Cross 'crowning jewel' for Woodland Heights church
Logan Hoffman  for the News-Leader 
January 18, 2009

Adding a sanctuary to the Woodland Heights Presbyterian Church was just a dream 50 years ago when the building was erected, but on Saturday afternoon the congregation put the crowning jewel on its new addition.

The congregation gathered Saturday to carry a 30-foot Celtic cross, weighing upwards of 300 pounds, seven-tenths of a mile from the home of member Scott Mahaffey -- where it was fabricated -- to the church at West Atlantic Street and North Grant Avenue.

"We are bringing the cross home," church member Mike Simpson said while watching the cross being raised. "It's a symbol of our church and it personalizes it because it arrived by the hands of our congregation. It's a crowning jewel for this building."

Members of the church divided up into teams and took turns carrying the cross to the new sanctuary addition, where a hoist was used to mount the cross on the church spire.

Mahaffey, a former Ozarks Technical Community College instructor who works for St. Louis Auto Body, began building the cross in his spare time after the Rev. Gregory Esselman approached him about it at a fundraising dinner for the new sanctuary.

"Scott is awesome. He's really an artist," Esselman said. "I'd seen some of his work before and I just knew he could do it. We needed a cross, but it wasn't in the budget."

Mahaffey had never built anything of this size before.

"I don't know how many hours I put into it," Mahaffey said. "I worked on it a lot of nights after I got off work.

"This cross is just a symbol of growth. The congregation here is what is really important."

The new $500,000 sanctuary itself is not quite complete, but Esselman hopes it will be ready for dedication on Feb. 8 during morning worship. According to Esselman, the windows on the sanctuary are not entirely finished and the interior is still relatively bare except for a few pews that have already been installed.

It was the vision of the church 50 years ago when its new building was constructed to add a sanctuary, but church elder Michael Decker said there were funding problems and, as time went on, the project fell by the wayside.

For the past 50 years, Woodland Heights has held worship services in its fellowship hall.

Coming up on the 100th anniversary last summer of the building that predates its current one, members wanted to take that next step toward the church's future.

"The time was right," Esselman said. "We were really crowded for space in our old building, and really now we are getting two-for-one. We are getting a sanctuary and we are getting our fellowship hall back. Before, this the building has always just been incomplete."

One further addition to the new sanctuary is also helping to add a finishing touch.

The original Woodland Heights building 100 years ago featured a large brass bell from an old Frisco steam engine, but when the new building was built, the bell was sold to a private collector.

A couple of years ago, members of the church were able to track the bell down and buy it back.

The bell now sits at the top of the church spire next to the new cross.

"We'll ring the bell on Sundays just like the church used to do," Decker said. "This is a new start for our church, but at the same it's a continuation of what this church has always been."