Loving Like Jesus in the Storm
By Ben Cox and Joe Ingham
From the 2024 Winter: Stories from the Storm
On Oct 24, 2024, Twenty-eight days after Hurricane Helene overwhelmed our region, I conducted a Zoom interview with Joe Ingham where he shares his testimony that led him to the High Country and how God manifested His Presence in Powerful Ways in the midst of the storm. –Ben Cox
Joe Ingham wears several hats as a pastor, bookstore manager, husband, father and more. When I interviewed him for this edition of The Journey magazine and website, our focus was on his role as the pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newland, NC where Hurricane Helene’s damage was particularly severe. In addition to this, he and his wife Tiffany co-manage Cornerstone Christian Bookstore here in Boone, NC.
When Hurricane Helene’s winds and torrential rains picked up on Thursday night September 26, 2024, Joe felt its impact as he was closing the store in Boone. Then he had to navigate treacherous roads and rising waters on his way home to Newland.
So, with that in mind, I asked Joe a four-part question:
• Will you share a bit of your personal testimony of how you came to faith?
• And how did that lead you into pastoral ministry and coming to Emmanuel Baptist Church?
• Also, how did you and Tiffany become managers of Cornerstone Bookstore?
• And finally, tell us about your experience with this storm at your personal residence in Avery County, the church building in Newland and the bookstore in Boone.
“I grew up in New Jersey, which I try not to tell a whole lot of people. But I am a Yankee converted to be a happy southerner.
“My mom had me in church my whole life and our church had a Christian school which I started in kindergarten and graduated high school there. I always tell people I was born, and the next service I was in the nursery.
“When the doors were open, I was at church. I didn’t miss much between Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Sunday school, etc. We had Awana on Friday nights. Then as a teenager I was involved in youth activities. My whole life revolved around church for the most part. I heard the gospel hundreds upon hundreds of times; at school and church we had all types of good Bible pumped into us. I knew every Bible story there was frontwards, backwards, up and down, all that sort of good stuff. But never really had a personal relationship with the Lord.
“One chapel service in school our pastor was preaching on hell. He was talking to us about how much we’ve been given and how we have had an opportunity to be taught the gospel while there were people in the world who have yet to hear the gospel. I had heard all the messages before, but that day it really got a hold of me. I went to talk to him after chapel in his office.
“My whole life revolved around church for the most part. I heard the gospel hundreds upon hundreds of times; at school and church had all types of good Bible pumped into us. I knew every Bible story there was frontwards, backwards, up and down, all that sort of good stuff. But never really had a personal relationship with the Lord.”
“He led me to the Lord in 1989, so I was 13 years old when I got saved. I thank the Lord for that. I will never forget it. From that point on I have always been strong about knowing that I am saved, but it was a long journey for sure.
“As I got to high school, I kind of drifted away, so to speak. I was never a giant of the faith in high school, I knew I was saved but I still had the teenage ways in me. At graduation I really had no idea what I was going to do. I wanted to play baseball, but I wasn’t good enough for that. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
“My father and I owned a baseball card shop, so I worked in the card shop. I had never really thought about Bible College much, but my best friend was going and recommended I try it. So about two or three weeks before college started, I applied, got accepted, and ended up at Bible College right outside of Chicago in Northwest Indiana. I went there for a year. I didn’t really feel much there, so I came home and went to community college.
“Then when I was in community college, I really felt God beginning to strongly work in my heart and tell me that I needed to be back in Bible college. So, I went back the next year with a new focus and more serious about it this time. Through college I majored in assistant pastoral theology, mainly because I didn’t want to take Greek for pastoral theology, and I thought I would work with teenagers in youth ministry.
“In college I met my wife. I graduated in 1999, and she graduated in 1998, and she moved back to North Carolina to teach at her church’s school while I was in college for my senior year. We got married in June after I graduated and I became an assistant pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Mocksville, North Carolina.
“I thought that was where we would be. I never really had any intentions of wanting to be the lead pastor of a church. In fact, it had never really crossed my mind. But, through the preaching and teaching of the pastor there, I began to feel the Lord working in my heart about that.
“One Thursday, I was out with my pastor and asked, do you think that I could ever pastor? And I told him where my heart was. He said, ‘hold that thought and let the Lord confirm it in your heart.’ So, God began to do just that.
“Later, I came back and told him I thought God really wanted me to pastor somewhere. He had some friends who contacted him about a church here in the mountains that was without a pastor and so he gave them my name. They asked me to come up and preach, so one Sunday I preached my first trial sermon at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newland, NC.
“To my surprise they asked me to come back the next week and I did that for a few weeks until they asked me to stay for a special service on Sunday night. We got voted in 100% and we accepted the call in October of 2003.
“So my wife and I, along with our daughter who was 11 months old, moved to the mountains. We fell in love instantly with this place. We were here for about four and a half years and then God began to work in our heart again, and not in the way that I wanted.”
“But you know, we view Cornerstone as the Lord’s work; it’s a ministry. We don’t view it as just a business and they don’t view it as a business. Like I said, George and Megan’s heart is to grow the kingdom. They want to see people saved. They want to see people helped. We have the same vision, that is what we want. That is what ministry is all about. It’s about helping people.”
As Joe continued his story of beginning here at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newland in 2003 and then returning to Emmanuel Baptist as the pastor again in February of 2013 I sat with amazement and gratitude to hear Joe’s and Tiffany’s inspirational testimony. Plus, I was a little shocked because this young couple has been in active vocational ministry for the Lord for over 25 years, serving 5 different churches in the process. Joe is 49 years old but looks like he’s 30 years old and Tiffany looks young enough to be his daughter, even though she is only 2 years younger than Joe.
Here’s a brief recap of the wonderful testimony he shared with me via a Zoom video call, which we’re planning to put on our website after the magazine is published!
• They served together as associate pastor and wife beginning in 1999 in Mocksville, NC for 5 years.
• They came to Emmanuel Baptist Church in 2003 for 4 and ½ years.
• From there Joe served as an associate pastor for a year at a big church in Saginaw, Michigan where he learned a lot from a wise senior leader there.
• Then he accepted a call from a church in Eastern NC near Goldsboro where he served for 3 years.
• And now both Avery and recently Watauga County have been blessed to have them here for the last 12 years!!!!
In the process of all these moves and adventures Joe and Tiffany have had 2 more children, which I asked him about.
“My daughter Brooke, who was 5 years old when we moved away from Newland, graduated in May from Lees McRae College with her master’s in teaching and then got married last weekend.
“Our son Landon is now a sophomore at Milligan University. He plays basketball and is on the track team at Milligan.”
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The realization that Joe got to officiate his daughter’s wedding after all this flood drama that he had been through blew me away as I considered the resilience in this family that only God can give. And then he told me about the foster children that Tiffany and he adopted.
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“Our oldest boy, who we adopted named Ryan is now a sophomore at Wake Tech in Raleigh. Our youngest son Carson just turned nine yesterday and he is in the third grade. We had three in college and one in elementary at one point. It is quite the experience.”
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As we moved on in our interview, I couldn’t wait to hear how he and Tiffany took on the responsibility of managing Cornerstone Christian bookstore after my dear friends John and Pat Pope owned it 40 years.
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“Approximately 2 years after we came back to Newland in 2013, Tiffany and I began to work for George and Megan Shinn as caretakers for their house at Linville Ridge, so it’s been about 10 years now since we’ve known the Shinn’s on a personal basis. So, we’ve known them for a long time now and they have become more like family. They treat us like family, and they love on our family and kids. They are so good to us.
“So, when the Shinn’s bought the store from the Pope’s, they did so with the stipulation from the Pope’s that it had to remain a Christian bookstore. That was George and Megan’s heart, for it to remain a Christian bookstore. They loved the store and wanted to see it go on. They want to see it built. Every dime that the store would make goes right back into the store—goes into the Lord’s work. Their heart is to grow the kingdom.
“After settling in as the new owners George and Megan approached us and said they would like our help in starting the store. We began to help some and got more involved as we got closer to Christmas. After that holiday season he talked to my wife and I about managing the store for them. The reason that it does work out for us is that he knows our heart is the church and pastoring the church.
“He laid it out for us, the church comes first. He wanted us to manage the store with the understanding that you can drop things and get to do what you need to for the church. That was the only way it could work; most places wouldn’t afford you that kind of leeway. So, he understands that the Lord’s work is the church and is number one.
“But you know, we view Cornerstone as the Lord’s work; it’s a ministry. We don’t view it as just a business and they don’t view it as a business. Like I said, George and Megan’s heart is to grow the kingdom. They want to see people saved. They want to see people helped. We have the same vision, that is what we want. That is what ministry is all about. It’s about helping people.”
I love how the Lord put all that together for this great bookstore to be preserved as a landmark for Boone and a beacon to the whole region. When other bookstores are shutting down, I am grateful that Cornerstone Bookstore will remain. So, with that in mind, please share with our readers what your experience was like with hurricane Helene regarding your house, the church building, and Cornerstone.
“We were at the store on Thursday September 26. My daughter Brooke and I were working that day. It was slow because of the rain, and we were getting ready to leave about five o’clock or so. We pulled out and got to the light there at Walmart when my phone rings. It was from Cornerstone.
“Madelyn, one of our workers, had called to tell me I should probably come back because the roof was leaking pretty bad. We had already put a plastic tub there. So, I ran to Lowe’s and grabbed black rubber seal, duct tape, some of the spray, whatever I could find. I couldn’t get on the roof so I couldn’t fix it but had to figure out something. So, I sprayed it all and said, “alright, Lord there’s nothing I can do, just keep it dry.”
“We went home that night and of course the storm was raging all night at the house. At about 11 o’clock at night the water started coming into the house, into the garage. It wasn’t flooding the house, but the ground was so saturated, and it was springing up in the garage and in our back room. So, we didn’t have a shop vac, but we had a mini sump pump and a carpet cleaner with about a half-gallon capacity container on it. We ran that for about eight to nine hours straight to try and keep the water from getting into other parts of the house.
“Then around five in the morning the power went out. We have a generator that runs part of the house, so we ran drop cords to be able to get the sump pump to keep going. We were just exhausted, but we had to keep pumping that water.
“It was around nine o’clock in the morning, and my son came downstairs to tell us that a tree had just fallen on the house. At first, we thought he was joking but a tree had fallen on the house over his room. I went upstairs to find a huge tree had fallen and hit the edge of our house and now there is a big hole in the side of the house.
“It was pretty discouraging to say the least. My wife was steady as a rock, and I was just kind of discouraged and defeated. She was playing the role of the Holy Spirit while I’m falling apart with a tree in the house. She was the rock through the storm.
“So, I pulled myself together and called my neighbor, asking him to come look at it. And this is in the middle of the storm. He comes over full rain gear. He and his wife chainsaw the tree and get it cut up. I was just asking him to come look at it. But we got it off the house and got it tarped up. It left probably a five-foot hole in the house. Later that afternoon we found out a much larger tree fell on my daughter’s future home. It did much more damage than what happened to ours.
“When it finally stopped raining, we had a minute or two to rest. My youth pastor’s family lives in Jonas Ridge and they were worried about a tree falling on their house, so they spent Thursday night at the church. They were sending us pictures Friday morning of the parking lot. The water was rising in the parking lot because we’re right on the creek. Then they sent a video of it running into the church building into the basement. We had about five or six inches of water in the church. It left mud everywhere. We had to tear all the carpet out of the classrooms.
“So naturally, my thoughts wondered about the store, it had only been pouring out when I left. If they were live, I would check the store cameras on my phone, but they eventually went out. Then I saw videos of the Walmart parking lot and water was everywhere. I told my wife the store is going to be demolished. I just thought there was no way with how much water there was. We had been praying for it to not be destroyed.
“To my surprise and lack of faith, I got a call from Madelyn that there was only a little bit of water on the tile in the front of the store in the foyer. We had some stuff that got damaged but everything else in the store looked good, no damage. We were so excited, praising the Lord. I think we opened back up Wednesday or Thursday, so we weren’t even closed for a week.
“The unique thing about the store is that there is a two-foot ledge that leads up to our property. If you step off that ledge into the road, you’re in a flood zone.
The house our daughter and her husband planned to live in. They had spent months working to get it ready to live in before the wedding.
But, if you step up to Cornerstone’s property, you’re no longer in the flood plain. So, we had little to no damage whatsoever in the store.
“That was just the Lord, I believe, protecting it and keeping his hand upon it. We are about 200- 300 yards away from Walmart that had three feet of water in it. We only had one or two little puddles, not much damage at all. It was the hand of God protecting that place.”
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As we finished talking about Boone, I asked Joe how He has seen God’s Presence be manifest in the crippling devastation that hit Newland and many other parts of Avery County.
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“The thing that has stood out to me has been the response from the church in all of this. I can’t speak for other counties, but I can speak for Avery County. Every church in the county, it seems, is stepping up in a major way. Shortly after this happened, we just opened the doors to become a supply center, and we started taking donations.
“The people of our church, I can’t brag on them enough, how they’ve shown the love of God. That’s kind of the theme of our church. We’ve got a big poster hanging up in our auditorium that says, “Love like Christ.” That’s been my message; this is our opportunity to do that. To love like Christ would love.
“In the three weeks that we’ve opened this, we’ve had easily 1,500 people come through to pick up food, supplies, coats, blankets, heaters, and more at the church. We’ve had outside help from churches and others. Not just from this area but also from outside this area. I tell people often they didn’t teach a class on how to run a supply center during a natural disaster at Bible College. Or if they did, I missed it. So, we are doing all kinds of stuff on the fly. It is overwhelming the number of things that have come in. We have so much stuff that has come in. We joke that we probably have enough water to flood Avery County again. But that is a good problem to have, because we are going to need it. We had a hardware store in Illinois bring in a couple trailer loads of stuff from their store.
“So, the community response, not just Avery County, Watauga County, and Ashe County, but outside of our community has been really great. I think it just reminds you of the things you take for granted.
“For example, we had a lady who came through that had lost quite a bit. My wife was talking to her and the lady said that she would just like a clean towel. We had one we were able to give to her. Tears filled her eyes over a clean towel. Her son saw a case of Pepsi sitting over with some other supplies and said, “she won’t tell you this, but she’d like those Pepsi’s also.” That kind of thing we just take for granted.
“As I stated earlier, the whole purpose of the church is to serve and love like Christ. That is our goal. God has provided us this opportunity. We often joke that if you pray for patience, God’s going to give you the opportunities to be patient. He’s not going to pour the patience in your head. He’s going to present you with some opportunity to be patient.
“As the body of Christ, we ask God to open doors for us to serve. Well, this is an open door for the church to serve.
“As a Christian, as a child of God, as a pastor, I try to express to our church how fulfilling it is for me to see the people of our church sacrificing. These are people who have trees down on their property. These are people who have damage to their homes. These are people who have lost things of their own and yet they are giving 10+ hours a day organizing, sorting, and making boxes to give to others.
“As we look for opportunities to serve, the Lord presents us with those opportunities. We don’t get to pick and choose the opportunity; it’s just placed in front of us. What better way to show the love of Christ than the church opening its doors saying here’s food, water, blankets, whatever you need. When people ask why we are doing it, it’s because that’s what Jesus would do. It’s to show the love of Christ. This is the mission of the church!!
“So, as I already said, our mission here is synonymous with the mission of the Church that Jesus intended for His people to have. Cornerstone is a unique business. Obviously, it is a business; you must make money. If you don’t make money, you go out of business.
“But I know that was not Mr. Pope’s heart in starting the business. He didn’t want to get rich on Cornerstone. And I know the heart of George and Megan Shinn is not to get rich. George doesn’t take a penny. Matter of fact, he sinks money into it.
“So, the whole purpose for us is to serve people. That’s what we tell our employees. We have devotions every morning and it is an opportunity for us to serve the community.
“Furthermore, we view Cornerstone as a lighthouse in Watauga County. We want it to be a place where people who are hurting, struggling, or suffering can step outside of the world. They can step outside of their struggles into a safe place where they can find people who care for them, people that will pray with them. Every one of our employees will stop and pray with you. It’s not just about coming to the store and spending money.
“If you want to come, sit in the store for eight hours and drink free cups of coffee all day while reading a book, you are welcome to do so. If you just want to come in and listen to some good, godly music and sit in a place with some peace and quiet for 30 minutes, you can do that.
“We don’t pressure people to buy anything because we truly view Cornerstone as a ministry in which we get to try and love like Christ. If our heart is the heart of a servant, to serve others, the Lord always takes care of the other stuff.
“That is our focus at Cornerstone. That is what it was when Mr. and Mrs. Pope had it, and that is what George and Megan’s focus is. I can say that as someone who works closely with them. Every time I have talked to them since the storm they have asked if people are coming in asking for prayer or if we have been able to help people. That is what we are trying to do. God gives us that opportunity and I think that’s part of the reason why he protected the store.”
(Photo below) Bible school at Emmanuel.
