Hope City Church Opens Door Again
DULUTH, Minn.- Not even one month ago, Hope City Church in Central Hillside was struck by lightning, damaging its steeple and the street it sits on, but churchgoers were back inside the building for Sunday morning service.
“There’s no way that we would be so positive, so optimistic that we’d still be going if we just looked at what we could see with our eyes, because what we could see with our eyes was pretty bad and it looked bad, and it was bad, but our faith just kinda kept us going,” said Hope City Church Pastor Mark Pavola.
Lightning struck the church around 7:30 p.m. on August 28, causing one of the two steeples to fall, including a metal cross.
In addition to the steeple’s damage, an underground water main on east 5th street burst, leaving the street blocked off.
“The main damage was on that upper steeple and spire; we took it down to a certain level where most of the damage was above,” said Pastor Pavola. “Took it to that level, capped it with a long-term temporary tarp, and then one of those interior walls had been damaged.”
Parts of the steeple made up of brick and wood were destroyed, and even a few of the walls inside of the sanctuary were breaking away. Hope City Church will not be fixing the damages until spring of next year, as the approximate cost of damages of the steeple is one million dollars.
“It kind of depends on how you look at things,” said one member of the church, Josh Hull. “If something bad happened or if something good happened. Right away when the lightning struck, my initial response was, what we need to do to just get the church sealed up, get things back up and running again.”
On Friday, experts deemed the sanctuary room safe to enter, but their first service back inside the building was held in the fellowship hall, one floor below.
On August 29, members of the Hope City Church met at a nearby park for Sunday service, and despite everything that had happened, they decided to share food with familiar and new faces. They will also be continuing these efforts to give back to the community.
