BY EMILY R. COLLINS/CONTRIBUTING WRITER
ecollins@tidewaternews.com

FRANKLIN—A Chesapeake-based religious community is building a $700,000 church in Southampton County.

Construction is under way for Kingdom Life Ministries’ 6,300-square-foot church on Delaware Road for the Franklin congregation.

“Honestly, we have people from there, and we have a heart for that community,” said Tammy Daniels, assistant pastor of Kingdom Life Ministries.

Matthew Kidd, lead pastor for Southampton County Kingdom Life Ministries, said services have been held at seven different locations in the past five years.

“A couple of years ago, we didn’t know where we were going to be,” Kidd said.

They looked for several locations to rent, but none were conducive to their needs, Kidd said.

The objective of building the church is “to have a permanent place, where we can more effectively minister to the community,” he said. “We’re believing we’re going to reach those who need to be reached.”

A bank loan and donations will finance the project, Daniels said.

Volunteers from Kingdom Life Ministries will complete the framing of the building.

Daniels said Kingdom Life Ministries has always had a passion to help the Franklin community, but the closing of International Paper and the jobs lost moved the construction of the church forward.

“Once the jobs were lost, we really moved forward,” she said. “We just want to see that community come back.”