4-minute read
New Beulah Missionary Baptist Church Pastor Jerry Smith knows about the power of prayer and the deliverance of miracles.
For more than a year, the pastor has been praying for a new roof for the Spanish-style church on the corner of North Ohio Avenue and Quincy Street, in Northwest Lakeland. Congregants donated money for the cause while tar-paper patches speckled the tan shingles, from where water has been dripping into the sanctuary.
Smith’s prayers became more fervent and the issue more urgent during Hurricane Milton, in October, when the leaking roof and pouring rains flooded the church’s downstairs with ankle-deep water.
On Thursday, Smith’s prayers will finally be answered with the additional help of James Middleton of K.L Smith Roofing of Lakeland. The company is donating a new $30,000 roof to the church, along with replacing an untold number of plywood sheets, which could add another $10,000 to the cost.
In the beginning: New Beulah Missionary Baptist Church didn’t always reside at Ohio and Quincy. A smaller version of the church, hand-built by its congregants in the early 1900s, was once located in the old Moorehead neighborhood. In 1967, the City Commission decided to destroy about 200 clapboard homes and businesses on 35 acres, including the church, to make room for The Lakeland Civic Center, now the RP Funding Center. The demolition began several years later.
New Beulah’s congregants decided to move their center of worship north and in 1967 bought an existing church and moved in. Their first service there occurred 58 years ago this week.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in February 2020, New Beulah Missionary Baptist, like many other churches across the country, closed its doors to in-person worship. While it has more than 100 people on its membership roll, attendance never recovered, with about two dozen people gathering for a 9:45 a.m. Sunday school and 11 a.m. service, along with a Wednesday evening Bible study.
Its youth group sings every fourth Sunday and holds its own Sunday school each week.
Divine intervention: About a year ago, Pastor Smith called K.L. Smith (no relation) Roofing to see what could be done about the drips.
James Middleton co-owns the company with his lifelong friend, Ryan Smith, whose father founded the business.
Middleton climbed on the pitched roof and discovered that the shingles another roofing company had installed a few years earlier were actually old shingles — at least a decade old when they were nailed in place. New Beulah would need a new roof soon, something not in the small church’s budget. They could put patches on for the time being.
As Middleton was perched on New Beulah’s roof, he later told Pastor Smith, he felt God telling him to “do something for this church.”
He and his son visited the church again just before Hurricane Milton hit to try to make it as secure as they could. Middleton watched as fierce winds drove rain sideways for hours. He couldn’t stop thinking about New Beulah.
“I woke up one morning after the storm,” he said. “I had words in my head: ‘Just do it.’ And I was seeing the church.”
Middleton himself is baffled by this commandment. It wasn’t in the business’s budget to give away a roof. He had to convince his partner to do it.
“I’m not even, like, a godly guy — I don’t really even go to church,” he said. “I just had this draw to make it happen.”
Fruits of their labor: On Thursday, a flatbed truck will arrive with pallets of shingles and workers will scale the two-story heights to rip off the old, crumbling roof and hammer on a new one.
On Saturday, Penny’s Landscape will plant some new bushes and flowers.
All for a church to which neither business had any previous connection.
The church’s deacons and trustees point to Pastor Smith’s faith and prayers, which they said he lies awake and does long after they’ve all gone to sleep.
“We can see his prayer is coming true in this,” said Trustee Sharon McGriff. “We know that he prays for this church. He’s a giving pastor. He loves each and every one of us.”
Middleton is still scratching his head, but thinks he might have an answer about why he was led to this church.
“Maybe it’s about getting recognition for that particular church,” Middleton said. “This isn’t about me, this is about a struggling church. Maybe it will get people paying attention and maybe they’ll get some more members there and do some more stuff there.”
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