Broadway church reborn after Ike

GALVESTON — The pulpit was simple and plain. The sound system had yet to be installed, and the walls of Broadway Church of Christ were bare.

But the pews were full and smiles abound as members of the 50-plus-year-old church returned to their house of worship for the first time since Hurricane Ike flooded the building two years ago.

“After the storm, in my naiveté I thought it would cost about $80,000 and wouldn’t take that long to repair,” the Rev. Allen Isbell said of his review of the church structure in the days after the storm in September 2008. “Well it’s been closer to $400,000 and two years.”

Especially since the church, which avoided high water during Hurricane Carla in the 1960s, did not have flood insurance.

Isbell, an attorney who became pastor of the church in 1977, said had he known at the start the price tag would be so high, “I would have given up in despair. I would have been discouraged and said, ‘Let’s pack it in brothers. It’s over.’”

The process to rebuild already had begun, and, with a few calls to friends and even nonmembers, help came in from around the globe.

Isbell’s daughter, an architect, led the way, and, as donations came in, the building at 17th Street and Broadway was gutted and rebuilt.

The only items that survived the storm were a couple of stands used to hold up flower displays and the communion table.

The church still has work to be done before its grand reopening Sept. 19, but the heart and soul of the house of worship was there in full force Sunday.

For two years, the congregation worshipped in a garden house at Isbell’s house in Galveston.

It wasn’t ideal but it brought the congregation closer together physically and spiritually, Isbell said.

The church took more than a structural hit. Isbell said since Ike, the church lost 30 percent of its membership. Its membership is about 99 congregants, Isbell’s wife, Mikey, said.

That means less money for the church’s homeless and prison outreach ministries, which were a big part of Broadway’s faith mission.

“We will resume that ministry because it is very dear to our hearts,” Isbell said.

The first day back brought more than a congregation back to its worship home, it also provided an opportunity for a 16-year-old Ball High School student to proclaim his faith publicly and be the first to be baptized in the church’s new baptismal.

Isbell noted that before the storm, the baptismal was a problem because it was too small.

The reconstruction allowed for an improved public display of one’s declaration of faith.

Loren Winters’ baptism was symbolic in more ways than one.

Not only did it mark a rebirth of his faith as well as the rebuilt church, but it tied back to the building’s construction in the late 1950s, when his grandparents were a big part of that church’s birth.

His grandfather was a Church of Christ preacher in the area back then and on Sunday his grandmother, Margaret Winters, broke out in tears as she watched her grandson being baptized.