JACKSONVILLE — At the end of a one-lane, blacktop road, Neil Earle reclines under an old oak tree to the right of a building more than a century old.

Earle is the great-grandson of Elijah Earle, a Texas settler from Alabama who came to the region in 1846, and on Wednesday afternoon, he watches a group of volunteers saw, hammer and measure for a new assembly center next to historic Earle's Chapel Methodist Church.

Thanks to donations and the eager hands of Marvin Menders, a team of workers from Marvin Methodist Church in Tyler, the new sanctuary is getting closer to completion.

“There's not any professional carpenter out there or professional builder out there,” Earle says, as he looks on. “They're just professional men.”

About 10 men are hard at work covering the skeletal frame of the assembly hall. The structure, measuring just more 1,850 square-feet, is a replica of the old church. A few modern amenities, like indoor plumbing and a small kitchenette, will be added, but the design is as close to the original as possible, down to the pitch of the roof and over-sized windows, says Melissa Brigman, Marvin Methodist Church's director of missions.

The workers are a coalition of men and, sometimes women, who’ve stepped away from their regular lives to do this work.

“If you look at the guys who are out there today, we have bankers and anesthesiologists— people in all kinds of roles who just love the church and love serving,” Brigman says. “We call it kingdom-building work.”

Volunteers descended on the space this week, lifting the 12-foot walls and beginning to line them with plywood.

The work is volunteer and donation driven. Money comes in from as far away as New York and Oregon, where some of Earle's family now live.

For Brigman, that says volumes about what Earle's Chapel has done for the community.

“I think that speaks to how this church has been influential in people's lives since 1858,” she says. “For 150 years, it (has) been faithful. This church which has been serving God right here for all those years now had a vision to expand their church so they can expand their ministries.”

Earle thinks the congregation, which consists of between 12 and 20 regulars, will grow as a result of the new building.

For a time, membership had dwindled to five or less members. Now, it's on the up-swing again, he says.

Building a church from the ground up might seem a monumental challenge, but for Marvin Mender headman Ewell Dickerson, there's really only one thing that goes into it.

“(The projects are) all a little bit different because it depends on the plans and how detailed they are, but it's really just time more than anything,” he says.

Dickerson began working with the Menders 11 years ago and in that time, he's worked all over Texas, even out of state on occasion, building and repairing facilities.

Marvin Menders started off as an organization IN 1991 building wheel chair ramps and doing repairs. Since then, the group has taken quite a “leap of faith,” as Brigman puts it, into building homes and churches as well.

Dickerson says the effort and time are well worth it.

For all the traveling, clambering up and down ladders, swinging hammers and sawing wood, Dickerson doesn't mind the work.

“I think we all of us owe to give something back because we've all been blesses whether we realize it or not,” he says. “It's amazing when you start something and watch it over a day or two.”

Earle says the building should be finished by June, depending on volunteers, materials and money. It will get finished, he says.

Elijah's grave is only a few dozen steps from the old church. When asked what his ancestor would think about the work, Earle is confident about one thing.

“I imagine he might be surprised, but I'm sure he'd be disappointed if there wasn't still something going on,” he says.