Endurance Church is what's called a plant church... a start up. This Sunday it's scheduled to hold its first service in a rented space at a Fort Worth elementary school, but last Sunday everything church leaders need to hold that service was stolen when a thief took the church's trailer from a storage facility.
"It's a church in a box," Josiah Garcia said, describing the trailer. "Anything and everything that we had to make church happen on any given Sunday was taken."
The 7x14 foot dark gray trailer held music instruments, sound equipment, signs, and more.
"My first response was not necessarily one of hope or of joy," Garcia said. "So yeah, my faith has been tested."
On Tuesday, Garcia got a call from the All Storage on North Beach Street in Fort Worth, asking if he had taken the trailer from its space. He had not.
Surveillance video shows a newer white Ford f-250 truck with an Fx4 sticker on the bumper had been to the storage facility several times. On Saturday night, it appeared to have been casing the grounds. On Sunday night, the truck returned to take Endurance Church's trailer. On Monday, the truck was back again, that time in an unsuccessful attempt to steal another trailer.
The All Storage manger told NBC 5 the thief used an employee code to gain access, but said he did not think the suspect was an employee. He said someone posing as a potential customer likely watched an employee use the access code while showing the facility, and then used that same code later to get in the storage facility. He said All Storage is cooperating with the police investigation.
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"It's just devastating to know all of the people who supported this ministry who've given of their finances, of their time," Garcia said. "To see it all gone."
Garcia said church will go on as planned on Sunday with borrowed equipment from other local churches.
"The timing is not great," Garcia said. "We believe that God will show up and move in the same way."
