Worship music emanating from the Wonder Church fills a concrete cathedral on Sundays in a most unlikely place — a long-vacant 1910 grain elevator, where rows of 200-foot-tall silos, running alongside the Michigan Street Bridge to the banks of the Buffalo River, once milled flaxseed to make linseed oil.
The church’s previous location – a bar – wasn’t exactly out of the traditional church playbook, either.
“The authenticity and the realness of the people makes the Wonder Church special,” said LaCherie Reid, adorned in a cream sweater dress and matching hat on Nov. 19 for the nondenominational service.
Around her, families wore Zubaz and other Bills clothing, reflecting Pastor Joe Vacanti’s welcome to come as you are.
“I loved the unconventionality of the bar,” Reid said. “It felt comfortable, and it set the tone for this. But to have a place to call home, and a place specifically meant to worship and to praise God, and to do it with the people you love, and the fact we’re standing in Buffalo history as we pray for our city, is a transcendent feeling.”
This story is about the Wonder Church and its new space. But even more, it’s about church leaders Kate and Joe Vacanti and a nonprofit they founded that serves families in Sierra Leone and the 150,000 meals of rice, lentils, protein vitamin powder, dehydrated vegetables and vegetarian chicken flavoring it can now pack in the grain elevator and send in a 40-foot shipping container to the West African country.
The Clarence couple founded and help sustain a 30-acre school campus, called Hope Rising Academy, in one of the poorest countries in the world, providing predominantly Muslim children with education, health care and nutrition.
“If we had to say what has informed why we do what we do, it’s really as simple as ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ “ Joe Vacanti said. “If your neighbor is thirsty and you have water, give them water. If they need…
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