Bethel Park clings to hope after fire damages church

By Jessica Brodie

DENMARK—In the aftermath of a devastating fire, one South Carolina United Methodist church is clinging to hope and faith, certain God will use for good what someone meant for evil.

Bethel Park UMC is a historic church in the Orangeburg District of the state, nestled a block from the highway in a small community near Bamberg. The church has been a thriving part of the area for more than a century, known especially for missions in the community.

But in the wee hours of Nov. 9, what is suspected to be three arson-related fires broke out at the church, damaging the church nursery, an upstairs Sunday school room and the library near the front entrance, leaving the church and its sanctuary unusable for now. 

“All of that front entrance area is ashes and charcoal, and the farthest corner of the building has layers of soot,” said Bethel Park’s the Rev. Javy Rudolph Gwaltney.

While the building was not destroyed, the damage was so intense it will likely take until May, maybe longer, before it becomes operable once more, Gwaltney said. 

Gwaltney got the call about the blaze around 2 a.m. Nov. 9 after a local firefighter just happened to notice fire at the church after responding to a false alarm at another church.

“Our church is not on main road, and one of the firefighters happened to go down the road our church is on and saw the fire, so they were able to get crews there very quickly,” Gwaltney explained.

By the time Gwaltney arrived, fire crews were on the scene actively working to extinguish what turned out to be three small fires set in various corners of the church, the worst in the church library.

Fortunately, Gwaltney said, doors were closed that contained most of the damage and probably saved the building from the fire spreading any further, and the sanctuary is largely intact. However, heavy smoke caused massive damage throughout the entirety of the structure.

“We’re going to have to literally clean every square inch of the building,” Gwaltney said. “Smoke just got into everything.”

The sanctuary has a 20-foot ceiling, so they need to build scaffolding to reach that high, and he said there’s about an eighth of an inch of soot everywhere else—the pews, the stained-glass windows, hundreds of individual tubes in the church’s old pipe organ, everything.

“It almost looks at first glance like we have wallpaper with black streaks going down it, literally streaming beads of water and soot in perfectly straight lines,” Gwaltney said.

“It’s going to be a very long process.”

Gwaltney said several of the church’s members have homes in a neighborhood on the Edisto River, where there is a pavilion they are able to use for worship for the time being.

Now, they are trying their best to work through emotions about the fire. The first Sunday they gathered after the blaze, Gwaltney led a service with a message on overcoming evil and using good to triumph as they work to let go of negative feelings.

“After you get past the anger and shock, it’s mostly hurt we’re feeling,” Gwaltney said. “This congregation is about 125 years old, and a lot of their history was destroyed in that library.”

As well, they now have challenges they didn’t have before. For instance, the church is very mission-focused and does a lot of outreach in the area, and they had a big kitchen where they cooked for Meals On Wheels and did a lot of work for a residential care facility. But now their kitchen is unusable.

“We’ll find ways to do it, but we’re hampered,” Gwaltney said. “It may be a year before the entire church is to the point that we can use it again.”

Still, he’s heartened by blessings they’re experiencing even now. For instance, they have a $5,000 deductible on their insurance policy, so Gwaltney started a Go Fund Me campaign to see if they could get some help meeting that amount.

To his astonishment, the deductible was met in three hours, and within a day and a half, the church had received double what they were requesting. He said any extra funds will go toward whatever insurance doesn’t cover.

“Far and away the most costly thing will be cleaning and decontaminating, and replacing the things the fire and soot has damaged,” Gwaltney said.

He’s also been heartened by the prayers and well wishes Bethel Park has received from other denominational churches in the area, as well as from United Methodists across the connection.

“We realized we’re blessed in a lot of ways,” he said.

To learn more about the church’s Go Fund Me campaign, visit https://gofund.me/2695d521.