New Yorkers to help rebuild church as part of 9/11 payback

A UMNS Report By Linda Bloom*

A church building that was the focal point of a small Indiana town is being rebuilt - with a special boost from New York area volunteers wanting to give back after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Last Nov. 6, a tornado took 25 lives in the DeGonia Springs community in southwest Indiana and damaged or destroyed nearly 1,000 homes and Baker Chapel United Methodist Church.

This year, Sept. 8-10, at least 40 New York volunteers - including 20 firefighters - will help raise the walls of the new Baker Chapel. The volunteer work is part of an annual 9/11 remembrance sponsored by the New York Says Thank You Foundation.

"You get a cross-section of people who were personally affected by it (9/11) one way or another," Jeff Parness, founder and chairman of the foundation, said about the participants.

The foundation's mission, according to its Web site, is to send volunteers each year "on the 9/11 anniversary to help rebuild communities around the country affected by natural or man-made disasters as our way of commemorating the extraordinary love and generosity extended to New Yorkers by Americans from all across the United States" after the terrorist attacks.

Parness expects a few volunteers from the foundation's previous projects to show up, along with a couple hundred local volunteers and at least 100 from the area's Amish and Mennonite communities.

A Sept. 8 prayer breakfast at St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, featuring Bishop Mike Coyner, will kick off the week's volunteer activities. St. Luke's also will provide food services during that time.

The building project is being coordinated through the United Methodist South Indiana Annual (regional) Conference office in Bloomington.

The volunteer crews are expected to work all day Friday and Saturday, with breaks for a barbecue or two and a softball game. The closing ceremony will include a march, complete with bagpipes, down a country road.

Another part of the project involves planting some 400 trees along the path of the tornado to honor both those lost in the tornado and the first responders killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Parness said he started to consider southwest Indiana as the site for the foundation's 2006 project after seeing news about the tornado on television. "It seemed like every cable network had reporters on the ground talking about the total devastation," he added.

He was impressed by the "immediate resilience" of the people there and contacted the Rev. Randy Anderson, the United Methodist disaster coordinator for the Evansville District, about assistance that was needed. "The first thing on his list was Baker Chapel," he recalled.

Parness hopes the weekend project will result in about $300,000 of free labor. "It's a real symbolic event to focus on one building that was really the center of the whole community," he added.

Ground was broken July 30 for the new building. More than 120 members and friends of Baker Chapel United Methodist Church gathered at the "once and future site" of the church to turn dirt at the east edge of DeGonia Springs.

The Rev. Mike Shelton, on the job for just a month, told those gathered, "It's time to say 'good-bye' to the building that was here and 'welcome' to the building that is coming."

Earlier in the day, during Baker Chapel's worship service, the congregation sang "I'll Fly Away" - the same song it had planned to sing the day the tornado struck. Currently, the congregation worships at Boonville Junior High School, about 10 miles west of the church's permanent site.

The Baker Chapel site was first dedicated in the 1840s, when local resident Thomas Baker prayed on the land where residents later built a small log building. That building was replaced in 1861 with a framed, never-painted building. With a growing congregation, the second building was replaced in 1903 with a larger framed building. In 1985, the congregation built a fellowship hall and class rooms.

More information about the New York Says Thank You Foundation and the Baker Chapel rebuilding project can be found at www.NewYorkSaysThankYou.org and www.inareaumc.org on the Web.

Contributions to the Baker Chapel Conference Advanced Special can be sent to South Indiana Conference of the United Methodist Church, P.O. Box 2267, Bloomington, IN 47402-2267.

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York. Daniel Gangler, director of communications for the Indiana Area, United Methodist Church, contributed to this report.