Lela Johnson, 97, was a member of one of the oldest Black churches in North Carolina. She recalls lugging water from the nearby springs for the building and carrying wood before service to make a fire in the pot belly stove to heat Brevard’s Chapel United Methodist Church and its members.
“I would hate to see it torn down,” Johnson said with her eyes closed, remembering her time at the site.
But that’s exactly what might happen. The Denver, N.C., church closed in 2020 after about 150 years due to water damage and declining membership. The Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church announced in February that engineers determined the chapel was not salvageable and it plans to demolish it…