MAYFIELD, Ky. (KT) — “The building is nothing. Twenty-two million dollars, a newly renovated facility, it means nothing because in 15 seconds it can all be gone again. It really helps guide our perspective and keeps us grounded to what our mission is: making much of Christ,” said Paul Wilkerson, senior pastor of First Baptist Church Mayfield.

First Baptist Church (FBC) in Mayfield, a church whose campus was severely damaged by an EF-4 tornado on Dec. 10, 2021, will celebrate the long-awaited return to their campus on Easter Sunday.

The timeline of reentering on Easter lined up well with the completion of the building project, so the staff decided to make it “one giant celebration.” Wilkerson said Easter will give a prime opportunity to share that overarching message of hope, instead of just focusing on a return to the building.

“Easter is giving us the opportunity to focus on what’s important and not let the building become the major focus. We have a resurrected Savior to worship!”

Whitney Braden, a member of FBC Mayfield who was interviewed after the tornado, shared her reflections on getting back in on Easter Sunday.

“God has been good to us through the years while rebuilding,” Braden said. “How awesome that will be getting back into our building on Easter when Easter represents new life, hope and fulfilled promises.”

The service will begin in an unusual way. The entire congregation will meet on the street in front of the building that morning and begin with prayer and a few opening comments before walking into the completed building together.

Eight baptisms are scheduled for the service, in addition to words shared by Wilkerson and former senior pastor Wes Fowler.

Three years in the making

These three and a half years have been a long time to wait and worship in a borrowed facility, but God has been moving during the hardship, Wilkerson said.

When the tornado first happened, he and the rest of the staff felt “completely helpless and overwhelmed.”

“You’re in the midst of rubble. Your campus is in rubble. Your people are in danger. It’s scary to think back on honestly,” he said.

But almost immediately after the tornado, help started rolling in for both the church facility and the community.

“Within the first day, we had so many people reaching out to us with gifts to help and would want us to utilize those gifts to help the community,” he said. “You could just see God’s you know people really cared.”

Wilkerson and the rest of the staff would never have guessed it would take more than three years to get back into the damaged facility. From the day of the tornado on, the rebuilding process has been all-consuming for the staff.

“We were able to divide up the responsibilities in the first phase. Then we had meetings upon meetings upon meetings. We had somebody donate a camper and they parked it on our campus. It was just like ground zero. Every day you come up there and ask, ‘What are we going to do today?’”

After the initial chaos died down, the church continued to face obstacles. The campus flooded again, insurance and back-ordered products caused major delays, Wilkerson, associate pastor at the time, was called to the mission field, and Wes Fowler, senior pastor at the time, was called to be the executive director-treasurer of the Missouri Baptist Convention, so there was the added challenge of search processes in the midst of the rebuild.

There have been many moments where the building project has seemed a tremendous deterrent to ministry, Wilkerson said.

“As a pastor, you want to care for your people and focus on preaching the Word and focus on missions and evangelism,” he said. “That’s where my heart is and what I feel called to, but during this season, my time has been completely divided between insurance conversations, contractor and architect meetings and all of these things have robbed your time from doing the things that you really feel called to do.”

Wilkerson returned from the mission field to answer the call to be senior pastor of FBC Mayfield in April 2024.

In the interim, the congregation has been meeting for Sunday worship in the Performing Arts Center at Graves County High School. Children and student activities have met in various other community locations, and Sunday school classes have met in homes and businesses.