A series of storms has devastated several states with tornadoes, heavy rain, and flooding. In the aftermath, members of a Kentucky church are thanking God no one was hurt when a powerful twister destroyed their main sanctuary at a time when the building would have been full of people.
Amid the incredible destruction, the believers at Christ Community Church are grateful to God. That’s because, in an unprecedented move, the building sat empty during its usual Wednesday night prayer service.
It was April 2nd, and the forecast over Paducah, Kentucky, didn’t look good. In that moment, Pastor Tim Turner felt compelled to do something he’d never done before.
“We canceled that night because of the storms,” he recalls. “It is the first time in my 35 years of pastoring that we’ve ever done that.”
All signs point to divine intervention. “We just feel like that was an act of God,” Turner tells CBN News.”If you look at all these blocks, it was a block wall, 18 feet high, and it all fell, and the roof caved in to and I doubt there would’ve been any survivors. So we’re not mourning today, we’re praising God,” he says.
Church member Lindsay Stanley says she and her husband rarely miss Wednesday night service.
“But we had a feeling like we should just stay home. And then Pastor Tim actually decided to cancel services and we never canceled services,” she says.
“Actually, when we got the call that the church was gone, we were in the closet because the tornado had literally just gone past over our house… It was me, my husband and our two daughters, literally in the closet with helmets on and everything. It was that like this thing’s coming,” Stanley recalls.
The tornado hit just as the church had completed five years of renovation on their new sanctuary, wiping out thousands of dollars in new cameras, instruments and lighting equipment.
“It’s a gut punch,” Turner says. “I mean we had just finished all the remodels. Matter of fact, on Monday, I had told someone, I said, we can slow down now. The sanctuary is finally beautiful. And on Wednesday, it was gone.”
But Stanley sees something special in this moment.
“I truly believe that what looks like a setback is actually a setup. Like the Lord knows that we have been very faithful. I say all the time. When I first started going to that church about four years ago, the Lord told me this is the End Times army. My dad was actually healed in that church, a stage four cancer. We’ve had so many cancer healings and just amazing moves of the Holy Spirit,” she explains.
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“And I truly believe he knows that we needed a bigger place because we were outgrowing that sanctuary and we thought it would be years and years down the road. And I think he’s just like, you know what, let’s go a little quicker and I’m going to help,” she continues. “I truly believe that we are going to need the space to house more broken, lost people because our church is serious about evangelism.”
Pastor Tim also sees a silver lining, despite this devastation.
“The first and foremost is we are so thankful no one was hurt. Had we had service here that night? We all linger after church, you know how church people are, we linger and talk and there would’ve been people here,” he says. “And the way it looks, the way that the structure, how it fell, it looked like the roof came off and the walls all came off and they were 18 foot concrete walls and nobody would’ve survived.”
The pastor says the other good news is that their old youth center building remained nearly untouched, and although smaller, it can still be used for services until they can build something bigger.
“We’re resilient people. We’ll build back,” Turner says. “But we’re so thankful. God is so good to us. I preached it on Sunday morning. I want everybody, I want the world to know that this church still loves God, still trusts God, still believes in God.”
