From the ashes: Church keeps going after fire

Published 10:53 pm Wednesday, November 14, 2007

LYNNWOOD — It’s hard to imagine anyone worshipping at St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church, a building known for its ornate copper dome that rises above the trees along I-5.

The once-dazzling dome is now wrapped tightly in white plastic. Inside the church, a maze of scaffolding rises from the floor to the roof, which was damaged by an accidental fire in May.

Leaders of the Lynnwood church had to choose whether to move services into their building’s basement or find a new place to worship. The main sanctuary hall may not be fully repaired until next summer.

They chose to stay.

“We were not going to leave as a result of that fire,” said William Salama, a member of the church since 1975.

Within a month after fire ravaged the church’s copper dome, church members started gathering in the basement of their building for weekly services and liturgies.

They hung fluorescent shop lamps from the steel girders that support the rest of the church, and set up a speaker system and overhead projector. They installed framing and laid down carpeting, brought in folding chairs and arranged their church relics around an altar in front of the open room.

They pray, sing and smile as if the fire had never happened.

“Everything is good for us,” said the Rev. Arsenius Shaker, the church priest. “The praying, the services, liturgies and meetings, everything is regular.”

Investigators believe the fire was caused by a roofing repair mishap. The copper has since been removed from the structure of the dome, which is decorated on its interior with an ornate mural of Jesus Christ, his disciples and the authors of the Gospels. The only visible fire damage to the mural is a small hole.

The St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church serves 250 families from throughout the Seattle area. It took about a decade for the Lynnwood church to plan, pay for and construct its building at 4011 204th St. SW.

After the fire, the first service was held in a gazebo in the parking lot — in the pouring rain.

Mena Gad, 21, will never forget it.

Gad, a deacon who was at the service that day, could read the sadness on people’s faces. Their church was right there, and they couldn’t use it.

By the end of the service, people were crying tears of joy, he said.

“We felt the warmth of prayer, and we felt the warmth of our unity beneath that tent,” he said.

Soon after, the church got permission from officials to allow people to gather in the basement.

Children and adults worked together to clear the basement. Even members who live more than an hour away came to help after work.

Church leaders had always planned on renovating the basement, but the fire hastened the process.

“Everyone did whatever they could, and sacrificed whatever they could for a couple weeks,” Gad said.

The first basement service was held amid the glow of portable flood lamps, the kind normally used at construction sites. People were overjoyed when church leaders announced the damage to the building would be covered by insurance, Gad said.

Any awkwardness over holding services in the basement dissipated quickly, Salama said.

A building is just a building, Salama said. It’s the church that matters most.

“Even if we didn’t have a building, we still can pray our liturgy,” he said.

Reporter Scott Pesznecker: 425-339-3436 or spesznecker@heraldnet.com.