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David Gidcumb sat at a table in The Salem News office, and for an hour or so, flashed back through what brought him to New Harmony Church a little over 31 years ago and what has transpired since. He had smears of white paint on his hands and legs, the direct result of chores around the house he says a retired pastor has to look forward to.
But the story of Pastor Dave, as he’s called at New Harmony, goes back farther than August of 1989 when he preached his first sermon at the church on Dent County Road 240. About 40 people showed up, sprinkled around the sanctuary that seated what he figured to be about 150.
“I thought to myself, ‘Oh my, I’m already in trouble,’” says Gidcumb, thinking back to that first Sunday. Then he laughed long and hard. “The church I came from (Lockwood Baptist Church) seated about 100. New Harmony had just finished an auditorium, and it seemed like the biggest place I’d ever preached in my life. And it probably was. I was a little nervous, but it was a young church and a lot of people were doing last-minute vacations before school started and other things.”
Gidcumb survived, excelled actually, and over a span of parts of four decades watched God help New Harmony grow into one of the area’s largest churches. They knocked a wall or two out not long after Gidcumb helped the church grow, and seating capacity went from 150 to 200. Then New Harmony Church, parts of it 106 years old, burned in 1998. But the fellowship rose from the ashes, and before COVID-19 hit earlier this year, the church was drawing 450-500 people spread out over two services.
It is a fitting and triumphant end of sorts for Gidcumb, 62, who retired in August as one of the longest-serving pastors at the same church that Dent County has ever seen, leaving the future of New Harmony in the hands of “God and all the younger folks.”
•••••
Before he was Pastor Dave, Gidcumb worked for Norfolk Southern as a track inspector, which is exactly what it sounds like. He rode what they called the hi-rail, inspecting tracks. A hi-rail is a dual mode vehicle that could operate on a conventional highway or the rails of the track.
After a while the call of the rail wasn’t as strong as the call from the Lord, so Gidcumb surrendered to preach. He wasn’t saved until he was 21 – in a railroad trailer in the Cumberland mountains – just before he got married to his wife Cathy. He was still in his mid 20s when he felt the call to preach.
Gidcumb emphasizes that he was first called to preach, not pastor, and that there is a big difference.
“I never wanted to be a pastor,” he says. “At the time I loved preaching. I loved it when churches would open their pulpit for young preachers, which you don’t see much anymore. I preached in several states – Illinois, Missouri, Indiana. When they needed somebody to fill in, I was there. I loved that but never considering pastoring until Lockwood called.”
Lockwood is Lockwood Baptist Church in Lamar, northwest of Springfield. It had a congregation of about 40 people, allowing Gidcumb to pastor part-time and pursue his education. He got his bachelor’s degree from Southwest Baptist University in Joplin and started worked toward a Master’s in Divinity at Midwestern in Kansas City.
Her went to Lockwood at age 28, and at 31, decided to “start looking around and praying about (a change)” because the church was full but had no desire to grow or go to two services.
Enter John Smith.
Smith was the pastor at Ten Mile Baptist Church in Hamilton County, Illinois, when Gidcumb got into youth ministry there and eventually surrendered to preach. Smith a few years after that became pastor at Oak Grove in Salem, and the two kept in contact.
While Gidcumb was praying about a move, he and Smith planned a trout fishing trip on the Current River. Gidcumb drove to Salem, and things fell into place quickly for the position at New Harmony.
“We were talking about church things while we fished, and he said he thought there was a church that might fit, and that was New Harmony,” Gidcumb remembers. “At the end of the fishing trip I ended up meeting with their leadership about being their pastor. It wasn’t long and I came to preach in view of call, and I ended up being their pastor.”
Gidcumb had been to Salem and Dent County several times as a kid, fishing, canoeing and camping.
“I always thought I’d love to live here but never dreamt it would happen,” he says.
But the second Sunday in August, 1989, things had fallen into place, and Pastor Dave preached his first sermon at what was then New Harmony Baptist Church.
Attendance picked up. Then it picked up some more.
Gidcumb and his wife Cathy lived in a double-wide mobile home across from the church and growth was so heavy they sold the double-wide and built a parking lot in its place.
“One thing I remember was everybody had kids,” he said. “It seemed like everybody we gained had kids. It is still like that now at New Harmony.
“Before the church burned, the parking lots were full and we had no place to park people. I saw people drive through the parking lot and not find a spot and leave.”
Then, the church burned.
•••••
Hand-hewn logs made up the original foundation of New Harmony Baptist Church, which had stood at the same spot since 1891. Many years and several additions later, it was a 20,000-square foot facility serving a congregation of hundreds each week.
Then around 3:30 a.m. Jan. 14, 1998, Pastor Dave got a call from Glen Harris, a former member who lived a quarter mile from the church.
“The church is burning,” Harris said.
The church is burning.
Those words to this day are chilling for Gidcumb. He remembers the nightmare. The heartache. The burnt-out memories. The wood bench that graced the original church and was placed in front of the altar. An original oil painting of the church. Pew spots that had been passed from generation to generation of Dent County Baptists. All burned, all gone.
Gidcumb had moved into his new home when the church burned, and after getting the call, on the way to the fire as he crossed the junction of highways 32 and 72, the horizon to the west was ablaze.
The coverage of the fire in the Jan. 15 edition of The Salem News filled up the front page. A headline declared: “New Harmony burns: Leaders promise the church will live on.”
But few probably expected that it would not only live on, but that arising from the smoldering timbers would become the church that it is today.
“You know, it started that night,” Gidcumb said of the resolve and God’s blessings that saw the metamorphosis of New Harmony. “It was probably the coldest night of the year. . .”
His voice trailed off when remembering the phone call and the flames.
The morning the church burned, members were already volunteering for cleanup and talking about a new place to worship. The next night they had a meeting to discuss the future of the church, and that Sunday they worshiped at Wilson Funeral Home. Somehow, even then, Gidcumb figured God had something special in mind.
During the next year, New Harmony met at Salem United Methodist Church, with the Methodists worshipping in the morning and the Baptists of New Harmony taking the afternoon and evening shifts.
“We still averaged about 225 people during that time,” Gidcumb said. “They (Methodist church) were so gracious, helping us any way they could.”
After the fire, in the short term, attendance that winter “sort of stagnated,” he said. “But that summer we bought the land and started building. People got excited.
“During the building process I asked them to give me every night after work and all of their vacation except one week. They came through. The guys worked night after night, and all the ladies cooked meals. We got a tent from the Missouri Baptist Convention and made a kitchen in it. They cooked every night and on the weekends, feeding a lot of people.”
Around 750 out-of-town volunteers showed up that year to help build the church. They came from across the U.S., and two of the groups came twice.
New Harmony had insurance, and it would have paid enough to replace what they had. But they needed more, so with volunteer help, donations – Gidcumb asked members to pay for their own chairs – and a $750,000 loan, New Harmony had what it needed.
On March 21, 1999, New Harmony got in its new building.
•••••
As hard as it is for David Gidcumb to believe, New Harmony has been in its new, modern building for over 21 years.
A few years after the fire the name was changed from New Harmony Baptist Church to simply New Harmony Church, and the flock continued to multiply. With his wife Cathy at his side, the days with the railroad, preaching all over the Midwest and that awful fire have become distant memories.
“How did all this happen?” Gidcumb repeated when asked the question. “It all started with the fire. We couldn’t build bigger on the property we had, so we purchased nine acres and started on that. We ended up building bigger. I guess we were taking a chance.
“When we moved into the building, we made a definite decision to reach young families. We geared everything to reaching young families, to fill that church. We changed the way we did children’s ministries, our music, preaching, activities. . .Everything we did was young-family driven. That was one of the biggest things. We brought in speakers that really spoke to young families and teenagers. We did Bible studies focusing on families. My wife Cathy led and organized that, as it was really on her heart. That all made a huge difference.”
Gidcumb went on to talk about the annual sportmen’s banquet, the ladies’ night out, Awanas, mission trips and youth activities that “have been huge” for our church.
“We sat at a table quite often and asked, ‘Is this really accomplishing our goal of reaching these young people?’ If it didn’t, we wouldn’t do it.”
At a recent church event, 50 to 60 teenagers were taking part. Church members had an adoption of sorts, going to the front of the sanctuary and choosing one of the teens to pray for and perhaps help mentor over the next year.
“That’s the kind of thing I am talking about, the kind of thing that can make a difference in someone’s life,” Gidcumb said. “I had nothing to do with that as pastor. I stood and watched. We have now handed that ball off to the next generation. Now they are carrying the ball. The same mentality that we started years ago of reaching young families is still there today.”
For some folks, that’s called a legacy.
And with that, Retired Pastor Dave stood up from the table after going down New Harmony Memory Lane, and went back home to his painting.
