When Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton swept through the southeastern U.S. earlier this fall, Pastor Heath Taws couldn’t help but get flashbacks to 2018.

On October 10 of that year, Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 story with 160 mph winds, devastated Panama City, Florida. The roof of First Presbyterian of Panama City, where Taws now serves as senior pastor, was blown off, and everything inside the historic building was tossed by wind and drenched in rain. 

Because of his experience Taws has a sense of what pastors impacted by the most recent storms are dealing with.

“Our heart goes out to them completely. It’s like reliving what we went through,” he said.

Taws knows from experience that rebuilding can take a long time, but he hopes First Pres can offer a testimony of God’s providence and give hope as other churches walk through their own storm recovery.

This fall, construction will finally begin on the interior of the church building that was so badly damaged in 2018. If all goes according to plan, by 2025 a congregation that has grown numerically and spiritually through the trials of the last six years will return to worship there.

“We are truly a living example of God’s grace down here in Panama City,”  Taws says.

Heavy Winds and Hard Decisions

In 2018 Pastor Ron Brown was senior pastor of First Pres and had recently offered Taws a job as a youth and family ministries director. Brown now serves at a church in Tennessee but still remembers the sinking feeling he felt when a neighbor came over and showed him a picture of the church without the roof.  

A day later he made it to the church property to fully survey the damage and was shocked at the sight that greeted him. The church, the Sunday school building, and the fellowship hall all were badly damaged. 

Adding to the stress was his knowledge that the church didn’t have wind insurance.

It wasn’t just the church building that was affected. Most members of the congregation were going through their own struggles.

“We had no cell service. We had no electricity. We had no water,” Brown recalls.

With no way to call people, he would wait at the church for people to show up. 

As soon as Brown could get a hold of the leaders, they started to pray and make decisions.

A contractor estimated the storm had caused about $10 million in damage to the church’s buildings.

The leaders weighed their options. Should they rebuild the damaged church? Should they buy another building? Could they do something with the property they owned across the street? Should they build a whole new church somewhere else? 

Working with an architect, they concluded that the most cost effective use of the funds was to rebuild the current sanctuary.

But there was a lingering question on Brown’s mind: Would the congregation survive the ordeal?

“I don’t consider myself to be a great man of faith, but it was a faith-building experience for me,” he said. “My mantra during that time was, ‘One foot in front of the other.’”

“Camp Faith”

Meanwhile, Taws, who had already sold his house in anticipation of the move to Panama City, watched the damage from Michael unfold on national news broadcasts.

“My wife and I just bawled because this was my new job. This was my new church family.” 

He reached out to ask if he still had a job to come to, and Brown assured him that there was still work for Taws.

“I give him a lot of credit for coming in under those circumstances,” Brown says. “It wasn’t easy for him.”

Determined to move forward, one of the first things the leaders of the church did was to look for a temporary meeting space.

Within a few weeks they found a Seventh-day Adventist church nearby that was willing to let them rent space for Sunday services, and First Pres has continued to meet there ever since. On Wednesdays they meet at the fellowship hall of a Lutheran church.

After securing a worship space, the congregation began efforts to clean up and protect what was left of the church.

Mission North America Disaster Response sent in a team to help with the cleanup in the months that followed. MNA’s Disaster Response specialist for the state of Florida, Keith Perry, set up a camp in the parking lot of the wrecked church building, including a military-style mess tent, bunk trailer, and shower trailer. He dubbed the compound “Camp Faith.”

“Keith personally led the disaster relief efforts there for many months with people coming to help from all over the country,” Brown said. “These efforts included tearing out the interior of all our buildings to save them and demolition and repair of many homes in the area.”  

Once that was done they decided the best way to protect the building from further damage was to put on a roof. That was done about a year later. Christians near and far have helped along the way. 

“It was beautiful to see the church, the hands and feet of Christ, just come together during a tragedy,” Taws said.

Growth that “Makes No Sense”

Since then, the church has taken steps to get ready to repair the building. The funds have come from donations from outside our church, a capital campaign that raised approximately $1 million internally, the sale of church buildings, and FEMA grants, Brown said.

“The way that God provided through all of these means was a real encouragement to the church,” he said. “We prayed for the Lord to bless us in His lavish grace, and he did it financially (and by adding to our numbers).”  

Everything about the process has been long, but Brown said God has been good.

“Personally, as a pastor, as a leader, my goal was to hold out in front of the people evidence of the Lord being at work in our midst.”

He’s thankful God answered that prayer. 

“He held our church together. It could have divided us.”

From a practical standpoint, Brown, Taws, and the church leaders tried to be candid about the situation but also communicate the plan for moving forward.

To their surprise, they began adding new members who had never even seen the old building.

Prior to the storm, the church was averaging about 170 people in worship, Brown said. Today, they average over 200 at their services.

“It makes no sense,” Taws said. “We’re not doing anything different. We have the same liturgy, the same songs, we preach the same gospel. It’s been wild.”

Brown points out that this growth is particularly significant since it happened in the midst of the COVID pandemic.

He encourages those who may find themselves in a similar situation to take advantage of the resources they have available, whether insurance, PCA ministries, or churches or individuals who want to help.

But most importantly he encourages people to pray for the unity of their church.

Brown left his position at First Pres a couple of years ago and, after a search process, Taws assumed the role of senior pastor. But both men continue to rejoice in the way God has blessed the church, which they can confidently say is the people and not a building.

Taws said the restoration work to repair the building will begin on November 4. “Lord willing, by this time next year we’ll be in our building, which is just pretty incredible to think about,” he said.

He said it’s amazing to see how God has used a tragedy as a blessing and marvels at how they will return to their church building in a stronger position than when they left.

“God has been so good to us,” Taws said. “Hopefully it’s an encouragement to others that even though your building’s destroyed, even though your whole community is wrecked by a tragedy, the Lord will use this to do wonderful things.”