Rich McLawhorn, pastor of Garden City Baptist Church, has no doubt his church will rebound from a fire that engulfed its worship center and education building early Sunday morning, June 28.
“I am extremely optimistic,” he said.
McLawhorn has seen good things rise from the ashes before. When he was president of South Carolina Baptist Ministries for the Aging, he was eyewitness to a turnaround he describes as a “miracle.” The ministry’s two retirement centers were struggling under mounting debt and chronic budget deficits, and trustees explored selling or closing the facilities.
Instead, they hired McLawhorn, a lawyer turned minister, who became the ministry’s biggest cheerleader. He traveled around the state, speaking in churches and drumming up good will for SCBMA. South Carolina Baptists responded with record special offerings. McLawhorn revamped the ministry’s business practices, streamlining operations and increasing revenue.
Today, SCBMA is in the black, and no one is talking about closing the retirement centers. McLawhorn, who left SCBMA last year to accept a call to the pastorate at Garden City, doesn’t take credit for the turnaround, but instead offers it to God. “I saw a miracle at that ministry, and I believe he’ll do the same thing here,” he said.
McLawhorn said the miracles at Garden City have already begun. Even as he and a few church members stood helplessly and watched firefighters knock down the blaze in the muggy pre-dawn hours – before most of his members even knew what was happening – a local fire inspector, a man whose son worships at Garden City Baptist, overheard McLawhorn telling his deacons he didn’t want the fire to prevent the church from holding a worship service that day, even if it meant standing in the hot sun in a parking lot across the highway from the church.
The fire inspector put in a call to his own church, St. Michael Catholic. Within an hour, St. Michael’s pastor, Raymond Carlo, offered the use of his church school’s gymnasium – and enlisted parishioners to set up seating and a sound system – for the Garden City congregation.
The next day, McLawhorn met again with Carlo, who offered the continued use of St. Michael’s gymnasium until students return to school in August.
McLawhorn asked the school’s principal about the possibility of using St. Michael’s classrooms for Sunday school classes and Wednesday night meetings. Some of the rooms were being used for teacher training, but the principal quickly agreed to rearrange the schedules so that Garden City members could use the rooms on Sundays and Wednesdays.
The pastor’s study lies littered with ashes and water-soaked ceiling insulation.The principal told McLawhorn she wanted to help his church because she remembered that it was a Baptist church that shared its facilities with a Catholic school in Biloxi, Miss., when Hurricane Katrina blew through the state in 2005. “She said it was her turn to help the Baptists,” McLawhorn said.
McLawhorn is not Pollyannaish about the challenges his church faces. “We need prayer,” he said. “I know that sounds trite, but we have incredible challenges.” He said Garden City, which averages more than 250 in worship during the summer, was in the midst of a period of growth when the fire (which officials think may have been caused by lightning) struck. “God was working in our midst,” he said. “Satan would love to come in and stop that.”
McLawhorn said another challenge is to figure out where the congregation will meet after Aug. 9, when students come back to St. Michael’s. He said he doesn’t want the the fire to disrupt Sunday school, and “it’s important that we all be together,” he said.
Just a few hours after fire destroyed Garden City’s building, McLawhorn reminded his congregants – in a Sunday morning sermon he had not planned to preach – that the resurrected Jesus asked the women who came to an empty tomb why they were looking for the living among the dead.
“We’re not looking for life in a building that’s burned down,” McLawhorn said. “The church is not the building. The church is us. This is just a speed bump along the way.”