In time for Easter season, Waverly church finds higher ground after deadly 2021 floods

WAVERLY, Tennessee — In the nearly three years since the deadly flood, the church has risen about 170 feet.

From the site of the old Waverly Church of the Nazarene, you have to drive along the incline of North Powers Boulevard for about a mile, then a right turn continuing upward, on Airport Road to find the church today.

In its more than 70 years of existence, the Church of the Nazarene has finally reached higher ground. The broken and battered old building has been shut down since the deadly 2021 flood, and the gleaming new building is now open with fancy coffee makers being installed in the lobby.

That 170 feet or so in elevation is the difference between disaster and calm, danger and peace. It sounds biblical, said Pastor Daron Brown, like a parable of the wise and foolish builders. He who builds his house upon the sand, or in this case, in the floodplain, is asking for problems with the weather.

Brown referenced the book of Matthew: "The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

Brown, a youthful 49 years old, has overseen the Nazarene congregation since 2001. On Aug. 21, 2021, the day 20 Waverly residents died when flood waters ravaged the town, Brown was trapped for about four hours inside the old church building.

Members of his congregation lost homes, cars and their entire neighborhoods. Many residents are still trying to restore their lives and are trying to get comfortable with the new church.

It has been an uphill climb. And Brown and his congregation are reminded of that during this Easter season, a time of rebirth and renewal and when Christians across the world celebrate Christ's resurrection.

"Crisis is not the end of our story," Brown said. "There is life on the other side. Resurrection is the Easter story, too."

Here's the thing Brown and his congregation learned about churches. You don't just pick up memories and move.

The receiving end of kindness

Brown chose Waverly over Seattle. He had offers in both places.

His wife, Katie, had family in Seattle, but it "didn't feel like a fit." Waverly, with its 4,000 residents, train tracks and old-fashioned Main Street, felt perfect.

Brown said Waverly is a town now known for two tragedies. The 2021 flood killed 20 people, and a train derailment and explosion that took 16 lives in 1978.

From 2021: Rebuilding after the flood: Long, unclear path ahead for Waverly

He hopes the new church is safe enough to make people feel comfortable.

"The peace it gives us is that we are on higher ground," Brown said. "We are more resilient than we thought we could be. There is a greater sense of unity, and a deep sense of humility."

For many residents, Brown said, the flood was the first time they had to ask for help.

"When you are on the receiving end, it's humbling," he said.

Trapped inside the old church

On the day of the tragic flood, Brown anticipated the water damaging the floor of his church. He and five other people — including his two teenage sons — were there to move whatever they could upstairs.

When he saw his car floating past the church's front door, Brown knew this storm would never be forgotten.

His group was trapped inside the church for about four hours. The water rose almost to the ceiling of the first floor. When it receded, they were able to get out.

That's when he began to realize just how tragic the flood had been. One of his parishioners had died. Brown would later officiate that funeral.

Brown has been asked so many times since August 2021, how could God let this happen?

"God's primary attribute is love," Brown said. "A God of love would not orchestrate something deadly and destructive to the people He loves."

"God didn't do this."

House on a hill

Edie Stainforth couldn't sleep.

And that may have saved her.

She has lived in Waverly all her life and has developed a healthy fear of the rain.

She and her husband Scott were in their house (the house she had grown up in) when Stainforth decided they needed to get out.

"I didn't want to sit there and be scared all day," she said.

Waverly recovery: One year after an extreme flood shook Waverly, residents share stories of grief, doubt, hope

The Stainforths escaped the flood waters. Her house did not. The only thing left is a concrete slab.

"It hurts me every time I go by there," Stainforth said. "Nearly every memory of my life was there."

They now live in a house on a hill in Waverly.

"The most important word in that sentence is 'hill,'" she said.

Her grandfather, John W. Adams, was a former pastor at the Waverly Church of the Nazarene, the church that was also destroyed in the flood.

"It did something to me emotionally," Stainforth said. "There's a part of me that shut off."

She got mad.

"I was very angry at God," she said. Then, during prayer, God answered her. "You have forgiven everyone in your life by Me."

That changed her. She forgave Him.

Stainforth cried when she walked into the new church for the first time.

"Something is missing," she thought. "It's memories and heart that make a building a home."

Stainforth took her mother, who could not attend the old church because it wasn't wheelchair accessible. The new church is wide open, and wheelchair friendly.

"That's a good memory to start," Stainforth said.

Losing the feeling of community

Kay and John McGranahan said the only things left of their house is a pile of dirt and a tree.

Kay and her father planted the Oak on that property when she was a little girl.

"I had to quit going back there," Kay McGranahan said.

On the day of the flood, the McGranahans helped their neighbor and her German shepherd get out ahead of the rising water.

The McGranahans had flood insurance, so they were able to buy a house about a mile away, on higher ground.

"We're safer than what we used to be," John said.

They were married at the old Waverly Church of the Nazarene and have decades of memories there. During construction of the church, they wrote the names of long-dead relatives who had attended the old church. Those names will live forever under the floorboards.

"I love the new building," Kay McGranahan said. "But it's not the building that my grandmother brought me to."

The old church "served its purpose well," John McGranahan said.

"Over time, new memories will be made," he said. "We look at the new building as a way to propel us into the future."

The most valuable thing they lost in the flood? "The community," he said.

Their neighbors all moved to different places, and they don't see each other much anymore.

The new church will help bring all of them back together.

"God knows what He's doing," she said.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Waverly Church of the Nazarene gets new home after 2021 floods