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Comments
Submitted by Erik (not verified) on Thu, 5/28/2009 - 1:37pm
Are you suggesting a liquor store should have just occupied an old church?
If so, I think that's the greatest idea ever.
Submitted by Gary (not verified) on Thu, 5/28/2009 - 5:38pm
Exactly.
GK
Submitted by sinikl (not verified) on Fri, 5/29/2009 - 3:56am
i have worshipped there, i do believe.
Submitted by Dessauer (not verified) on Fri, 5/29/2009 - 2:41pm
I would rename it the Church of the Holy Spirit(s). I cannot believe there was a church there before.
Submitted by Michael Bacon (not verified) on Mon, 6/1/2009 - 2:56pm
Where is John Shelp of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association? (I put that there because he regularly googles for it, so maybe he'll show up that way...) He's got a bunch of great stories involving this church, I think involving the pastor running off with the church secretary, and it being one of the leading voices for temperance in the city (and now replaced by a liquor store).
Submitted by retired Englis… (not verified) on Sun, 6/7/2009 - 2:24am
Is John Schelp sure of the 1948 date on the photo? I could almost swear I see my grandmother holding me, and I didn't grace the world until 1954. Very eerie!
Submitted by John (not verified) on Tue, 6/9/2009 - 1:26am
Retired English teacher, check out our webpage on the West Durham Church of God...
http://www.owdna.org/History/history9.htm
Longtime members of the church said they thought the date of the photograph was 1950.
Send me an email if/when you determine you are the baby in the photo and we can change the date on the webpage.
thanks,
John Schelp (bwatu AT yahoo.com)
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 6/9/2009 - 5:44pm
FYI: That's a 1953 Ford in that photo of the church that is labeled as taken in the 1940s.
Submitted by Donald (not verified) on Thu, 1/7/2010 - 10:51pm
Hi, I am Donald Lowery, now an Episcopal priest, but I grew up at the West Durham Church of God and remember it well. I think it would have been great to have reused it as a liqour store. However, the building had serious structural problems. It was in danger of collapsing from structural failure. The congregation was told it could not saved, which is one reason they moved rather than renovated.
As regards a pastor running off with a secretary, are you sure you have the right church? I was a member there from 1957 (of course I was a baby) until 1975 and I know of no such event. The Pentecostal Holiness Church down the street is still standing and has similiar architecture.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 8/3/2010 - 8:41pm
"Have some Gin, it's no sin."
I like it.
Submitted by Gil Bowers (not verified) on Tue, 9/21/2010 - 12:14am
I doubt that Roland Verrico ran off with his secretary. He was married to the daughter of one of the pillars of the church. I worked at radio station WSSB from 1948 to about 1953, off and on. Verrico bought time on our station. He arranged for several big tent revivals. He moved away, transferred, I assumed, about 1950. He was replaced by R. C. Munsey (Muncie?), a faithful man without Verrico's push. The church was air conditioned, rare for that time.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 10/30/2010 - 2:15am
some of you folks are a little confused. I went to West Durham Church of God as a child for many years. West Durham Church of God was a Pentecostal Holiness Church. I later started going to the East Durham Church of God, also a Pentecostal Holiness Church, as ALL "Church of God" churches are. Another big brick church down the road from the WDCOG was Greystone Baptist Church (still there). As far as I know, the pastor/secretary story is bogus, and not a very nice tale to be spreading. I also can't understand why anyone would think it would be so cool to have an ABC store in a church.
Submitted by Donald (not verified) on Sat, 10/30/2010 - 3:01am
The West Durham Church of God was not a Pentecostal Holiness Church. It was part of the Church of God headquartered in Cleveland, TN. The Pentecostal Holiness Church is a couple blocks away and is still standing and in use. They were both faux Gothic in architecture. Greystone Baptist is still in use as well a couple of blocks down from the PH church. My family were members of the WDCOG from 1957 till they moved up north in 1975.
Submitted by Gary (not verified) on Sat, 10/30/2010 - 3:14am
For reference, I wrote about the Pentacostal Church here and Greystone here.
I suppose those of us who like the idea of an ABC store in a former church structure are fans of 1) adaptive reuse, 2) the unexpected, 3) mild irony, or all three.
GK
Submitted by Donald (not verified) on Sat, 10/30/2010 - 3:28am
A clarification: The Church of God is holiness and pentecostal in theology. The distinction I was making in my previous post was between the C of G and the Pentecostal Holiness Church as denominations with identical theologies. I think the post to which I was responding was using the terms pentecostal holiness as theology not denominational names. However, there is a lovely PH church close towhere the West Durham C of G once stood also close to Greystone Baptist.
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