Doulos Chapel Needs Help to Save Its Roof

South Bend's Doulos Chappel is a Conservative Inner City Baptist House of Christian Faith that asked HE to Donate.

By Kelly Roberts, Hoosier Enquirer

SOUTH BEND — Pastor Mario L. Sims Sr., a Marine and the senior pastor who operates the small nondenominational church at 608 South Saint Joseph Street, recently walked a Hoosier Enquirer journalist through the historic building. What the tour made clear is simple: the roof is failing, and the congregation cannot keep the sanctuary dry on its own.

Doulos Chapel — Greek for “servant’s house” — has long been more than a Sunday pulpit. For years Sims has used the property as a base for feeding, clothing, and sheltering people who have nowhere else to go. In 2020, when the city ordered a downtown tent camp moved, he opened the church grounds so residents would not be pushed back onto the street overnight. That work has never been easy. The building that houses it is old, and old roofs do not last forever.

Inside, the damage is not abstract. Stains, soft spots, and the smell of damp wood tell the story before anyone explains it. Portions of the ceiling are from the water damage. A leaking roof is not a cosmetic problem. Left alone, it ruins plaster, wiring, floors, and eventually the structure itself. For a small church that already stretches every dollar toward people in crisis, a major roof job is the kind of bill that can close the doors.

Sims founded Doulos Chapel as an independent congregation and incorporated it as a tax-exempt church in 2014. The nonprofit, Doulos Chapel Inc., lists the Saint Joseph Street address and Sims as pastor. Donations to the church are tax-deductible. The chapel’s name is the point of the ministry: the building exists to serve, not to impress.

That service has come with a cost. Sims has said publicly for years that cleanup, code pressure, and the daily needs of people living on the edge pull money away from the church’s core work. A roof that no longer keeps rain out makes that math worse. Every storm that soaks the interior is money that will have to be spent twice — once on emergency patches, again on the full repair that still has not been funded.

The building sits in a neighborhood that has seen tents, empty lots, and repeated fights over what South Bend owes its unsheltered residents. Doulos Chapel has been part of that story, sometimes as a refuge, sometimes as a critic of the city’s approach. Whatever one thinks of those debates, the chapel itself is a physical place: pews, a pulpit, four chairs for visiting pastors, and a roof that is no longer doing its job.

Sims asked for help the way small-church pastors usually do — by showing the problem rather than staging a campaign. The tour was not a press event. It was a walk through a building that still holds services and still takes people in, with water finding its way where it should not.

Historic churches across the country face the same choice: raise the money to keep the roof on, or watch the building die by inches. Doulos Chapel is at that point. The congregation is small. The need is not.

Anyone who wants to help can contact Doulos Chapel at 608 South Saint Joseph Street, South Bend, IN 46601. The church is a recognized 501(c)(3) religious organization. Contributions marked for roof repair go to the work that will keep the building standing.

A Marine who became a pastor is asking neighbors to keep a servant’s house from leaking through another winter. The roof will not wait for a better season.