August 26, 2002
Abandoned church buildings come to life with a little ingenuity
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___New life is springing from dead churches in central Texas.
___And when Harold Cook talks about dead churches, he doesn't mean churches with boring worship. He means churches where all the members have died or moved away and left an abandoned building.
___Cook, director of missions for the FIRM Baptist Area, has unearthed a unique way to resuscitate the witness of such churches.
___His responsibilities cover four Baptist associations, Falls, Independence, Robinson and Milam, encompassing six counties. With all that ground to cover, he began to notice several abandoned churches and wondered if something might be done to find value in the ramshackle buildings guarded by weeds.
___When he locates such a building, Cook goes to the county courthouse to obtain a legal description of the property and make certain the structure is a Baptist church. He then finds at least two former members of the church or their descendants and holds a business meeting in which they vote to disband and appoint themselves as trustees. As trustees, they then vote to distribute the church property and all the church's assets to the association. The deed is signed and notarized on the spot and filed at the courthouse.
___The total cost of this resurrection: $12.
___From that point, however, Cooks get even more bang for his buck.
___Liberty Baptist Church near Rockdale, for example, had disbanded, and the building was beginning to deteriorate in the midst four acres of untended land. After completing the acquisition process, Cook had the church building moved down the road to Blackjack Baptist Church--a one-time mission of Liberty--where it was renovated and now is used for education space.
___"In a sense, the mother church went home to live with the child," Cook explained.
___In addition, the four acres of land were sold for $4,000, which was used by the association to buy a building in Buckholts for a Hispanic mission church. The mission already has grown to the point that a larger building had to be constructed.
___A similar chain of events resulted from the acquisition of Satin Baptist Church. The church building itself was still in good enough shape to be used by another congregation in the community. The pews were removed to be used by another mission church in the association.
___While the pews were being moved, a woman who was driving by stopped to ask if the pews were for sale. She had been married in the church, and other family members had other strong memories there as well.
___"I told her that they weren't mine to sell, but if she wanted to make a donation to the mission fund, maybe we could work something out," Cook said. "She did to the tune of $650 for four pews."
___The defunct church also had a bank account with $2,000 still in it, which also went into the mission fund.
___Cook believes other associations around Texas could do the same thing.
___"There's bound to be churches all over the state just like this, and some of the churches still have money in their bank accounts that we could be using for mission causes," he urged. "This is a way to recycle mission buildings that are out there, and it's something that could be done by anybody anywhere, all across the state."
___In addition to pews, a baby grand piano was reclaimed from one abandoned church and given to a mission church.
___That's pretty close to an organ transplant.
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