ATLANTA — Hundreds of parishioners are looking for a new place to worship after their church caught fire in the middle of the night over the weekend.
Fire investigators are still trying to figure out how it started.
“I think it was built sometime in the 50s,” Pastor Howard Beckham of New Jerusalem Baptist Church told Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes.
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When Beckham and his congregation were looking for a new church home about two years ago, they though the old church on Dill Avenue was the perfect place.
“The sanctuary is what really sold me on buying this church,” Beckham said.
The sanctuary was grand, full of light, and surrounded by stained glass windows.
At around 3:30 am on Saturday, the church caught fire.
A neighbor called Beckham with the terrible news.
“It seems that the fire started up in the attic and it burned most of the roof, so it caused the roof to collapse,” Beckham said.
Beckham believes the fire is just another test of his faith and he’s ready to learn God’s lesson from this tragedy.
“We’ve been here before. This has happened to us twice before in another building that we owned and that we worshipped in. We recovered from that and we know that we’ll recover from this and we know it’ll turn out good for us – and we know that God is doing something amazing through this fire so we’re just looking forward to see what God is going to do and what he is doing and what the outcome is gonna be for us as a church,” Beckham said.
The church has about 300 members.
Beckham says it will be a long road, but he plans on rebuilding at the site.
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