A year after a fire destroyed Westminster Presbyterian Church in Little Rock, members of its congregation are preparing for a dedication service Sunday in the building it now calls home.
Located at 15802 Arch Street Pike, an electric marquee sign at the curb greets passersby. The building -- which was last a residence before Westminster bought it -- sports new faux brick siding and transparent window coverings that resemble stained glass. The burning-bush seal of the Presbyterian Church affixed to the front of the building denotes it as a house of worship.
"We're hanging in there," Brenda Donaldson said of the congregation. "It's been a lot of work, as far as keeping things going."
Donaldson still carries photos of the church she took July 19, 2018. That was the night she and her husband, Jerry, received notice that an alarm had been triggered on Westminster's property. By the time the Donaldsons arrived at the church, the entire A-frame structure was ablaze.
The stunned congregation didn't meet for worship services that Sunday. The Rev. David Dyer, the church's pastor, had taken a week off for the first time in years and was out of state the day the church burned. Presbyterian churches in the area offered to share worship space with Westminster in the interim, and the Presbytery of Arkansas supplied Westminster with a $5,000 disaster grant, which covered some immediate expenses and gave the congregation time to think about its future.
The next Sunday, the congregation held its first meeting at Arch Street Fire Station in Little Rock, one of four stations that responded to the fire. In preparation for that service, Dyer had ordered green paraments to mark the space as one of worship and draped them over a podium and small table in the station's community room. To supplement them, he brought a ceramic Communion set he owned that was similar to the one used at Westminster.
"The Communion table [that Sunday] looked like the past; it looked like continuity," Dyer said. "[The congregation] said the fact that the table was there gave us a sense that we could continue on, and they were right."
Dyer, who will have been pastoring the congregation for six years Monday, said that in previous years he has recommended "thinking outside the box" in terms of Westminster expanding its presence in the community.
Originally established in 1899 in Sweet Home, the congregation moved in 1972 into the church it constructed at the end of John Calvin Drive in Little Rock. But with 16 members -- three of whom are no longer physically able to come to church, Dyer said -- it wasn't a foregone conclusion the congregation would continue.
"I have come to realize since then [that] thinking outside the box isn't a thinking-outside-the box statement anymore, but God burned the box down," Dyer said.
Investigators were unable to determine what caused the fire, but several events occurred in the months after the fire that helped the church make a new start.
Sherry DeWitt, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Madison, Kan., contacted the congregation in August with news that their church, established in 1888, had closed in October. First Presbyterian had reached out to a church in Philadelphia that had also recently been lost to a fire, who were undecided about rebuilding but said they'd been informed about a church in Little Rock that had lost everything.
The Donaldsons made a trip with two friends to the town of about 750 residents in early September and filled a truck with furnishings they would otherwise have needed to wait much longer to buy, including a pulpit, a Communion table, piano and organ -- a gesture that members of Westminster have mutually agreed made them feel blessed.
DeWitt's parents had attended the church since 1946 and she had grown up in the church, and its closing had been difficult on the six members who remained by early last year. Giving the items to Westminster was one way DeWitt said the church would continue its legacy.
"This way we felt they were needed and used," DeWitt said of the church's former belongings. "It wasn't [all] going to a landfill, it wasn't going hither and yon. It had a purpose."
Westminster decided in September not to rebuild at the John Calvin site. That month, Donaldson spotted a small clapboard house for sale almost directly across from the fire station on Arch Street Pike, where Westminster had been holding services. They were able to close on the house and the five acres it rests on in November.
David Murray of Sheridan, owner of Murray Construction, Inc., had been visiting churches last year in Pine Bluff, Fordyce and elsewhere when he remembered Westminster and its pastor. Murray had heard Dyers' sermons in the past and knew of the pastor from Presbytery meetings, and then learned that Westminster had lost its church building to fire.
"I went to meet with them and started to remember the core of faith they have there," Murray said. "[Dyer] has always been one of my favorite preachers -- he was always kind of a blue-collar pastor, and I'm a blue-collar guy, so it seemed to work out pretty good."
Murray offered to do the work at cost, and he and his two employees have finished the major parts of the renovation, such as knocking down walls separating three rooms to create Westminster's new sanctuary. The work isn't completed, but a small sign above the church's front door reading "Murray House," which Dyer said Murray was very touched to see.
"I'm almost afraid to take a picture of it," Murray joked. "I'm afraid somebody [will say], 'Nah, you Photoshopped this one.'"
This week, Donaldson and others have been putting the most recent touches on the church. Food will be bought and prepared; extra furniture and seating will be brought in for the dedication Sunday. DeWitt, her daughter and granddaughter will travel from Kansas to join the congregation, along with members of the Presbytery of Arkansas and other guests, including Murray, who has been attending Sunday services at Westminster and said he hopes to become a member.
RedStone Construction Group, which bought the property on John Calvin Drive, was to have created a driveway this week next to the new church that will eventually extend farther back into the property, as the church raises the funds to build a permanent main building for Westminster.
The fire has really been a journey for the congregation," Dyer said. "Their first inclination was to say, 'Well, that's it, let's give up. There's only a dozen of us. Some ... [said], 'We're not going to quit. We're going to move to a new location and get involved in the neighborhood.' "
"It's sad that it happened, and it makes me sad when you think about it," Donaldson said of last year's fire. "But in life everything happens for a reason, so I feel like it was meant for us to move forward, and that's what we're doing."
Religion on 07/20/2019