"When a fireman came out with the bell on his shoulder, a cheer went up," a spectator said.

Several parishioners and the paster, Rev. Vic Ramsey, were at the scene early Monday morning.

"It's not a happy day. It's a bad thing from which good things will come but it's a bad thing," said Ramsey. "We lost some things that can't be replaced but most of what we lost can be replaced."

It was Ramsey's next door neighbor, a Virginia Beach policeman, who first spotted the fire and alerted the Moyock Volunteer Fire Department and then contacted Ramsey.

"By the time we got here, it was alread through the roof. It's a brick veneer over a white frame church. When the fire hit the white frame, it went," Ramsey said.

Both Ramsey and firefighters said the firewall that seperated the two sections of the church had prevented the fire from spreading.

Mrs. J. Norwood Edge, a member of the church for half a century, said many parishioners were devastated by the blaze.

"When we saw it, there were a lot of tears but we're not giving up," she said.

Ramsey said the congregation will begin the task of rebuilding.

"The congregation is healthy and we have already received lots of offers to help," he said.

An official cost estimate of the damage was not available late Monday.