A small Fort Worth church says they discovered this weekend that over $200,000 worth of building materials meant for a new sanctuary had been stolen.
Fort Worth Police Department spokesperson Daniel Segura confirmed Tuesday that the department is investigating a report of the theft of a disassembled steel building, which appeared to have occurred Saturday.
Longvue Avenue Baptist Church had been fundraising for two years to move to a new building, Pastor Brian Fisher told The Dallas Morning News. He said the church sees about 80 people every weekend, and congregants have told him they’d put summer vacations on hold, skipped trips to the amusement park and budgeted retirement checks so they could help fund the church’s relocation.
The church’s current building is old and needs costly repairs, Fisher said. The church found a buyer for its old building, purchased land near Chapel Creek in Fort Worth, and bought the materials to construct a new sanctuary, including building metals and rolls of insulation. They were just waiting on permits and approval from the city.
Breaking News
This image shows metal building materials the church was planning to use to construct a new sanctuary.
Courtesy of Longvue Avenue Bapti
On Saturday, Fisher said he went to the site and the materials were gone. He said the first thing he did was pray.
“We’re not a big church as you can tell, and not a real wealthy church, but we really had a mind to sacrifice and give and make this happen,” Fisher said. “To have it taken away — it hurts, and it just shakes people to their core, myself included.”
Fisher said the church couldn’t afford to insure the building materials, and it has started a GoFundMe to help recover what they’ve lost. “Who would have ever thought that someone would steal a building?” he said.