Louisiana Parish to Rebuild After Devastating Fire - The Living Church
November 17, 2025
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Sixty years—that’s how long Stephen Jackson, an architect by profession, has been worshiping at St. Luke’s Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was also there that he met his wife in 1987.
In the early hours of Saturday, February 17, 2024, the parish caught fire, destroying the library and the hall where parishioners gathered for worship.
“It was pretty devastating,” Jackson told The Living Church when he learned what had happened hours after the event. Bishop Shannon Rogers Duckworth, Louisiana’s 12 bishop and the first woman in the office, immediately went to the parish with her husband at 3 a.m. that day. St. Luke’s rector, the Rev. Bryan Owen, lived nearby and could smell the smoke as he walked toward the church around the same time.