In December, three days after Christmas, the service at Martin Luther King Jr Community Presbyterian Church in Springfield started with the spiritual, “This is the day.”
It was a symbolic choice.
“Breathe in for a moment this space that we are sitting in, where five years ago…something sought to take us out and to silence our voice,” Rev. Dr. Terrlyn Curry Avery said in her sermon. “But here we stand.”
“It was surreal”
On December 28, 2020, parishioners woke up to the news their church, which opened in 1979, was burning.
Lisa Baker, a church elder, remembers rushing to the building.
“And when I came here, I could still see the flames,” she said. “And it was surreal.”
Investigators determined the cause was arson and the suspect , Dushko Vulchev, was a white supremacist from Maine. He’s in federal custody.
No one was hurt, and at the time, services were already on Zoom due to Covid, but Curry Avery said it was still a “gut punch.”
“We had to just kind of sit with the hurt of a faith community being burned down,” she said.
“Black people are not surprised by racism”
The pain came not just from this fire but decades of hate crimes against Black churches — from the 1963 Birmingham bombing that killed four girls, to another arson down the street in Springfield in 2008, to the massacre at a Charleston, South Carolina, church a decade ago. Even Curry Avery’s own childhood church in Mississippi was burned down in the 1980s.
“Black people are not surprised by racism,” she said. “I'm not saying that this was just another event because it was not. It was horrific, and we still have to work through the trauma of that. But I think because of the history in this country, because of the power and strength of our ancestors, that is what we leaned on to get through this."
That resilience, she said, helped the small congregation stay together as they rebuilt — using insurance money, grants, and donations. They prayed in parking lots, community centers, and other churches. And they’ve continued to volunteer in the community, holding diaper drives and meditation workshops.
But at this service in the new church building, the fire was very much on their minds.
“Fire does not always come to destroy. Sometimes fire comes to reveal, refine and compel,” Curry Avery told the congregation. “The same fires that burn can also forge. The same fires that threaten can also testify. The same fire meant to silence can become the source of our song.”
“If God forgave, we had to”
The legal process has been long and emotional. Prosecutors are pursuing hate-crime charges, but the court ruled Vulchev was not competent to stand trial and no trial date has been set.
Parishioners say they’re hoping for a conviction – but working on forgiveness.
“If God forgave, we had to,” said Laura Anderson, a member since 1982.
Church deacon James Watts has been attending Vulchev’s court hearings.
“It was disturbing the first time I seen his face. He's a human being, just like me. He might be going through difficult situations,” Watts said. “I can't explain why he decided to burn down our church. But this has given us an opportunity to deal with mental illness, to help also let people know about racism in America and throughout the world.”
Amid the joy of re-opening, church leaders do worry something bad could happen again and have increased security.
“But I'm not going to come in every Sunday and wonder if the person who's sitting in the back of the church is here to do harm,” Curry Avery said. “Faith is taking each step of the way, as Martin Luther King said, even when you can't see the stairwell in front of you.”
On Dr. King’s birthday this year, the church was finally able to worship in their own sanctuary – named after the man himself.
