Tornado Destroys Kentucky Church But Misses Congregation after Service Canceled
Members of a Kentucky church are thanking God after a tornado destroyed their main sanctuary last Wednesday, yet no people were present.
"We canceled that night because of the storms," Pastor Tim Turner of Christ Community Church Paducah, Kentucky, told CBN News. "It is the first time in my 35 years of pastoring that we've ever done that."
"We just feel like that was an act of God," Turner added. "If you look at all these blocks, it was a block wall, 18 feet high, and it all fell, and the roof caved in too, and I doubt there would've been any survivors. So we're not mourning today; we're praising God."
Lindsay Stanley, a member of Christ Community Church, said that she and her husband never missed Wednesday service. But the pastor would cancel the service last Wednesday, April 2nd.
"But we had a feeling like we should just stay home. And then Pastor Tim actually decided to cancel services and we never canceled services," she says.
"Actually, when we got the call that the church was gone, we were in the closet because the tornado had literally just gone past over our house... It was me, my husband, and our two daughters, literally in the closet with helmets on and everything. It was that like this thing's coming," Stanley recalls.
The church had just spent five years renovating its new sanctuary before the tornado struck, costing thousands of dollars in new lighting, instruments, and cameras.
"It's a gut punch," Turner says. "I mean, we had just finished all the remodels. Matter of fact, on Monday, I had told someone, I said, we can slow down now. The sanctuary is finally beautiful. And on Wednesday, it was gone."
Nevertheless, Stanley views the moment as something significant.
"I truly believe that what looks like a setback is actually a setup. Like the Lord knows that we have been very faithful, I say all the time. When I first started going to that church about four years ago, the Lord told me this is the End Times army. My dad was actually healed in that church, a stage four cancer. We've had so many cancer healings and just amazing moves of the Holy Spirit," she explained.
"And I truly believe he knows that we needed a bigger place because we were outgrowing that sanctuary, and we thought it would be years and years down the road. And I think he's just like, you know what, let's go a little quicker, and I'm going to help," she continues. "I truly believe that we are going to need the space to house more broken, lost people because our church is serious about evangelism."
Despite the destruction, Pastor Tim is also seeing the bright side in all this.
"The first and foremost is we are so thankful no one was hurt. Had we had service here that night? We all linger after church, you know how church people are, we linger and talk, and there would've been people here," he says. "And the way it looks, the way that the structure, how it fell, it looked like the roof came off and the walls all came off, and they were 18-foot concrete walls, and nobody would've survived."
According to the pastor, the church's old youth center building was not damaged and, despite its smaller size, it can still be utilized for services until a larger facility can be constructed.
"We're resilient people. We'll build back," Turner says. "But we're so thankful. God is so good to us. I preached it on Sunday morning. I want everybody, I want the world to know that this church still loves God, still trusts God, still believes in God."
WATCH: Entire Kentucky Church Survives as Tornado Destroys Building: 'God Is so Good to Us'
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Originally published April 11, 2025.
