Members of theGospel Outreach Church of North Georgia in Jasper are grieving after a massive fire Saturday night left them looking for a new house of worship.
The Rev. Jerry Stewart stopped by the 20,000-square-foot barn used as a worship place for the congregatio around 5:15 p.m. Saturday to turn the heat up for Sunday morning service.
“We keep it set low. I came in, turned all the dials up,” he told Channel 2 Action News.
He got about five minutes down the road before he got a call the fire alarm was going off.
The pastor could only watch as the investment of love, time and money put into the building went up in flames.
“I grieve over the loss of the physical part of that, but the eternal part of it is never lost. Those are treasures the Bible says are laid up in heaven and they will forever be there,” Stewart said.
And that was the message Sunday morning as close to 200 people worshiped together at a community center in Jasper.
The fire chief says the cleanup will have to wait until investigators with the state fire marshal’s office arrive Monday.
“We’ll be here today, all day and all night tonight on fire watch with an engine till they get here tomorrow,” said Pickens County Fire Chief Bob Howard.
“The question isn’t why; the question is what now. That’s the question we’ll be after. Put this in perspective and say what now?” the pastor said.
It’s unclear if the heating system sparked the fire.
The old barn was made up of four buildings connected and added onto over the years, which helped the fire spread quickly. The church celebrated its one-year anniversary last Sunday.
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