Rebuilding our church wasn’t the first step after a church fire…
It was a warm, late summer day. One of the trustees from my church and I decided to start a project to re-do the flooring in the church kitchen. We propped open the double doors next to the kitchen to get some air flowing through the room on that hot day.
After removing a few appliances from the kitchen, we had to assess removing the gas stove. We noticed there was no shut-off valve on the outside of the building, so we assumed it was behind the stove, as many are. We slid the stove over just a few inches.
We had no idea at the time, but moving that stove a few inches would drastically change our lives for the next two years.
A drastic change
I was a young pastor leading a small church at the time. I was still trying to learn how to navigate all the typical duties and responsibilities one would expect to go with being a pastor. After the incident, though, my responsibilities looked more like being a bookkeeper, a project manager, and an insurance adjuster than one who oversees a flock.
You see, after we moved the stove just a few inches, the gas line that was designed to move with the stove broke off and filled the kitchen and fellowship hall full of natural gas. The trustee and I ran through the doors we had propped open, and we ran across the street of the church. As we stood there dialing 9-1-1 and awaiting the impending flames, we were struck with a surreal feeling that everything was about to change for our church.
At some point, while I was on the phone with the emergency operator, the gasses ignited. With a loud whoosh, a ball of flames came roaring out of the very doors we had just sprinted out of moments ago.
Thankfully, no one was hurt. But I realized at that moment that the church building and all of its contents would be lost.
Many questions flooded my mind as I stood on the street corner waiting for the fire trucks to arrive. Some of those questions included:
- Do we have insurance?
- Do we have good insurance?
- What kind of coverage do we have?
- How are we going to replace all of the items in the building?
- Where will we meet?
- How are we going to rebuild?
- What about all of the history and memories that were made in this building?
I had only been the pastor of this church for nine months! And now I was overseeing the monumental task of finding the answers to all these questions.
A long, trying journey
As it turned out, the church did have insurance, but to our disadvantage, the church was definitely underinsured. That, coupled with that fact that we had “Replacement Cost Value” insurance meant that the next two years were going to be a long, trying journey.
This journey, which we thought would be just as simple as rebuilding, led us on a path where we had to:
- Take inventory of all assets,
- Estimate the purchase value of those assets,
- Calculate the depreciation of those assets,
- Estimate the cost of rebuilding,
- Enlist the help of many volunteers to labor in the construction process,
- Deal with the influx of all these new construction transactions hitting the bank, and
- Maintain the budget of both the general account and the building account.
This trial we faced ended up be more trying than necessary. If our church had a bookkeeper or used a bookkeeping service, many steps of our journey could have been much easier.
Click here to read the rest of the story.
Today’s guest post comes to us from David Newkirk for StartCHURCH. StartCHURCH offers ministry-focused bookkeeping for churches and ministries. Click here to learn more or call 833-687-9394 to see how StartCHURCH Bookkeeping can get you back to doing what you love!
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