Collapsed church in Minto, N.B., given new life

The Pentecostal congregation in Minto has been worshiping at the United Church since the roof of their church collapsed nearly a month ago.

Welcomed with open arms, the churchgoers are thankful their neighbours offered up a place to gather on Sundays.

“Well, I guess we all have the same Bible and maybe we preach a little bit differently but overall it’s the same Bible,” explains pastor Kevin Howe.

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A hole is all that’s left where the Pentecostal church once sat. Snow caused the roof to cave in; nearly everything was destroyed by the weight of the rubble — all but Connie Howe’s most treasured possession: her bible.

“It wasn’t even damp,” explained Connie Howe just prior to her husband’s Sunday service. “It meant a lot to me because my girls gave it to me for Mother’s Day in 1997 and it’s called a Mothers Bible so I have a lot of things written in there about family.”

Much like KevinHowe’s sermons, there’s inspiration and a way forward, as the pastor proudly displays the blueprints for a new church to his congregation of only about a dozen.

The church will be built on the same site but can’t go ahead until ground testing is done. Minto is a former coal-mining town and there’s concern about old mining shafts or caverns.

“The engineers have to come in and have to drill to make sure there’s no holes where they used to mine underground and make sure that’s all OK. I guess at the Tim Horton’s when they went to build that there was a huge cavity under that and they had to fill that in with cement,” explained Kevin Howe.

There’s no timeline on when they can expect the build to be complete so until then, every Sunday at noon, you will find the congregation just up the road, gathered with their neighbours, the United Church.