Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Over the weekend, Sardis Baptist Church’s steeple fell due to bad weather.

“Sunday night, about 12 a.m., I got a call from one of the church members who said they heard a loud noise. She had looked outside and noticed that the steeple had fallen off to church,” Pastor Walter Dowell Jr. said. “That night, I came over and took a look at it but couldn’t do anything that night because we didn’t have a tarp or anything to put over the top of it.”

Dowell said the next day he got together with Deacon Truman Estes, who came over to the church and put a tarp over the hole to prevent further damage to the building.

“Right now, we are trying to make preparations to do what we need to put it back together,” Dowell said. “We are in a rebuilding state trying to rebuild the community, and we had a few projects we were working on before this happened.”

Dowell said with the church being almost 100 years old, their main priority is to get the hole fixed.

“About two years ago, we received the blessing of being able to repaint from donations from Sherwin-Williams,” Dowell said. “We’ve had community support from the businesses in the community in the past and hope there is a possibility that someone could help us with the steeple.”

Dowell said right now they are evaluating the damage to the church and estimating the cost of the reconstruction of the steeple.

“We’re not going to be able to use what’s left because it’s old and deteriorated,” Dowell said. “The steeple has been here since the church has been here — that’s why it’s so important to rebuild it.”

As they look forward to the rebuild of the steeple, Dowell said they plan to continue to use the church to educate the youth and keep them off the streets.

“We try to get them into the church and lead them in the direction of Christ. That was my foundation as a child. I was brought up in the church, and it did me good,” Dowell said.