Charlotte, NC - Arson destroys Briar Creek Baptist Church Wed, June 24, 2015

The Charlotte Fire Department is investigating an early morning Wednesday fire at Briar Creek Road Baptist Church as arson, Senior Fire Investigator David Williams said.
A 911 emergency call from a resident in a nearby apartment complex received at 12:52 a.m. turned into a third alarm by 1:21 a.m., with a total of 14 engines and 75 firefighters on hand to quell the flames. Williams said it took around an hour to get the fire under control.
“The Baptist church on Briar Creek Road right before Central, it’s on fire,” the caller told dispatchers. “It’s really big.”
Firefighters realized when they arrived that it was a “monumental task,” Williams said.
Two firefighters were injured and treated for heat-related injuries. Williams said they don’t believe anyone was in the building at the time of the fire.
“When I got here I was even amazed to see that the flames were so high,” Mannix Kinsey, the pastor at Briar Creek Road Baptist Church, told WBTV. “I am thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, this church is going to be destroyed.’”
The church building sustained excessive damage to its back left wing, used as an education building. Williams said it is close to a total loss.
The rest of the property, including the sanctuary and gymnasium, has smoke damage. He said they estimate total damage is more than $250,000.
Kinsey’s wife, Rhonda, is the co-pastor. Both are African-American. About 100 people, most of them black, attend the church. It also shares the campus with two or three immigrant churches, including one whose members were born in Nepal.

Briar Creek Baptist began in 1951 as Commonwealth Baptist Church. And for the next three decades or so, it was a predominantly white church.

But, as the demographics of the neighborhood changed, so did the congregation. And about 13 years ago, the church called an African-American pastor, the Rev. Dennis Hall. When he left a few years ago, Briar Creek Baptist turned to Kinsey, then one of its leading members, to pastor the church.