Bishop Bryant Robinson Jr.: "In the beginning, all we saw was flames and smoke. But we asked for the Lord's help and we have received it."
The Macedonia Church of God in Christ on Tinkham Road in Springfield nears completions. Construction continues after the original church was hit by an arson fire the night Barack Obama was elected president.SPRINGFIELD – The first volunteers flew in from Chicago last summer, followed by groups from Santa Barbara, Ca., and Los Angeles.
Months later, the volunteers were still coming – paying their own expenses, even bringing their own tools to help the Macedonia Church of God in Christ rewrite its recent history.
On Sunday nights, they prayed at the black congregation’s old King Street chapel; on Monday, they picked up hammers, drills and saws to help rebuild the new church, the one torched by arsonists on Nov. 5, 2008, as a protest of Barack Obama’s election.
The visiting carpenters brought more than free labor to the sprawling, $2.5 million project, which is 90 percent complete and set to open this summer.
Bishop Bryant Robinson Jr., sits inside the santuary of the Macedonia Church of God in Christ.They brought renewed hope. As one group after another finished week-long shifts at the Tinkham Road construction site, Bishop Bryant Robinson Jr. marveled at how one bad act could foster so many good ones.
“It’s remarkable,” the pastor said. “In the beginning, all we saw was flames and smoke. But we asked for the Lord’s help and we have received it.”
From high school students to retirees in their 80s, more than 100 volunteers have toiled at the site since last summer. Some – including members of the Millbury Federated Church – had worked on church rebuilding projects in Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.
With the Macedonia church arson, the Millbury volunteers found work much closer to home.
Set several hours after Obama’s election, the gasoline-fed blaze ripped through the 18,000-foot structure, leaving a charred skeleton, rubble and ash. The fire was so intense, the acrid smell lingered for 14 months until the cement floor was torn up and replaced.
Given its timing, the church fire drew international attention, and the investigation and eventual arrests were closely monitored by White House.
Two white defendants pleaded guilty last year, and a jury convicted the third, Michael F. Jacques, of Springfield – in U.S. District Court two weeks ago.
The three men spent election night drinking beer and smoking marijuana at a home near the church construction site, witnesses testified; around 2 a.m., they walked to the church with gasoline cans, climbed through a window, and set the fire, prosecutors said.
During a visit to the church-in-progress Friday, Gov. Deval L. Patrick praised federal prosecutors for winning the conviction, and commended the parish for their faith and resilience.
The governor’s appearance came one day short of the fourth anniversary of church’s first groundbreaking. While the criminal cases commanded public attention, the rebuilding unfolded in phases – with the help of Patrick, new financing was secured in early 2010, and construction began again a few months later.
By then, the small congregation had been embraced by other churches in Greater Springfield and around the country. Indeed, the crime strengthened ties between local churches, creating a “multi-cultural, multi-denominational coalition,” Robinson said.
Within days of the fire, Robinson got a call from the National Coalition for Burned Churches, an Atlanta-based charity that provides free labor, expertise and moral support to congregations suddenly without churches.
“When you see your church burned down, it’s like a family member dying – that’s where the coalition comes in,” said president Rev. Terrance G. Mackey Sr., whose church in Greeleyville, N.C., was torched by two Ku Klux Klan members in 1996.
Not long after construction began again on Tinkham Road, volunteers from the coalition began arriving.
Catholic volunteers from Chicago showed up first, followed by two groups from California, including a 33-member contingent from a church and synagogue in Santa Barbara.
The volunteers paid for their own plane tickets, rental cars, meals and motels rooms; to save money, some stayed with local parishioners, and others unrolled sleeping bags in the basement of the Trinity United Methodist Church in Forest Park.
There two photos show signatures and messages left by some of the volunteer workers who have helped rebuild the Macedonia Church of God in Christ.
Some of the volunteer workers at the Macedonia Church of God in Christ signed their names and left messages.In exchange, they were guaranteed gratitude, lunch, and five days of work beneath the August sun.
To Sheldon O. Haase, of Glendale Ca., the opportunity was too good to pass up.
“Part of the Methodist belief is to do good, and this was one way we could help somebody who had a great loss,” Haase, 71, recalled last week. “It’s what we do.”
A building contractor and parishioner of Glendale First United Methodist Church, Haase helped supervise his seven-member group.
“We had two skilled people; and (five) people with willing hands. Willing hands are the most important,” he said.
The weather cooperated, too.
“We expected hot and sunny, and we got cool and sunny,” Haase said. “We were blessed.”
The overall quality of the volunteer’s work has been very good, said principal contractor James A. Tarrant, whose Chicopee-based Construction Management of New England has spent four years building and rebuilding the church.
“I’d give them a B-plus,” said Tarrant, who specializes in church projects and has experience with volunteers.
“For attitude, I’d give them an A.”
Last month, two dozen Harvard University students gave up their spring break to paint the chapel, prayers rooms, banquet hall and the bishop’s office.
In a crawlspace above the ceiling, they signed their names and left a wish for the future.
“God bless this house of worship,” one student wrote.