DALLAS — First Baptist Dallas members are getting closer to returning to their downtown Dallas property after a four-alarm fire ravaged their historic sanctuary.

“The Worship Center looks wonderful. I was in there yesterday, and I texted our pastor,” Dr. Ben Lovvorn said. “I said the Worship Center looks, feels, and smells great.”

Lovvorn is the executive pastor of the Dallas megachurch. On Sunday, he told congregants who had to go to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center‘s main arena for the past two Sundays about their chances of returning to the property.

“Barring any surprise, I’m fairly confident that we will be together worshipping in our Worship center next Sunday morning,” he said.

Lovvorn said everything, including the building’s systems, elevators, escalators, media, internet, and life safety systems, must be checked out first.

In the meantime, he said crews are working around the clock to put beams and scaffolding up at the site of the scorched facade, where they are accustomed to having services.

“We are confident that we’re going to preserve much of that historic sanctuary—the exterior of those walls,” Lovvorn said.

The pastor also told the church he had no answers about how the fire started. He said the investigation could only proceed once First Baptist Dallas got the grounds safe enough for fire investigators to do their job.

“The priority has been to secure those walls and make sure the site is safe,” He said.

The damage to the church’s Criswell Center is significant enough that he said members would be unable to use it. The night of the fire, he said, the building took in dark smoke, lost power, and had a flooded basement.

The impact on the church’s artifacts remains unclear. A church spokesperson said the items are all digitized, but they have not worked through everything damaged or what didn’t make it.

The hull of the former sanctuary is where destruction occupies the place where members came to worship.

Mike Judd, the president of the Dallas County Pioneer Association, said the First Baptist Dallas fire reminded him of Notre Dame in April 2019.

“The wooden structure tends to burn straight up, very hot, and very quickly, but that type of fire tends to leave the exterior walls intact and reusable,” Judd said.

Judd’s Dallas County Pioneer Association is a non-profit organization that preserves and promotes the history of pioneer-era properties and facilities. The 1868 genesis of First Baptist Dallas is on their page.

“This is not just any church that burned. It’s the flagship church for decades and decades of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Judd said. “I think for prominence, it probably has no equals.”

As for what the rebuilt First Baptist Sanctuary could look like, Judd said he’s not a member. He does have a vision.

“Leaving a corner with smoke damage at the top of one of the windows, all those cornices around the edges that have the smoke damage, yeah,” Judd said. “Leaving one or two of those as a reminder of 2024 and the fire. That would be a wonderful call back to what happened this year.”

In a statement to CBS News Texas about the new sanctuary, Lovvorn said, “We are confident God is going to do great work in the days ahead. We are beginning to make plans to rebuild. Whatever we ultimately do will both honor the history and spiritual heritage of our church and express an excited optimism for the future.” 

MIAMI – Relief may be on the way for people in Miami Beach who are going through homelessness.

City leaders announced a summer initiative Monday that encourages people in the vulnerable population to accept services and shelter. However, critics say it comes with a harmful ultimatum: Accept help or face arrest.

The mayor, commissioners, police chief and leaders of Miami Beach homeless outreach said Operation Summer Relief will deliver an extra boost of resources offered, including access to shelters,             

“I think it’s horrifying,” Kat Duesterhaus, an activist, said.  “I was homeless at the age of 16 and if it weren’t for the kindness of someone putting me up in housing I could have been arrested here in Miami Beach.

“I’m not leaving,” Rodrick, a man who says he lives on the streets and in public places in Miami Beach, said. 

The 54-year-old from Liberty City who walks with a limp said he is too disabled to work, cannot afford a mortgage or rent, feels at home in various places on the barrier island and has no plans to move to a shelter, even if forced. 

“Ever hear Papa was a rolling stone?” he said laughing. “That was a joke.  I have my spots that I like.  I don’t like crowds.  I’m basically always by myself.”

However, he knows the initiative brings change.

“Do not mistake our compassion for weakness,” Mayor Steven Meiner said.  “There is a strong enforcement element.”

The plan is to “compassionately” encourage people experiencing homelessness to accept room at shelters, mental health care and support delivered by increasing numbers of outreach teams, non-profits, city staff and volunteers.

Those who refuse help face police armed with the authority to move people out of parks and off beaches and sidewalks.

“Public spaces are for the public, period,” Meiner said. “There should not be a person sleeping on public property.”

“We don’t focus on arrests like people are saying,” Chief Wayne Jones said as three protesters shouted at him during a press conference Monday.  “(What) we focus on is connecting with people to approach it through a position of empathy.”

ATLANTA – A metro Atlanta mom, whose son was stillborn, has turned her grief into a new social network for moms who have experienced similar loss.  

Katherine Lazar says when she lost her first child, hearing from other moms in Atlanta who had experienced the same thing was the only way she was able to move forward. 

“In January of 2020, our first son was stillborn at 37 weeks. And what I found was that life completely changed. Everything changed,” Lazar said.  

She says she didn’t know if she would ever feel happy again after losing her first child, Brody.  

“I had a wonderful support system with my friends, my family and my husband. It was amazing. But I really needed to hear the perspective of someone who had been through a term stillbirth before, because I needed to have someone look at me and just say, ‘I understand,’” Lazar said.  

Then she connected with three other moms in Atlanta who had also lost a baby. Lazar says they call themselves “loss moms.” 

“Those women saved me. I did not know how to survive the death. I gave birth to a baby that was gone, and I didn’t know how to move forward. They showed me not only how to move forward, but that it was okay to move forward. They taught me how to laugh again and smile again,” Lazar said. 

When she got pregnant again in 2023, she says she tried to join Facebook and other social media groups to try and connect with other moms.  

“It was always kind of framed with ‘No negativity, please! Don’t want to be scared, only positive comments’… and so, I saw a lot of us getting censored off of groups saying we were scaring people,” Lazar said.  

So, she started her own Facebook group. Soon she began connecting with more local loss moms.  

“And we now have happy hours every month and dinners every month. I see my friends for coffee every month. And there’s something to be said about sitting across from somebody who understands it… We talk about our babies that have died. We talk about life. We talk about everything,” Lazar said.  

She noticed people in other cities and states were having a hard time connecting to other loss moms in their areas.  

“People started messaging me and saying, ‘Hey, I want what you have in Atlanta, can you hook me up with someone in my town?’” Lazar said.  

Katherine Laza, whose son was stillborn, launched losslink.com, a new social media site dedicated to mothers who have lost their children. (FOX 5)

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So, she started connecting people just by herself, but it was not long before she thought there had to be an easier way to do this. That is when she thought to start her own social media site just for loss moms.  

“Losslink.com…essentially like a Facebook meets LinkedIn for mothers who have experienced pregnancy loss, stillbirth, TMFR, infant loss and child death,” Lazar said.  

It took working with a developer for over a year, but she says the result has been worth it.  

“The day that it launched, all these profiles were popping up, and I was like, ‘I’ve never seen all of them in one place.’ And it was so overwhelming because so many broken hearts and so many babies gone and I love all of them,” Lazar said.  

On Losslink.com, Katherine says no mom is censored.  

“You can share a photo of your baby, which a lot of times is not allowed on regular platforms, because nobody wants to see a baby that’s an angel baby. But we’re proud of them,” Lazar said.  

She says it is been incredibly rewarding to see women use her site to pull each other out of the same darkness she once found herself in.  

“Women are meeting each other, and they’re having coffee, and they’re sharing doctors, ‘Hey, go to this doctor, they’re really kind.’ You know, ‘Hey, go to this therapist.’ They’re really great. So now they’re sharing resources with each other. It’s been really cool to see,” Lazar said.  

Katherine Laza, whose son was stillborn, launched losslink.com, a new social media site dedicated to mothers who have lost their children. (FOX 5)

It is also rewarding for her to see a new legacy for her son, of connection through pain and loss. 

“To be able to say ‘Brody inspired this, Brody is behind this. Brody is connecting these angel babies, mothers together,’ has been really rewarding as a mom for a baby that’s gone,” she said.  

You can sign up and create a profile here: losslink.com.