A fire ignited by a bolt of lightning destroyed a church on Stenson Road Thursday evening in the middle of a storm that downed trees and cut power across the county.

“I guess you can say the Lord had his way,” said Ronnie Bunch, a maintenance man at Hinds Community College who has been a member of the church, Rose Hill M.B., for seven years. “We were going to have Bible study at 7 o’clock. We could have been inside.”

Lightning sparked a fire at the 20-year-old wood and brick church at about 5:30 p.m. when no one was inside, said Pastor Walter Weathersby Sr.

“It looks like lightning hit the wire that runs into the electric meter,” and set the wooden part of the building ablaze, Weathersby said.

The roof of the sanctuary caved in.

“Basically, most everything in there was destroyed,” Weathersby said.

Firefighters had the blaze at 683 Stenson Road extinguished in about half an hour, said Jerry Briggs, chief of the Culkin Volunteer Fire Department.

Lightning also sparked a fire in the attic of a house on Mill Creek Drive, just about a mile from the Stenson Road address, but that fire was extinguished in minutes, said Tommy Stewart, chief of the Fisher Ferry Volunteer Fire Department.

The storm dumped rain and toppled trees south of Interstate 20 and near downtown.

A tree downed by the storm damaged the roof of Great Hope Manor, 2011 Cherry St., said the owner, Dr. Robert Clingan. The home is on the National Registry of Historic Places.

During the storm, Clingan said, he heard a crushing sound, which was a large tree branch landing on his porch.

Rain runoff also flooded parts of Cherry and Monroe streets about 5:45 p.m. during the height of the storm, but no rain was reported at the water treatment plant on Haining Road. At Vicksburg/Tallulah Regional Airport, .09 inches of rain was recorded.

No break from severe weather is in sight. The National Weather Service has forecast a few strong to severe thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, with the most potent capable of producing wind gusts of up to 60 mph and quarter-size hail.

A 50 percent chance of thunderstorms will continue daily until Tuesday, the weather service has forecast

About 620 Entergy customers south of Interstate 20 were without power this morning, said Entergy spokesman Don Arnold.

The outages were concentrated around Fisher Ferry Road, he said.

Another church, Zion Baptist in Pontotoc, was destroyed by fire, also blamed on lightning, on July 4. A couple of hours after Thursday night’s fire at Rose Hill M.B., Rosa Weathersby, the wife of Walter Weathersby Sr., said the church had insurance.

“We will rebuild,” she said.

Until then, she said, “A couple of pastors have stopped by and offered their places of worship.”