When Pastor Kevin Taylor arrived at Harvest of Praise Ministry Church with his wife Saturday evening, he had no idea his own faith would be put to the test.
Taylor said he had just run inside the Red Oak church to grab something when he realized a violent tornado was headed through the area.
"As quick as I could get in the door…the doors started blowing," Taylor said. "I was in the very front of the building and tried to run down the hallway to get to safety."
In an instant, the building came crashing down on Taylor.
"Everything went black," he said.
Despite the pile of twisted metal and crumbling drywall on top of him, Taylor was not injured. His thoughts quickly turned to this wife, who was outside the church in a pickup truck.
“I started yelling for her to see where she was," he said.
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For a few moments, his wife did not answer. It was not until Taylor got out of the church that he realized that his wife had survived.
"The doors were open, the back window blew out," he said. "The car wasn’t parked that close to the building, (wind) moved it over."
Fortunately, Taylor’s wife was not injured and the couple walked away from the devastating ordeal together.
"God got us through, somehow," he said.
Sunday morning, the congregation gathered for a prayer service in the church’s parking lot. Taylor said he wants to be very transparent about what comes next.
“We'll rebuild," he said. "We'll take time out for the next week, figure out a place we can go to and have church temporarily, and then we'll rebuild this and get back in here."
Multiple churches in Red Oak have already offered the congregation use of their facilities. Despite the devastation and his own frightening episode, Taylor said his faith is stronger than ever.
"This is God's doing, so I never question what God allows," he said. "I don’t have a building, but I still have a church."
