LOCAL NEWS out of BLOOMINGTON, Illinois — Victory Church is “rising and rebuilding” after a fire destroyed their building one year ago. Faith is what keeps the pastors of the Bloomington church moving forward in hardship.
“We’re not going to let a fire stop us from being the church God has called us to be,” said Senior Pastor Ed Herald.
On Monday, January 10, 2022, our church facility suffered the devastating impact of a fire inside the building.
The fire started in the west wing of the facility and continued to burn through our children's ministry and youth ministry rooms. The heat and smoke from the fire quickly made its way through our sanctuary and lobby where the damage continued.
Due to the extensive damage of the fire, smoke, heat and water, our building was considered a total loss. In the months following, our senior leadership decided that it would be better to deconstruct the entire building rather than repair half of the facility and rebuild the rest. But we will not be shaken. We will not stop loving people and ministering to the great community of Bloomington-Normal, McLean County, Central Illinois and the State of Illinois.
As our Senior Pastor Ed Herald has declared, the lights inside of our building may be out, but the light inside of us is not!
WE WILL RISE FROM THE ASHES AND REBUILD!
When Elizabeth Harold reached out to our team at Seeds Family Worship and told us their story we knew we needed to step in and help where we could. She shared with me that everything was lost in their Children’s Ministry department, they had nothing left. We decided that we wanted to restock the Children’s Ministry Library with Seeds Family Worship DVDs, and that’s what we sent them.
Elizabeth received our gift and responded…
Thank you so so much!!! We are beyond thankful for your generosity, thoughtfulness and kindness towards us. We have been loving your songs and videos. We play them every Sunday for our Children’s ministry and the kids are memorizing scriptures and hiding God’s word in their hearts! This blessing has come at the perfect timing to encourage us and inspire us to keep moving forward with what God has for our church to do; Love and worship Him and love and care for people.
I shared with our leadership team and they were blown away by your generous gift to our church. I have recorded it in our Blessings and miracles log that we are keeping track of during our journey without a home church building. We have prayed many blessings and favors upon your ministry and all that you do for God’s kingdom.
Beth believes there’s a lesson for everyone to learn in the face of tragedy.
“People are seeing that God can do beauty from ashes. And it’s not just us who have gone through something like that. Everybody has their own story, sickness, finances, whatever. God can take ashes and turn them into a beautiful testimony,” she said.
