This morning I was roused from a sleep to these words. ‘Lanfer, the church is on fire.’” Rev. Lanfer Simpson shared this on the Mapletown United Methodist Church Facebook page at 2pm on July 4. By then the fire that started in the parsonage around 5am had been extinguished and the family that lived there had been taken to the hospital with “less than serious injuries” and would soon be released. The fire had jumped to the church next door and destroyed most of the back of the building, but the vestibule and front door were still intact and the bell in front of the church was still in ringing order.
Rev. Simpson had been live streaming his sermons from home since March. Two Sundays before the fire, he returned to church to live stream sermons from the chapel that now lies in ruins. Thankfully, those sermons have been saved online and those who watch them in can still see the beautiful details of the lost altar and remember.
Count your blessings. No one had died, thank God! What was lost was “just stuff.” Lori Beth Adams-Hamman shared that morning. “I rushed outside and saw the smoke coming from Mapletown. Immediately, as I began to think of all the things that may have been lost…this hymn came to mind. “I am the church! You are the church! We are the church together!”
I remember going to church with Lori Beth, whose family history here goes back 200 years. The “charred remains of the only church I’ve ever known” that flooded her newsfeed that morning is not the only building her hardy frontier congregation has worshiped in.
This branch of the Christian faith dates back to the Redstone Circuit of 1784 when Methodist preachers were appointed to Western Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War was won. Worshippers met outside of town on Whitley Creek, according to church history. Historian L.K. Evans tells us that early settler Stephen Mapel’s son Benjamin sold some of the family farm to trustees for a church in 1797. Parishioners from Greensboro had a steep hill to climb getting to ‘Mapel Town’ – Bishop Asbure wrote in 1803 that he was “stiff and sore” from walking the “rugged, perpetual hills” to preach. Greensboro Methodists opened a church of their own in Glassworks in 1820 and as Mapel Town became Mapletown the faithful continued to hold services in a log cabin school on Whitley Creek.
As the 20th century brought its changes, a church parsonage was built in town and in 1922 work began on the church that would sit next door to it. Ten years later, a basement was added. By 1951 a kitchen addition gave the congregation and the community a place to gather for fellowship dinners, holiday celebrations and later, as a county food pantry site. It was also the only place in town big enough for the students of Mapletown High School to shelter in during an emergency.
Greensboro Methodists closed their doors in 1968 and drove up the hill to join forces with Mapletown United Methodist Church.
When I joined Lori Beth and her family for Sunday service in 2018 while I was writing about Mapletown, I found a relaxed, kid friendly congregation wearing comfortable country clothes and looking roll-up-your sleeves ready to deal with whatever the future might have in store.
That future came in like a flaming meteor in the early morning hours of Independence Day. The balance that these parishioners are striking now is to count their blessings and, as Jesus commands, take it one day at a time.
While the trustees sort out the gritty details of saving what can be saved from the church building before demolition and addressing the matter of building anew, the faithful will be back in Greensboro, holding services in the retired Catholic Church that is now the Greensboro Fire Hall. There’s plenty of room in the old brick building to play in the Greene County Dart Ball League and hold socially safe events and services such as the church’s monthly food bank (every third Monday at 10:30 a.m. Volunteers welcome at 9 a.m.). Donations to help the family that lost everything when the parsonage burned can be made by calling Rev. Simpson (412-496-2868). When I talk to Rev. Simpson on the phone he has more good news to share. When the safety fencing was put up around the ruined church, the bell was removed and will soon be ringing every Sunday morning at the fire hall.