Reverend Mark Johnston had been co-minister at St Paul\u2019s alongside his wife Reverend Carolyn Kelly for two years.<\/p>\n
He said the damage to the church, which was built in 1932, was significant and unrepairable.<\/p>\n
The main internal sanctuary was lost and the roof had buckled, but the outside structure was intact thanks to metal trusses.<\/p>\n
Pews from the original church lost in the 1931 earthquake had also been charred or destroyed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s devastated the whole sanctuary,\u201d Johnston said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be a quick fix.\u201d<\/p>\n
The church\u2019s administration offices, lounge, kitchen and toilets were still operable.<\/p>\n
Johnston last used the church for a 10am service on Sunday. He said it was pretty upsetting to see it smouldering fewer than 24 hours later.<\/p>\n
Police were investigating the scene when Hawke\u2019s Bay Today spoke with Johnston, who said there was no confirmation yet of what had happened.<\/p>\n
The pastor said it held special memories for his congregation, who\u2019d invested a lot of time celebrating and mourning loved ones at the church.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are great people…they rally, and they know that the church will continue … but we are going to have to reimagine what our future is on this physical site.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was yet to confirm a location for the church\u2019s next service but said it had good relationships with other parishes and expected to have a location confirmed in the coming days.<\/p>\n
Smashed windows at St Paul’s Presbyterian Church on Tennyson St in Napier after a fire early Monday morning. Photo \/ Mark Story<\/p>\n
Napier Mayor Richard McGrath said the community needed places like St Paul\u2019s in the middle of town for its congregation to worship and for community meetings.<\/p>\n
He said the council would be happy to have a conversation with the church to see if anything could be worked on together. <\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully they\u2019re not down for too long … I wish them the best in getting things back to normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police have been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a fire about 24-hours earlier at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment on Bower St in Napier was being treated as suspicious, with Fire and Emergency investigators handing the case to police to investigate.<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reverend Mark Johnston had been co-minister at St Paul\u2019s alongside his wife Reverend Carolyn Kelly for two years.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[94925,12897,41008,77435,2079,45190,78,15902,8732,3607,111,43,139,69,21497,314489,11420],"class_list":["post-641391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-94yearold","tag-church","tag-destroys","tag-earlymorning","tag-fire","tag-gutted","tag-in","tag-innercity","tag-mystery","tag-napier","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pauls","tag-presbyterian","tag-st"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}