Courtesy: CTV News
Scores of people clad in white gathered Sunday for a healing service in a community gym across the street from a fire-ravaged historic church just outside Halifax.
The service was originally scheduled to take place in St. Thomas Baptist Church in North Preston, N.S., but was moved after a blaze tore through the sanctuary last Wednesday. No one was injured, but the fire left a gaping hole in the roughly century-old building that serves as the social hub for the predominantly black community. Rev. Wallace Smith told the crowd that the charred structure was just a building and that the congregation was the actual church. He estimated that on some Sundays, his church receives as many as 600 people. Colter Simmonds said he has been a member of the church for decades, but Sunday’s service was the first he had attended in a year. “I watched (the church) on fire, and I started thinking about … the state of the community, and knowing that the church was the foundation that we all grew up on,” he said. “It could have been lost and gone, and I just felt I needed to be there to support it.”
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