Tornadoes can?t halt church services

When Metro Baptist Church Pastor Phil Martin looked out his window, he could see the whirling, black tornado bearing down on his church.

So he and other church employees gathered up the 35 children at the church’s preschool and rushed them to a windowless room in the middle of the church and told them all to crawl under the chairs.

The twister crashed into the church and destroyed most of the building, ripping stucco and concrete blocks from its steel frame. Despite the awesome damage, no one at Metro Baptist was hurt.

“Afterward, the amazing thing was the children didnt even know the tornado came through. We were only about 200 feet from the section of the church that was destroyed.”

The congregation of about 600 at Metro Baptist Church in Goodlettsville had to hold its first Sunday services since Friday?s storm at the gym of the church?s private school in nearby Madison.

They were among dozens of churches in the area that mourned the tornado?s victims and thanked God for what was not lost in the storm that claimed the lives of 12 people in the second round of deadly storms to hit the state in a week.

Under a basketball scoreboard and state championship banners dangling from the walls, Metro Baptist members sat in folding chairs on the gym floor Sunday and sang ?Jesus Loves the Little Children? as children and their parents walked up to the pulpit together.

Pastor Phil Martin showed members slides of pictures of the damaged church, which had tufts of insulation hanging from light fixtures, crumpled ceilings and pews filled with splintered wood and debris.