Church Looks to Rebuild After Being Destroyed In The Storm

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- A Columbus church destroyed in February’s tornado is beginning to rebuild.

First Pentecostal Church is on a mission to not let a damaged building stop them from doing the Lord’s work.

“The storm blew our building away, but it didn’t blow the church away,” said Pastor Steve Blaylock. “The church is still strong.”

Last week the church hired a contractor to come in and remove all of the debris the deadly tornado left behind.

Now they’re mapping out the plans and layout for how the new building will look.

“What you see now is the slab is totally cleaned off,” said Blaylock. “This site work is being done, getting ready for plans to start laying the foundation work to rebuild.”

Blaylock has been the pastor at First Pentecostal Church for more than two decades, and admits it hasn’t been easy starting over.

“The toughest part about all of this so far is keeping our people together,” the pastor expressed. “We’re having services at two different locations, and then trying to put the memory of what we had in a place and a perspective, and then projecting for something new in the future”

After the storm hit, the church began exploring whether to move somewhere else or buy a vacant property.

In the end, Blaylock said none of those options felt right, so they decided to stay and rebuild.

However, there was only one problem. Before they can start rebuilding, the church was told they’d have to raise the elevation of its current foundation since the building sits in a flood zone area.

“This present slab is a foot and 8 inches below the BFE, the basic flood elevation,” Pastor Blaylock explained. “We want to utilize as much of this as we can, but our plan is to go out across here into the parking lot, build that up and to build a new sanctuary, new church, Sunday School rooms, something that the community can be proud of, something that our church family will be very proud of, and then utilize this as much as possible.”

If everything goes according to plan, the church will have its Easter Service on dry slab on the church grounds.

There’s still no timetable on when construction will begin on the new church.