Tim Grooms, pastor of Riverview Baptist Church, Newport, and his wife Teresa lift their hands during a worship song on Palm Sunday. The service marked the first time the church hosted a Sunday morning worship gathering since last September, when the church campus was devastated by flooding caused by Hurricane Helene.
NEWPORT, Tenn. — Like he’s done so many times before, pastor Tim Grooms went to the pulpit at Riverview Baptist Church at the start of Sunday’s service and offered words of welcome to those in attendance.
But this was no ordinary welcome. This was a welcome back.
On the morning of April 13, Riverview Baptist Church held a grand reopening, hosting morning worship in its sanctuary for the first time since last September, when storms and subsequent flooding from Hurricane Helene tore through the area and blasted the church campus.
“I just want to praise God today,” Grooms said. “I want to thank Him for all the prayers, all the financial support and all the physical labor that brought us to this point.”
For the past several months, Riverview had been holding services at the East Tennessee Baptist Association office building while the church was being repaired.
Mike Hensley, director of missions for the East Tennessee Baptist Association, attended the reopening service. Hensley played an instrumental role in the restoration process, continuously helping the Riverview staff connect with disaster relief volunteers and coordinating many other recovery projects.
“I remember the day after the storm, I was standing with Joe Sorah (of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board), and we were looking around at the damage,” Hensley said. “And I told Joe, ‘We’re about to see Jesus flex His muscles.’”
And that is exactly what took place in the days that followed, he said.
The church, which is stationed on the bank of the Pigeon River in Newport, has been hit by severe storms and flooding in the past. But what happened last September was unlike anything in recent memory.
As Hurricane Helene roared through the state, the Riverview campus was ambushed by the raging floods, which rose to an estimated height of 10 feet on the church campus.
Everything in the basement — which houses Sunday School rooms and a community food bank called The Bread Basket — was a total loss. The sanctuary also sustained damage.
Aerial photos taken immediately after the storms showed the church completely surrounded by water. “We saw devastation all around us,” Grooms said.
Within days, however, the restoration process began. Tennessee Baptist Disaster Relief (DR) volunteers — working in connection with the Arise and Build Initiative — along with others from across the state joined forces to help ignite the recovery efforts.
Disaster relief volunteers John and Kay Thomas helped coordinate some of the projects immediately after the storm. The couple attended the reopening service, along with several other DR volunteers who had been involved in the process.
Kay Thomas said it was exciting to see God’s goodness on display through the selfless acts of others. “We are here to be the hands and feet of Jesus,” she said.
Numerous other individuals and teams also worked on the project, including an 11-member team from First Baptist Church, Smithville and a team from East Rogersville Baptist Church, among others.
Grooms said the individuals who helped with the restoration were “heroes.” He said the same was true of the building-and-grounds team at Riverview.
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Grooms told the Baptist and Reflector that he hoped the church could host worship services again by Easter Sunday. They beat that goal by a week.
The basement is almost completed, too. For now, the church is operating the Bread Basket from a different location.
Grooms said one verse kept echoing in his mind on the morning after the floods. “I kept hearing the words of Romans 8:28 ringing in my head,” he said.
He said he clung to the promise in that verse: “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.”
Grooms said having the church reopened for worship services is a fitting image of God’s grace.
“As bad as things looked after the flood, God has restored us,” Grooms said. “And not only has He restored us, but He has also made it better than it was before. Isn’t that an amazing example of who God is and what He does for all of us?”
(EDITOR’S NOTE — David Dawson writes for the Baptist and Reflector, news journal of the Tennessee Baptist Convention. This article originally appeared in the Baptist and Reflector.)
