Open doors
A large crowd enjoyed tours of the newly renovated Eighth Street Church at an open house hosted by a Nazarene congregation that will hold services there.
Leaders of a Nazarene congregation were thrilled when a large crowd recently showed up to see their new church home in Midtown.
The Rev. Chris Pollock, lead pastor of Eighth Street Church, said he wasn’t able to get a good count of how many people flocked to the church building on March 31, but he knew there were many people there.
Pollock and his congregation held an open house so that people from their sister church Bethany First Church of the Nazarene, along with local clergy and residents, could see renovations recently completed at the historic German Methodist church building at 701 NW 8.
“We thought there would be a lot of interest. People care about the old Eighth Street Church,” he said. “We wanted to restore it as a gift to the city, and that’s what we wanted it to be so we’re very glad that people are interested.”
Pollock’s congregation was formerly known as Midtown Church, but they have now taken the name of their new church home. They moved in just in time to hold Easter services there.
“We had a great Sunday, very exciting. It was just a great day of celebration,” he said. “As we’re in this kind of restored, resurrected building, we got to celebrate in a very tangible way resurrection and are just thrilled by everything that’s happened.”
Pollock said the renovation of the church building cost about $1.3 million. He said the church is finishing up Phase Two of the project, which will feature the completion of a bell tower and steeple. The church currently is trying to raise the remaining $50,000 to go toward this effort.
Pollock said it was his idea to start a new church in Midtown, but he gave the credit for the ideas for the renovation project to Scott Dedmon, an architect who is a member of his congregation.
“It was a team effort. I went into the Eighth Street Building with Scott Dedmon with ADG (Architectural Design Group),” Pollock said. “While I could imagine what kind of community we could build, Scott could imagine a building that could hold that community. I couldn’t. I thought it was a lost cause, but he could see it.”
‘Old with the new’
Many visitors at the open house said they were pleased that the old church had been restored.
“It’s so beautiful — the old with the new. It’s wonderful, and we’re so proud of them,” Darlene Stevens, a member of Bethany First Church, said of Pollock and his congregation.
Doug Samples, an Eighth Street Church member, echoed the same “old is new” phrase as he ushered visitors into the building. He said light fixtures that originally hung in the building’s sanctuary had been found in the attic, reclaimed and put to use in an area of the church.
“We thought they were so old, they were new and that’s the whole story. This is sort of what we’ve gone through with the whole building.”
Christina Wolf, archivist and special collections librarian at Oklahoma City University, showed visitors books featuring old bulletins from the German Methodist church. Wolf said she also serves as archivist for the Oklahoma United Methodist Conference so she had many items related to the historic building.
Wolf said she liked the congregation’s interest in the history of the building, which was built by German Methodists in 1907.
“I think it’s terrific, and I’m also especially pleased that they were willing to save the windows and how they tried to lean into the history even though it’s a totally different denomination,” Wolf said.