Church damaged by lightning strike

MUNCIE – Terry Harke and his wife, Carol, celebrated their 48th anniversary on Thursday, and before the clock struck midnight to usher in the next day, he returned to where they married all those years ago, First Baptist Church.

His visit wasn't to take a trip down memory lane. Harke along with Muncie firefighters and police officers responded to the motion detector alarm blaring after lightning struck the church's 80-foot high bell tower. No one was in the church at the time.

There are holes at the top of the tower where the lightning blew out pieces of Indiana limestone. Yellow caution tape surrounds the circle drive on the northwest side of church, and inside the tape, stone debris lies near the wooden doors.

Lightning damaged the interior of the church's organ, too. The pipe organ was built in the 1920s and refurbished into a digital one in 2003 by Reynolds Associates Inc. Harke said the organ is insured for $550,000.

A Reynolds employee examined the organ Monday and believes the damage is to the amplifier. The church suffered electrical outages, too, that have since been repaired.

Harke said the 86-year-old structure, at Adams and Jefferson streets, has extremely flammable areas. The roof next to the tower is rubber membrane and the sanctuary is virtually all wood.

"If we would've gotten a fire, it would've been extremely bad. No doubt," said Harke, as he stood inside the yellow caution tape Monday morning.

First Baptist still held its normally scheduled services Sunday. The church's congregation falls somewhere in the 225 to 250 range.

Harke, a First Baptist historian and member since 1966, said this is the first lightning strike to the church's current location. The church is more than 150 years old and occupied two previous locations on Jefferson Street.

Scott Boyce of S.A. Boyce Corp. examined the bell tower — which has never had a bell in it — Saturday and estimated repairs will take a couple of weeks. Boyce said the primary holdup will be acquiring the proper limestone.

"To get all of that recreated will be the hardest part of the whole thing," Boyce said. "We have a good supplier on that (in Bloomington), but it takes some time."

There is no time frame for when the organ will be repaired.

Damages to the church increased Friday morning as standing water under the Madison Street underpass spread to its basement.

"They've had a lot of problems with that over the years," sixth-year pastor Wade Allen said of the church. "The sewer backing up on Madison is a common downtown problem."

Allen said the church in recent years spent about $20,000 to waterproof all of its water wells and that prevented significant flooding in the basement.

The pastor said the yellow caution tape will stay up for the foreseeable future, blocking entrance to the handicap-accessible circle drive.

"That stone probably isn't too secure right now," he said. "We don't want somebody to walk by and get hit."

Contact reporter Thomas St. Myer at (765) 213-5829. Follow him on Twitter @tstmyer.