A small white church building, which has stood for more than 150 years off Billy White Road, has seen a lifetime of memories and served several purposes.
Whether it was weddings, homecoming parties or newborn baptisms, the Pheba Methodist Church was more than a place of worship; it was once a community hotspot.
But that was all before it closed in 2008 due to a dwindling congregation and with it a dwindling operating budget.
“It got so small we couldn’t afford the preacher and all that, so we just shut the services down,” McGee told The Dispatch. “… If you cleaned it up, vacuumed and dusted and all that, it’d be ready to use again.”
Since its closure, the church has sat vacant, deteriorating with time, but McGee, who grew up attending the church, said she has a vision to reopen it as a local event venue soon through a historic preservation effort she is spearheading.
Pheba Methodist Church was originally built in the 1850s on Henryville Road before being disassembled, moved and reconstructed in the early 1900s at its current location after the railroad system expanded through Clay County during that time.
After its reconstruction, the building held a small but strong congregation for several decades until it started to dwindle from a few dozen to only a handful throughout McGee’s lifetime.
The church, even through that time, had strong Pheba leaders on its board of trustees, including Henry “Buddy” McGee, Evelyn’s father, who died in June.
After his passing, Evelyn said the family knew what the church had meant to her father and asked for donations through a GoFundMe to be made for the church’s restoration in his memory.
“Dad was a trustee and (has) always taken care of it,” Evelyn said. “We’ve always taken care of it, and when he passed away, I put up a GoFundMe for people to donate to instead of sending flowers, so we could get this work that needs to be done on it.”
After those donations started to roll in, Evelyn said she felt compelled to expand her efforts by creating the Pheba Methodist Church Preservation Association, a nonprofit to coordinate the restoration efforts.
Evelyn said all of the church’s previous trustees except Linda Millsaps have passed away since its closure, leaving a need for a new board to maintain the property since its deed is listed to the church’s trustees.
Since June, McGee has been working with Millsaps to figure out the best approach for future renovations and continued maintenance for the church.
Millsaps, who married her husband Bryant in the church’s sanctuary in 1974, said the place is “magical” and deserves a new life because of its historical importance to the locals who attended there.
“Everybody there was basically kinfolks,” Millsaps said. “… I hate to see it fall down. … (We) were still trying to hold church. But then … everybody had died. … So we didn’t see any need in making a preacher come all the way out here for two people.”
‘Fabric of the community’
Evelyn said the interior of the church is largely in good condition even after nearly two decades of largely sitting vacant.
The main renovations to get it up and running again, she said, include repairs to the church’s foundation, a fresh coat of paint on the outside of the building and some window resealing.
Evelyn estimates that those renovations will cost about $25,000, but she hopes to raise $50,000 to help maintain the church and its neighboring cemetery.
So far, through online donations to the nonprofit and cash donations dropped off in a collection jar at Pheba’s Diner, the project has raised roughly $4,000, Evelyn said.
“I’m still trying to find places to get help, get some extra funds,” Evelyn said. “We’ve raised some, and the (Pheba) Baptist Church has donated to us, and they’ve offered some missionary-type labor for us. Just to come help us do the work, and we’re just trying to get the little building stable again. If we get it stable, hopefully people in the community might want to use it for small wedding venues or something like that, if they need to.”
The nonprofit is not yet designated as a 501(c)(3), but Evelyn is considering applying for that designation to be more competitive for additional local grant funding for the project to help cover some of the costs.
Bernie White, who used to attend Pheba Baptist Church when visiting his grandparents, said both churches have held significance in the Pheba community and he’s glad to hear the Methodist church is potentially going to gain new life.
“To me it’s very important because it’s part of the fabric of the community,” White said. “As you get generations removed from when it was an active church, you lose a lot of history like that (when those spaces close).”
White isn’t the only one optimistic about the project.
Catherine “Sis” Brown, who attended the church during the late 1930s with her stepfather, remembers the church as an important gathering space for many locals including her entire family.
Though she stopped attending the church after marrying and moving to Texas in 1950, she’s hopeful that with McGee’s efforts, the church will regain its local status as it becomes a small event venue.
“(It’s) most important,” Brown said. “… It’d be wonderful to see it in operation again.”
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
