Emmanuel UMC struggling after vandalism leaves church without AC

By Jessica Brodie

SUMTER—One South Carolina church that has been a beacon in the community for more than a century is struggling this season after vandalism left the church without a working air conditioning system.

Now the church is battling insurance claims as it tries to raise funds for a new unit.

Emmanuel United Methodist Church, Sumter, has been a vital part of its community, over the years not only producing more than a dozen pastors and one bishop, the late Bishop James S. Thomas, but serving as a mainstay during the civil rights movement.

Today, it is a thriving and worshipful congregation with a daily soup kitchen that feeds scores of people in need.

But earlier this summer, someone broke into the church and stripped the basement’s air conditioning units of its valuable copper parts. In July they returned and vandalized the units outside the church.

Church member Beverly Dicks said Emmanuel is now “in a state of urgency,” with no working air conditioning in its sanctuary building.

“The property has been tampered with three times in July alone, causing an estimated $80,000 worth of damage that requires immediate attention,” she said.

Members have been worshipping in the church’s Family Life Building, which causes problems because that’s the same building used daily for its soup kitchen, a ministry that has existed since the 1980s.

“It’s a large, old church with not much ventilation, and almost all our members are senior citizens, so it’s difficult,” said Dicks’s husband, retired pastor the Rev. John Dicks, who was raised in the church and has returned to his early church home after his retirement. “We have to go in and set up for services and then break it all down, and we’re having to fight the insurance because of the age of the system. They don’t want to pay.”

The oldest church in Sumter, Emmanuel UMC was a former site of the annual conference gathering for the 1866 Conference, the predominantly Black conference that merged in 1972 with the predominantly White 1785 Conference to form the South Carolina Conference of The United Methodist Church. The church itself formed in 1864 as a brush arbor church (also known as a bush or hush harbor church). In the 1960s, now-Rep. James Clyburn used to hold workshops for the Freedom Movement at Emmanuel, and its impact on the community is well known.

“It’s heartbreaking for me,” Rev. Dicks said about what Emmanuel is experiencing today.

Church members are raising funds for a new unit, taking private donations and also organizing a golf tournament fundraiser. Set for Friday, Sept. 27, at Beech Creek Golf Course, the tournament is seeking both sponsorships and players.

Reach out to Yolanda D. Wilson for more information about the tournament at 803-840-3973 or Emmanuel UMC, P.O. Box 1203, Sumter, SC 29151-1203.