The mid-December sun casts long shadows across the pews of a one-room log structure deep in the woods of rural Greene County. Dry oak leaves litter the window boxes of faded silk flowers.
Inside this church, there is no warm candlelight, no wreaths of green spruce and holly. There will be no Christmas service.
Few people, save for Craig Welch, even know it’s there. He built it in the summer of 2014, and tells the story in a book he published this year. But what the book never answers, and Craig can’t explain is:
Why? And why him?
“God told me to build a church,” he says, and that’s what he named the book.
Craig made a return visit to the site this month after leaving it for good five years ago. Taking in the emptiness, the cobwebs and colorless grime, it occurs to him that maybe all of this was never about building a church in the woods, after all. Except for some Bible studies, a pastors’ retreat and a surprise marriage proposal, it’s been empty and quiet.
In searching for the “Why” all these years, Craig says, maybe the church and an inexperienced carpenter were merely tools, and the story he dared to tell others about it has been the real church, all along.
Churched, but no choirboy
Craig Welch was a hometown boy, the son of faithful churchgoers but hardly a choirboy.
As a teen, Ash Grove Class of ‘88, it was Van Halen and hard rock, long hair, a hot temper and fights. He wanted to be a rock star. As the son of musicians who performed every summer at Silver Dollar City’s Bluegrass Festival, he took to the guitar at 13 and by 16 his rock band was playing gigs at local bars until the drugs and alcohol scene drove him away.
Then came the job at Pizza Hut where he met Des Moines transplant Wendi and married her in 1990. Today they’re the proud parents of two daughters and four grandkids.
Over the years, Craig found steady work for a trucking line that he’s still with, and on the side dabbled in small businesses — movie rentals, a carpet shop, fitness center, knife sales and a gun store.
He had put music aside after the kids were born, but it drew him back seven years ago. At 53, he performs country, rock, folk and original songs three nights a week at bars and cafes from Springfield to the Branson/Kimberling City area where he lives. He’s had a few bookings in Nashville, plays in the church worship band, and has over 1,000 followers on Facebook.
‘Let’s build a church’
In the early years Craig and Wendi remained in Ash Grove, and owned a little piece of heaven farther out in the country — a 13-acre wooded tract of hunting land. With friends and family, they built a tricked-out treehouse with a wood-burning stove and solar-powered lights, and he and Wendi would camp out there for getaways and solitude.
Before long, Craig thought about building a garage there to store his mower and tools. Seeing how often they camped there, Wendi voted, instead, for an outhouse.
One day when Craig was walking the property alone, thinking about a garage, he says, “I heard inside my head, “‘You need to build a church.’”
“I literally laughed out loud. A church?” Why would he need something like that? he asked himself. And how could it possibly benefit him? He went home and mentioned it to Wendi. “God told me to build a church.”
“A church?” she asked. She knew him to be a man grounded in his faith, but not one to hear voices. And anyway, she was still thinking “outhouse.”
But he was still thinking: garage, and later was back on the property to make some measurements. He had paused to take in the quiet around him, he recalls, when he saw what he describes as an intense vision. It was a small, rustic log church nestled deep in the woods, a glass front door and a wooden cross atop the roof.
And he heard the voice again: “‘Here, that’s where it needs to be.’”
He argued with himself. “Why do I need a church? What purpose will it serve out here in the middle of nowhere? I’m not a preacher and it would be a waste of money. Give me one good reason why I need to build a church.”
He only heard: “Build a church, and I’ll do the rest.”
“Okay,” Craig relented, “let's build a church.”
‘You’re on your own’
He chose a spot that was already cleared of trees and brush, but he felt “told” to clear a different spot. He grumbled, “Okay, if I build a church, you’re going to have to help me.”
Not thoroughly convinced help would come, he rallied the treehouse crew, but they all had reasons they couldn’t. His dad was caring for Craig’s mother who was battling cancer. His brother, a walking encyclopedia of useful stuff, was busy with work.
“It was kind of funny,” he says. “All the people that were a lot more qualified for the job couldn’t help me anymore. God was like, ‘Hey, you’re doing this on your own.’”
It began making sense, he says — the Bible is full of stories about everyday people doing extraordinary things. “God never, ever used anybody who was qualified,” he adds.
“I learned a lot about how to build stuff, but I learned a lot about listening to what God wants you to do,” and being willing to do it. Not that he does that, he adds. “It’s a constant battle.”
‘We’re doing something here’
Craig was still so unsure about the whole thing, he would buy small loads of lumber at a time. “I figured I’d get the floor done and see if God really wanted me to do this.”
Once, as he stood admiring his first feat — the 15-by-25-foot plywood base — he thought, “Wouldn’t it be awesome just to have it out in the woods and get some musicians together…”
“And God would tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, we’re doing something here…’”
It wasn’t always easy telling curious friends what he was up to. People ask him now what was the hardest part of building the church. “It was saying you were building a church,” he says. “You don’t want to say something where people will judge you…”
On the first of many trips to the True Value in Ash Grove, an old high school friend working there asked what he was doing. “Just kind of the last one I’d want to say I was building a church.” Craig couldn’t bring himself to answer except, “Just building another building.”
With that he loaded up the truck and left, feeling the sting of his own words.
It got easier with time. When he asked a stranger about buying some old barn wood he’d seen on private property, the owner asked what he planned to do with it.
“I took a deep breath this time and said, ‘Put it on a church floor I’m building.’”
“Take what you need,” the man said. “No charge.”
All through the summer alone, Craig hoisted rafters, struggled to put up 10-foot walls, and scrounged some windows at a flea market. When it came time for the metal roof, he was back at the True Value. There with the old classmate was his high school shop teacher. This time when they asked, he answered: “I am building a church.”
“A church?” they said.
Craig replied, “Yep, it’s time I build something for God. I’ve built enough stuff for myself.”
Welch Chapel EST 2014
With the roof secure, a son-in-law installed the top trim; Craig added log siding outside and shiplap inside. He researched and built old-style church pews with 2-by-6 lumber, 4 feet wide, four benches on each side. He made the pulpit from a red cedar log, his brother made a rustic rooftop cross from an oak tree branch. They added other touches inside, and Wendi found four black metal sconces to fill the room one day with candlelight. Inside over the entrance he affixed black vinyl lettering, “Pray about everything, worry about nothing.”
He figures the total project took six months and under $10,000. When the structure was complete, Craig lettered and nailed a barnwood plank to the outside: Welch Chapel EST 2014.
Then, Craig built that outhouse for Wendi.
A fresh start
Early on, the pastor of his Ash Grove church planned several Bible studies there. Craig brought his mother to see the finished chapel in October 2014 as her health was failing. “It’s beautiful,” she told him tearfully. When she died two months later, he says, “The little church sat empty for months. I couldn’t find the need or energy to go out there.”
Spring brought a happier time. His daughter’s boyfriend arranged to propose marriage there.
Then — nothing.
“Was that it?” Craig asked himself. “Was the whole purpose of the church to have a few Bible studies and my daughter to get engaged? Did I do all that work just for that?”
His mother’s death weighed heavily on him, and Craig felt he needed a restart on everything in his life. He and Wendi bought a place near Table Rock Lake, sold their Ash Grove home of 18 years, but struggled with selling the 13 acres and the church he had built.
Potential buyers didn’t see the need for a treehouse and church, until late one afternoon when he was locking the gate, nearby residents John and Joyce Bearden stopped to see the property. John’s eyes lit up when he saw the church. A man of deep faith, he felt called to use it in the time he had left as a terminal illness was taking its toll. His grown daughter bought the property, seeing how excited her father was.
With the sale complete, Craig locked the gate for the last time. The daughter encouraged him to visit anytime. “I thanked her, but I knew it was a chapter in my life that needed to be closed. Or at least, I thought so.”
John fulfilled his goal, inviting friends for Bible studies there, and used it as a retreat where pastors shared with each other about the things they struggled with at their church. In July 2018, John passed away, and Craig felt his connection to Welch Chapel come to an end. He heard about a few Bible studies there, and a neighbor who would walk to the wooded hillside from time to time to pray.
Craig had posted photos of the church on a Facebook page, God Told Me To Build A Church, and last winter a neighbor who heard his story encouraged him to write it down. He fretted over grammar and style — he wasn’t qualified, and this wasn’t songwriting — but he produced a self-published, 80-page book that’s sold on Amazon.
I never thought writing a story about what happened to me would inspire people and give them hope.'
craig welch
This fall his pastor at the First Christian Church in Kimberling City read it and arranged for Craig to tell his story from the pulpit because it fit with the sermon: Listening when God speaks to you.
Copies of the books were available after the service for a “love offering.” It raised nearly $600, which Craig donated to the church. The congregation is trying to pay off debts so it can do more in the community, he says.
“Every time I think that God’s done using that church, I realize that little church is helping pay for this big church,” he says.
People from the congregation continue to approach him privately, wanting to share how the book inspired them. One man who admitted struggling with depression and poor health told Craig it gave him hope: “It just made me think God’s not done with me yet.” Some have asked for more copies to give as Christmas gifts.
“I never thought writing a story about what happened to me would inspire people and give them hope.”
A December visit
On his mid-December visit to the empty church, Craig found two Bibles still resting on the cedar pulpit he crafted almost 10 years ago. Cobwebs quiver as he walks past. Outside, brittle leaves drift against the door. The rooftop cross is gone. It makes him sad to see it this way.
Craig doesn’t see himself buying back the property, and he has nowhere to move the church, even if he could. “I would love to be there, but that’s not my calling.”
Still, he has hope. The church has served as a tool before, he says.
“Just because it’s like this now doesn’t mean He’s not going to use it again someday… but in His time… Until God taps somebody else on the shoulder and says ‘Hey, this is what you’re going to do with it…’”
