By Louie Graves
News-Leader staff
Members of the Dodson Street Church of Christ will meet in the Green Room at the Nashville City Park while their old church building is coming down and the new one is going up.
Sunday, the pastor, Bro. Juerga Smith, and his congregation held a special service shortly after noon, and concluded it with the symbolic turning of the earth by the church Board of Trustees.
The church was established more than 80 years ago, and members have actually met in old houses and buildings on South Fourth Street and South Main Street, but mostly at the present Dodson Street location during its history.
Sunday, the preacher told his congregation to be very quiet until the shovels turned earth. “Then shout,” he instructed.
Four female longtime church members were chosen to make remarks Sunday, and they all had family connections to founders of the church.
They spoke about how they were brought into the church and expressed hopes for their descendants.
The group included Geneva Neal Walton, Janice Scoggins Green, Lillian Pryor Hutchinson and Hazel Cheatham Pauley.
Other congregation members with roles on the program with a prayer, text reading or song included Bro. George Staggers, Bro. Green Morris and Bro. Fred Green.
For the new facility, the church purchased a next door residence and had it removed. Sunday’s service was to be the last in that part of the church before it is taken down. Bro. Smith said that construction of the new facility was expected to take about eight months. The church will keep its family center; the new facility will be built around it.
Trustees who handled shovels for the symbolic groundbreaking were project manager Keith Young, assistant project manager Phillip Walton, Don Scoggins and Bro. Smith.
When the trustees shoveled dirt into the air, a shout of joy went up.
