Church members spent Wednesday morning cleaning up broken glass and repairing three windows of the Hickory Seventh-day Adventist Church in Long View. The church had been broken into overnight.
The break-in was discovered when a teacher arrived at the church's school at about 7 a.m. and noticed an open steel door and a broken window, said Pastor Marc Swearingen.
"It doesn't look like anything was taken," he said.
The investigation is still in its early stages and investigators aren't sure if the church was broken into during the night or in the morning.
"Right at the moment it looks like it was done by kids," said Maj. Jim Worrell of the Long View Police Department. "It looks like something kids would have done."
Swearingen said the vandals broke into the main church building and made their way through the old sanctuary looking for things to steal before breaking into the school building next door.
The brick structure houses a school where 18 children are enrolled in kindergarten through 8th grade.
The church has a membership of about 350 and eight members came to the church to help clean up when they heard about the break-in.
Swearingen said this is the first time the church has been broken into during his three years as pastor.
"It's just sad that people have to do this," he said. "I was just kind of disappointed and disgusted."
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