santa Rosa de Lima Mission was built 85 years ago, those who helped construct the church in the Old Pascua Village embedded a time capsule into its adobe walls.

On Saturday, the contents of the time capsule, will be revealed and those who attend the opening are invited to bring their own item or add their names to the capsule that will be re-sealed.

The opening, which will also feature traditional Yaqui dancers and traditional Yaqui food, is meant to help kick off the church's efforts to help raise money for much needed restoration work and also so elders in the community who helped build the church have the chance to see what's inside.

There are only about two people who helped with the construction of the church, 2015 N. Calle Central, that are still alive, said Patricia Noriega Romero, vice president of the church committee.

"I know that there's documents in there with the names of our elders who built this church and I'm hoping I'm going to find my great great grandfather's name," she said.

Aside from the documents, it's unknown what else is in the capsule, she said.

Longtime members of the church described it as a special place in the community.

"Our ancestors and family members built it when they were young. They built it for the community so we could have religion and things going on for the benefit of the community and the people of the neighborhood," Touch Romero, president of the church committee, said.

He recalled attending a learning center at the church led by nuns who taught the children reading, writing and arithmetic. When kids completed their lessons, they would earn points that could be exchanged for prizes, like toys or gifts that could be given to their parents.

After weekly Catechism lessons the nuns would give the children doughnuts and chocolate milk, treats they rarely got at home, Romero said.

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Time capsule at Yaqui mission to be unveiled