Millville church badly damaged by fire set to reopen after 4 years

A Cumberland County church that was nearly destroyed by a fire is getting ready to reopen once again.
The fire at the Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church in Millville occurred on April 3, 2016.
"I finished getting dressed and came over and by that time the whole building was engulfed in fire,” says Pastor John Mitchell. “A tree took down a 7,200-volt electric line and that snapped into the bell tower and to the aluminum siding and set the bell tower on fire."
Rebuilding efforts have been ongoing since the day of the fire. The entire worship area was destroyed, with just a few items surviving the blaze.
“The only thing they were able to save for us was those four stain glass windows and the one window out front,” Mitchell says.
But Mitchell says that with the bad comes some good.
"There were a lot of good things of having to get a hold of our bootstraps and do something in the meantime,” he says.
Now the worship area has been redesigned to be a versatile space and the finishing touches on a new indoor entryway are being added. A steeple from a church in Wildwood was added just before Christmas.
“That more or less put the whole [thing] back together when we got the steeple in place,” says Mitchell.
The pastor says he is hopeful that construction will be completed in time for Sunday’s rededication service.
The church was originally built in 1889.