Fire guts Raphine church

GREENVILLE — Amid the rotating lights of fire trucks, rescue vehicles and Augusta County Sheriff’s cruisers, the members of the Raphine Christian Church stood in a wide circle and held hands.
Then, as the sun disappeared behind a hill along U.S. 11, they began to pray, yards away from their church as it continued to smolder. There were no tears, just hugs as the smell of burning building lingered in the air.
Jeff Ward, brother of the church’s minister, John, stood watching and eager to join them.
“We all realize the church is the people,” he said. “But nobody was hurt and with each adversity you have some opportunity.”
A passing motorist reported the blaze at around 7:25 p.m., said Chief Bruce Crow of the Augusta County Fire department. When firefighters arrived on the scene, flames were licking through the building’s roof, he said.
The fire, which apparently began in the attic over the sanctuary, was contained to the southern portion of the building, but by 9 p.m. when the flames were fully suppressed, the entire structure had been heavily damaged by heat, smoke and water, he said. It is too soon to determine the fire’s cause, he said.
The church had been completely remodeled in the last year, with new paint, carpet, books, computers, a sound system – all lost in the blaze, said church member and groundskeeper Sallie Golladay. Some items from an outlying classroom will probably be salvageable, she said, but everything in the office and sanctuary was destroyed.
Minister John Ward was in Ohio caring for his sick mother-in-law Sunday and his sons, Jordan and Micah, received the call that the church was on fire. Micah Ward immediately called his father.
“I said ‘Dad, if you’re in the room with Mom, step out,’ ” Micah Ward said. “And I told him we were on our way to see what was going on.”
Jordan, who lives in Culpeper, and Micah Ward, living in North Carolina, were on their way back out of town when they got the phone call and as they drove up the church, they talked and relayed the scene to their father over the phone.
“As we were pulling up I said, ‘Well, we see smoke so there’s definitely something going on,” Micah Ward said. “It had just gotten started, there were some flames coming out of the roof.”
The smoke and flames from the church were visible for at least a mile along U.S. 11 and traffic on the north-south corridor slowed to a crawl as five different departments responded. Trucks from the Augusta County Fire Department along with Middlebrook, South River District, Swoope, Stuarts Draft, Fairfield, Walker’s Creek, Wilson, Raphine and Fairfield volunteer fire departments lined U.S. 11.
One firefighter was transported to Augusta Medical Center with heat exhaustion, Crow said. No one else was injured.
According to Jeff Ward, Raphine Christian Church – a nondenominational church — was founded in Steeles Tavern around 1976. He said he believed the church had been in its current location, on the 5100 block of Lee-Jackson Highway just south of Greenville, since 1980.
Minister John Ward took the news OK, according to his son Micah. But he was shaken.
“He was pretty shocked,” Micah Ward said. “We knew it had been a rough week with the family [in Ohio.]”
The Greenville BB&T Bank will be accepting donations for the congregation, Golladay said.