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Blountville's Franklin Chapel being built to meet 18th-century design specifications
Feb 05, 2010 (Bristol Herald Courier - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. -- Wanting to do something different but still blend with his neighborhood, a local pastor built his most recent church with logs and stones rather than bricks and slate.
"I wanted this to be Blountville's most unusual church," said Sam Rasnake, pastor emeritus and chief executive officer of Westhighlands Church Inc.
An ordained minister with the Assemblies of God Church, Rasnake has built three churches in the Tri-Cities during his 50-plus years as a preacher in the area. His latest endeavor is the 41-foot-tall Franklin Chapel that the Westhighlands Church community started building in January on Franklin Street, just outside historic Blountville's main drag.
In keeping with the neighborhood, Rasnake is building the Franklin Chapel so it meets 18th-century design specifications -- reflecting a time when Blountville served as a major stop on a stagecoach route connecting Virginia and Tennessee.
The church walls and frame are built of 6-by-12-inch beams of solid deep swamp cyprus from South Carolina, held together with notched joints and 15-inch-long metal screws.
The stone he plans to put on the facade will be shipped straight from an Oklahoma quarry -- and carved just for his project -- because the only other option was pre-manufactured slabs.
Rasnake said the church will be kept warm using geothermal heat and a state-of-the-art sound system using Bose speakers will provide the music. The speakers will be mounted atop a collection of hand-carved Teak pedestals that Rasnake collected from across the country.
"That's what the pastor wanted and that's what we're trying to do," general contractor Robert Smith said. Weather permitting, Smith said, his team should have the church's exterior finished within a few weeks.
By that time, the Franklin Chapel will stretch 60 feet from front-to-back and 28 feet side to side. The main chapel will be big enough to hold 125 people, while small crowds can gather inside the fellowship hall in an attached side building.
Rasnake will use the church's bottom floor to house Westhighlands' corporate offices, and a special museum "will have some unusual things in it," he said, including a centuries-old book made of bamboo leaves and written in Sanskrit that the pastor picked up on a mission trip to India.
"I think it's wonderful," said Shelia Steele Hunt, the director of Sullivan County's archives and tourism office. "It's going to be a great draw" for Blountville, she said.
Hunt said she's known about Rasnake's project since the pastor took a 1:12 scale model of his proposed Franklin Chapel by her office.
"Everyone who has come into the office [and seen that model] is pleased with what he's done," she said.
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