If this sanctuary were like her last church, the whole congregation would lose two walls of windows. Lose windows, you lose light. Windows down the sides of the sanctuary, but no windows behind the pulpit and the choir loft and no windows on the other end where there was just a door for entering. That was her last church, like a coffin with big windows on the sides. She hated it. It was sad and boring and well lit only when light lined up just right.
So when she had the chance to build a new church, she had one goal: windows on all sides, all four sides. She’d put the entrance on the corner, like her uncle’s drug store in Jackson, and she’d put the pulpit in the corner and make the whole congregation sing like a choir. And every wall would have windows. Lots of light.
In her first sermon from that soon to be famous corner pulpit, she proposed and the congregation agreed to rename the Smokey Creek Chapel to the Four Ways Chapel of Light. It seemed like a small decision to the two dozen farm families that made up the church’s membership, but it was a decision that would forever change the course of Sister Sarah McKay and the people of Smokey Creek, Alabama.