Kentucky church puts on new steeple after losing entire building to 2021 Tornado

BREMEN, Ky. (WFIE) - For the members of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Bremen, a little bit of waiting is no issue.

They’ve waited almost two years since the December 10, 2021 tornadoes took their original church building.

[RELATED: Oldest church in Bremen beyond repair after tornado]

In that time, the work has been underway to get back to a place they can finally call home.

So, when the brand new steeple arrived late and time passed by as crews hit snags in the installation, the congregation sat and watched with smiles.

In place of where destruction once stood, is progress.

“It definitely has been a long road. Step by step by step we’re getting there,” says Pastor TJ Milam.

For the members of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Bremen, October 4 is a special day.

Just ask Milam or Chair of the Building and Grounds Committee, Harold Morris.

“This is a special thing. One of the marks that we often associate with a church building is a steeple, so we’ve got a lot of our folks coming,” explains Milam. “They’re interested in this excitement and seeing it go up, so it’s just a good time for the whole church family.”

“The steeple symbolizes that this is a church, a place of worship. To me, it’s a point of moving forward,” says Morris.

Moving forward is something they’ve unfortunately had to grow used to at Bethlehem Baptist.

“The big thing that happened to us recently is we had all the trusses up on the church, and we had a rogue storm come through and took all of that down, and we had to start all over,” says Morris.

Undaunted, the mission stayed the same, paving the way forward as they look toward not only this day, but the future of their church.

“There’s a core of us that stuck together through all of this, and they’re my primary concern,” says Milam, “they’ve held together well. Christ has kept us together well, and we just want to keep on mission and on task while we do this.”

Milam says ideally, they’d like to have the outside wrapped up by winter, with the church fully functioning by this time next year.

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