Standing outside tornado-battered Alberta Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, Larry Corder recaps that it was the church where he and his wife grew up in the 1960s.
He returned seven years ago as pastor, prayerful of revitalizing a church surrounded by poverty, crime and illegal drugs.
The devastation of a tornado now has upended the lives of Alberta Baptist’s pastor and its members.
Corder and other Tuscaloosa church leaders gathered in Alberta’s parking lot May 25 for a time of encouragement from Rick Lance, executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, and Frank Page, president and chief executive officer of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee (see story, page 1).
“The definition of standing in the gap — you’re seeing the best of it here,” Lance, an Alabama native and former Tuscaloosa pastor, said to the group amid the noise and dust of bulldozer operators clearing away remnants of tornado-obliterated houses on all sides of Alberta Baptist Church, just two miles from the University of Alabama. In one block adjacent to the church, five people were killed.
Corder and Donnie Payne were from congregations that, as Payne put it, “took a major hit” from Tuscaloosa’s April 27 tornado. Payne is pastor of Forest Lake Baptist Church in the geographic center of the city.
Other pastors were from churches that rushed into action that evening — Doug Reeves of East McFarland Baptist Church; Dale Glover of Cottondale Baptist Church; and Scott Reynolds of North River Church — along with Tim Foster, chairman of Hopewell Baptist Church’s deacons. Also on hand were Billy Gray, interim director of missions for Tuscaloosa Baptist Association, and Gary Bonner, the association’s associate director of missions for new work/missions.
Nearly every church, apart from structural damage, had families whose homes or rentals were demolished by the tornado.
“Wounded” was Lance’s descriptor for “what has happened on April 27 and since April 27.”
“We’ve been wounded as a state; I have felt wounded emotionally, personally, but not to any degree of … [others] in the directly impacted areas,” Lance said. “I’ve traveled the state and been in most of the affected regions, which are many, and the evidences are the same: People have been traumatized — but we will recover and we will rebuild and we will renew as the time goes on.”
In immediate recovery, for example, mobile chapels are being placed at various sites where churches need a meeting place during the rebuild phase that may entail two or more years (see story, page 7), Lance said.
“Then the renewal part of it … We hope that we can have a sense of renewal in Alabama — in Alabama Baptist life and our state life — because this is an opportunity in the midst of a crisis to be the people of God, people of faith, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ,” Lance said.
Payne said, “We’ve been praying for God to give us a way to connect with the community … and share the gospel and meet people’s needs.
“We never dreamed that a tornado would give us that opportunity, but it has.”
The message Payne hopes tornado survivors will hear from fellow survivors in Tuscaloosa’s churches: “You’re here for a reason and we want to help you find that reason.”
Three of the church’s senior citizens died of the overwhelming trauma stemming from the tornado, Payne said, while many members were miraculously spared as the tornado tore through their neighborhoods. The church facility sustained an estimated $2 million in structural damage, the pastor said.
At Alberta Baptist, the tornado buffeted the spiritual breakthroughs the church had been experiencing in recent years, Corder said.
The church had participated in Southern Baptists’ pre-Easter “God’s Plan for Sharing” evangelistic initiative in 2010 and seen results from its prayerwalking, door-to-door visits and its invitations to worship.
African Americans, high school and middle school students and older children have been baptized in the aging, predominantly white church — including nine on one Sunday, “more than the previous two years combined,” Corder said.
And the church had dedicated a $1.8 million renovation of its sanctuary and education space last October.
Despite the tornado, and a multiple myeloma cancer diagnosis of his wife, Brenda, Corder said the church’s spiritual growth seems to be accelerating.
“It seems like Satan always rears his head in the midst of all the good that’s happening, so other than a few exceptions, we’re seeing our church really pull together,” the pastor said.
“I’m challenging our people from the Word of God every week, trying to encourage them and let them know this is not going to be a short-term recovery, it’s going to be long-term,” Corder said. “We’re running the race. We’ve been given the baton. Our church has accomplished, with God’s blessing, so much good over the years. Many people have gone out in the ministry from this church, including myself.
“I believe that our future is bright,” he said, “that we’re going to be stronger in the future.”
Additional Tuscaloosa-area churches damaged by the April 27 tornado are Fleetwood, New Eastern Hills, Pilgrim Rest, Rosedale and Temple Baptist. (BP)
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