On Tuesday, February 17th, 2026, Pastor Brandon Pitts told his wife, Maeleah, that he didn’t know how the day could get any worse.
Hours later, he would make a heavenward plea for his life to be spared.
Hear how Pastor Brandon Pitts and Abundant Life Church found Jesus during loss and chaos in our full conversation:
Pitts’ first order of business on the day was a meeting at the church he pastored, Abundant Life Church in Boonville, New York.
Upon arrival, he realized his keys were missing – another wrinkle in what was already becoming a long day. The distinct smell of gas also greeted him while he waited for his family to drop off the keys.
A call to the propane company confirmed suspicions, and the fire department was summoned after a steady hissing sound was discovered on the tank. Pitts soon led four firefighters into the building.
Three of the first responders followed the pastor to the basement while one ventilated upstairs. As power switches were being flipped, the lower floor ignited in an instant.
“I was immediately sent back, maybe knocked unconscious... the force of the explosion was massive,” Pitts recounted. “The first floor of our building went through the roof, through our sanctuary. It was just a very massive explosion.”
The minutes that followed felt like hours to Pitts as he lay dazed in the burning wreckage. It felt as if the air itself was on fire, and the firefighters were nowhere to be found.
Pitts was no longer thinking about his bad day.
“It was very clear to me in that moment, there was no help that was available,” Pitts said, explaining that two of the firefighters had been trapped under the debris, while the third was incapacitated and the one upstairs had been blown out of the building.
“In that moment I said, ‘Jesus, help me.’”
He noticed a ray of daylight shining on the basement floor, representing a faint hope of escaping the decimated structure. Pitts says he thought of his wife, of his children, and so he climbed.
After Pitts emerged, peeling off his melted jacket, he watched a firefighter leap into a snowbank to douse the flames covering him. Just survive, Pitts recalls thinking.
He did, as did the four firefighters, though not without serious injury. Two of the first responders required ICU care. Pitts was immediately shuttled off to the first of a string of hospital burn units.
“The immediate response from the congregation was shock. You hear about things, but when you walk through it, that can be more challenging – the shock of it,” Pitts said.
A shirtless, shoeless, and scorched Pitts rode with Maeleah to the first hospital. He knew his congregation would want to meet for worship as they did every Sunday, but particularly following such an experience.
Months before, a group of youth students had begun a Bible study at Adirondack Central High School. The school eagerly agreed to let the church meet in their auditorium that Sunday.
As Pitts lay in his hospital bed listening to his phone jammed full of messages from across Upstate New York, the Northeast, and the country, God’s kindness to the church came into focus.
“One verse I think we’ve seen play itself out, in the book of Romans, Paul says, ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you can abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit,’” Pitts said.
“Buildings come and go, obviously, but the strength of Jesus’ church is the people. In this situation, I think right from the beginning our hope has been to see Jesus glorified. We’ve seen as a community this beautiful expression of unity, without our community, the Gospel going forward, lives really being drawn to the message of the Gospel. I’m just seeing such beauty in the middle of chaos.”
Walls have continued to fall in the months following the explosion, with Abundant Life becoming "famous” in the process. A long list of churches across a spectrum of denominations and locations have joined together to serve Abundant Life. The larger community has also rallied together to meet the congregation’s needs.
Many new relationships have been formed or deepened, and the Gospel has gone far beyond where the building used to stand. Core truths that may have been known before have taken deep root through the ordeal.
“At the end of the day, all you need is Jesus,” Pitts said. “That has got to be the center of this story, that you can lose everything and still be rich in Jesus. You can go through the hardest time and still have peace.”
“We labor in vain; we build in vain. We do all these things in vain, but Jesus is building his Church.”
Pitts and Abundant Life will continue to make use of coffee shops, living room worship, and high school auditoriums on the road to rebuilding what was lost. Investigations have concluded, and the site has largely been cleared for a new building.
But even if all goes to plan, Pitts doesn’t want his people to forget what was gained by what was lost.
“We don’t want to lose this significance that God did something,” Pitts said. “That element of trust, that element of reliance that we found in this season, our hope is that that continues. That continued focus on reaching our community with the hope of Jesus, regardless of what the future brings.”
In the continued recovery, in the waiting, there are still hard days. But a new understanding of God’s mercy is enabling Abundant Life to move, step by step, toward the Light.
“He is the master builder. Nothing catches him by surprise,” Pitts said.
“Not to say that he caused this building to explode, but... he’s willing to go to great lengths for you to know him. If it requires a building being burned down, so be it. So be it.”
Visit Abundant Life's website to learn more about the church and its recovery.