Oklahoma church moves into new building five years after fire
In 2019, a fire devastated the meeting place of the Memorial Drive Church of Christ in Tulsa, Okla. It may have started in an electrical closet, leaders say, but the cause was never officially determined.
A few months later, a second fire ignited at the languishing site, killing two people who were sheltering there as church leaders struggled with an insurance claim.
Leaders of the Memorial Drive church have done what they can to secure the building, including putting a fence around the building.
But this past Sunday, Memorial Drive members gathered for the first time in their new building, ending five and a half years of sojourning and the “long and arduous” process of rebuilding, said Tim Rush, one of the congregation’s preaching ministers.
After their building burned, church members initially met under tents in the parking lot before a nearby church, the East Side Christian Church, offered the use of its former building.
Memorial Drive members meet under a tent after their building burned in 2019.
“There was a lot of sadness involved in the old building being gone — mostly for the nostalgia, where people were married and where people’s kids were raised,” Rush told The Christian Chronicle. “But on that Sunday, it was just an exciting thing: ‘Hey, look what God provided before we even knew what we were doing.’”
Memorial Drive kept meeting at the old Christian Church, first renting and eventually purchasing the property.
Less than a year into its temporary location, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, further complicating the congregation’s situation. Like many churches, Memorial Drive lost members during the time of quarantine and, for a time, had to meet in small numbers in the East Side courtyard.
Coming from an average of about 330 at worship previously, Memorial Drive now has about 300 — a good portion of whom were post-pandemic additions, Rush said.
The Memorial Drive worship team leads the congregation in singing “How Great Thou Art” in their first service at the new building.
Meanwhile, leaders searched for another existing building to move into long-term, with several potential options falling through.
It wasn’t until a significant time into the search they decided to rebuild, with construction beginning late in 2023.
Then, delays pushed the completion date back from July 2024 to January 2025.
“I don’t think any of us would have thought it would take us five and a half years to have a place again,” Rush noted.
Because of those delays, church leaders decided to significantly shorten their transition timeline from two months to a week.
“So there’s a lot of things that we’re learning on the fly of, oh this will need to be done differently, and oh, this isn’t quite finished yet,” the minister added.
“We’re trying to bring in a sense of being mobilized to go back into this neighborhood with specific purpose and mission, and not just, ‘We’re back at the old address, and everything will be just like it was.’”
After the long wait, members were eager to return to their home at 747 South Memorial Drive with a renewed commitment to reach out to their community in east Tulsa.
“We’ve been trying to talk a lot about (how) we are not going back to 747, but we are moving there on mission,” Rush said. “So we’re trying to bring in a sense of being mobilized to go back into this neighborhood with specific purpose and mission, and not just, ‘We’re back at the old address, and everything will be just like it was.’”
Worship minister Shane Coffman offers a benediction at Memorial Drive’s new building.
The new Memorial Drive building has several improvements from the old one, including a secure children’s wing, an inclusive playground and a baptistery more centrally located, in the foyer.
“It seems like we have more baptisms that take place during the week or after events than specifically on the Sunday morning after a sermon,” Rush said. “And so we tried to put it in a place where families and kids can gather much closer to the baptistry and feel a greater connection with the one being baptized.”
Still, the move is bittersweet for some members who came to Memorial Drive in those intervening years.
“A lot of people have mentioned … I don’t know if they’d say sadness or just a sentimentality of leaving the temporary building, because that was all that they knew of our church,” Rush told the Chronicle.
Memorial Drive Church of Christ members meet at their new building for the first time.
But the Christians meeting once again on South Memorial Drive are ready to face all the challenges and rewards that lie ahead.
“There’s a lot of excitement and a lot of curiosity of, how is this going to go, and what is this going to look like?” Rush said.
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