Shortly after midnight on October 25, heavy rains penetrated a weakened, aged roof, which recently underwent renovation, and collapsed a section of the south roof and wall at Travis Park.

Located on Travis Street and Navarro Street, the church in recent history has built a reputation for helping the downtown homeless population and migrants entering the country seeking asylum.

On Friday, the church’s migrant coordinator said no one was sleeping inside the church at the time of the collapse.

“It’s a blessing we did not have our migrant friends here last night,” said Cydni Bravenec.

Since March, the church offered food, shelter and water to some 22,000 migrants.

On Friday, city officials and structural engineers were busy assessing the incident and damage.

“We’ve had some catastrophic damage done,” Bravenec said.

From Pastor Eric Vogt: A number of clergy and lay leaders have asked how to help. The building remains closed to the public, but we aim to schedule a clean-up and moving day soon. And we’re humbled and thankful that some congregations have already taken up special offerings. You may also want to share that people can give financially at travispark.org/donate (there’s a designated button for building recovery efforts).

Travis Park MFSA

Travis Park UMC has an active Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) program that meets monthly on the second Sunday of each month at noon. MFSA mobilizes clergy and laity within The United Methodist Church to take action on issues of peace, poverty and people’s rights within the church, the nation and the world.

Working primarily through the ministries of the United Methodist Church, MFSA supports and augments peace and justice ministries at the local, conference, and national levels.  As an independent organization, we call our church to expand its understanding of the radical call of the Gospel to be the inclusive, justice-seeking, risk-taking Body of Christ.

MFSA lives out our belief that to be faithful witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is to be involved in the transformation of the social order.

Moreover, MFSA affirms the vital importance of theological reflection as the Church weighs great issues of faithfulness to Jesus Christ and the Gospel in United Methodist worship, governance and witness. We offer to following paragraphs as a point of departure for reflection and discussion.

For information on this committee, email John Patterson.