Nielsen Builders Harrisonburg Virginia

McGaheysville Church Gets A Building Boost From Alabama Group

Extreme Church Makeover

By Tom Mitchell

McGAHEYSVILLE — Wayne Pence candidly admits to having seen TV’s home-renovation reality show, “Extreme Home Makeover.” Now Pence, pastor of Mountain View Church of the Brethren, and his congregation are living their own version of the weekly program.

Just like the popular telecast, Mountain View COB will morph from a time-share church to a new home owner in one week. Construction of a new, larger building for Mountain View’s roughly 70 members began Thursday and concludes on June 16, thanks to an army of vigorous visitors with a fervor for lifting up God’s house.

Pence, who founded Mountain View as a house-based prayer group in 1998, has seen his church extend in stages. By 2000, the group’s growth necessitated a move to the town’s Ruritan Club headquarters, a multi-purpose site that Pence’s flock shared with not only the Ruritans, but also with 4-H and scouts.

While his church appreciated the Ruritans’ generosity, the arrangement curbed Mountain View’s agenda, Pence says. “It was harder for us to schedule activities.”
The church’s grander goal of reaching surrounding youth needed a path, said Pence, and the church’s members agreed. By 2001, a search for a new site had begun.

Last summer, a retired couple in the Mountain View congregation referred Pence to Carpenters for Christ. The pair, who had moved from Missouri, knew that Carpenters for Christ had recently built a church in the midwestern state and suggested that Pence send a request to the Waverly, Ala., chapter.

“They (Carpenters for Christ) had never heard of Church of the Brethren before,” said Pence. “But they were willing to come.”

Carpenters for Christ formed in the Dallas, Tex., suburb of Highland Park in 1996, first building homes for families in need as a partnering organization for Habitat for Humanity. Within a few years, some chapters of Carpenters for Christ added church building to its mission work.

Divinely Driven

Like Pence, John Neff, president and chief executive of Nielsen Builders, Inc., sees the project at Mountain View as divinely driven.

“God has been in the process from the day they got the land,” said Neff, whose business has allowed him to assist other area churches with various construction projects, mostly in what Neff terms “long-range” planning. “I’ve been involved with a number of church projects, but this one is pretty special.”

Neff joined the venture two years ago, after Pence phoned him on a lark. Mountain View’s congregation had bought 4.6 acres on McGaheysville Road, between McGaheysville and Montevideo, from a local Mennonite Foundation at what Pence called “very, very reasonable” terms. What the expanding church lacked was the monetary means to build on the land: an ideal job for Carpenters for Christ.

Said Neff, whose expertise in building Pence sought: “This is a great story for people who lack faith or don’t understand that God is real.”

Actions That Speak

Obie R. Fuller, project coordinator for Carpenters for Christ of East Alabama, is one of 80 men who travel across the country building churches. The group’s members collectively take vacation to build one church a year, and feel personally suited for their mission.

“I’m not one to talk or witness much,” said Fuller, 51, a diesel-mechanic foreman from Valley, Ala. “One way I can is to come here an use the talents God gave me.”

Fuller’s group, from Waverly, Ala., consists of 16 churches and is an offshoot of a larger alliance that started four years ago in Montgomery, Ala. The Waverly branch includes people, aged 9 to 70 or older, with difficulty of tasks corresponding to age. The crew brings its own cooks, and stays in common quarters provided by the host community — not homes, but often public buildings. This week, Rockingham County Fairgrounds and Spotswood High School will house the workers.

After Carpenters for Christ completes its work, Nielsen will oversee the final touches on the new structure’s interior. An area architectural company, Robert Winthrop and Associates from Farmville, is handling design.

The new facility will fill 7,000 square feet and offer parking for 70 vehicles. Pence figures that, between work done free or less expensively by all three participants, Mountain View will save $900,000.

“This is all very humbling,” said Pence. “Just the fact that God has done it. We certainly do not have all the resources, and we’re not smart enough to figure all of it out on our own. This just reaffirms that God has directed the whole process.”

Contact Tom Mitchell at 574-6275 or mitchell@dnronline.com