Shenango Township Police Chief Ronald Preston said today that two arson attempts in a week on a church construction site fall into the category of ethnic intimidation.

When construction workers arrived at the Wheatland Road site of the new Seventh-day Adventist Church at about 9 a.m. Wednesday, they found an altar area of the chapel had been burned, Preston said.

A 55-gallon plastic trash can full of waste paper had been dumped out near the altar and ignited, sending flames up about 5 or 6 feet, he said.

The entire altar area is made of wood and joins a bare-framed wooden wall with no insulation, Preston said. The rest of the church floor is concrete.

"Through some divine intervention the fire went out," Preston said. "It did not involve the building."

The hose on a portable propane heater in the foyer had been partly severed, but either the heater did not come on or the gas did not escape, Preston said.

"It looked like they were going to try to ignite the propane, but that's speculation," he said.

Someone entered the building through an unlocked window screen, Preston said.

It was not the first time workers found something amiss. On Feb. 6, workers found an empty propane hand torch, commonly used by plumbers and welders, lying on its side against some bare wall studding with the valve open, Preston said.

At that time, the front doors were not mounted in the frames. A piece of plywood nailed over the entrance had been pushed aside. Preston said the job foreman noticed it when he arrived at work but thought the wind blew it out of place.

Although workers originally thought the propane torch was left out by mistake, Preston said police are now calling it an arson attempt.

Preston said he contacted a state police fire marshal and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New Castle on Wednesday.

"I just want to say it's a shame that people have that kind of an attitude, said Catherine Sok, Seventh-day Adventist church clerk. "We feel the Lord is with us and this church is going to be built, and we want to do some good in this area."

Preston said police will spend today collecting more evidence.

Despite the two arson attempts, damage to the building was minimal, Preston said.

"Whatever reason the fire didn't take off and go is still a mystery to me. It was on a plywood floor and a bare studded wall," Preston said. "Call it divine intervention, I guess."

Construction began on the new church in November as part of the Pennsylvania Conference of the Seventh-day Adventists' "Arise and Build" program and was expected to be completed in six months to a year.

The Seventh-day Adventists have been worshipping since 1943 at a church on Mercer Avenue in Sharpsville, which the Sharpsville Area Historical Society bought in 2000. The congregation is leasing the Sharpsville church from the historical society until the one in Shenango Township is completed.