A Kansas-based anti-gay Baptist church may be planning to picket three Brooklyn synagogues—including Congregation Beth Elohim—on Saturday but one local church is lending a helping hand to the Park Slope synagogue on the holiest day of the year.

On Yom Kippur, Park Slope's Old First Dutch Reformed Church will roll out the welcome mat to Congregation Beth Elohim and let them use their church on the high holy day because the ceiling of their synagogue is falling down.

Here's the story:

On Thursday afternoon, Rabbi Andy Bachman of Congregation Beth Elohim telephoned Pastor Daniel Meeter of Old First Dutch Reformed Church to inform him that the ceiling of the Beth Elohim sanctuary had just come crashing down. He feared that it would be impossible to hold Yom Kippur services in the sanctuary on Sunday night and Monday.

Rabbi Bachman asked Pastor Meeter if he would be willing to let Beth Elohim hold their Yom Kippur services at Old First Church. Not surprisingly, Pastor Meeter told him that he would be honored and he was confident that his congregation would agree.

A structural engineer visited the synagogue on Thursday afternoon to determine the extent of the damage.  After a thorough investigation, the engineer recommended that they close the synagogue because he deemed it unsafe to have people sitting on the upper balcony.

At 5 p.m. on Thursday, Rabbi Bachman came over to Old First Church and met with Pastor Meeter, who told him that he would delighted to host services at his church.

Pastor Meeter expressed his excitement about hosting Kol Nidre on Sunday night and a second service on Monday morning in an email to his congregation. "Yom Kippur is the highest of the High Holy Days of Judaism and it's an incredible thing for us to host our Jewish neighbors for these two services."

Pastor Meeter is reaching out to members of his church to help get the church ready for 1,000 people expected on Sunday night for the Kol Nidre service. "Starting Friday morning, the church custodian and I will start to get the balcony ready," Meeter said in his email. "We need to clean it up, relocate storage boxes, move pew cushions, move some of the pews and stabilize them, clean them, move the harpsichord, and set up the wooden chairs."

Pastor Meeter hopes to have the church ready by Saturday night. On Sunday afternoon at 1 pm—after Sunday morning church services—Beth Elohim will send a volunteer crew  with 100 folding chairs over to the church to begin setting up for the Kol Nidre service.

Rabbi Bachman has invited Pastor Meeter to say some words at the Sunday night service. Bachman also invited church elders and deacons to attend. Pastor Meeter attends the Kol Nidre service at Congregation Beth Elohim every year.

"I consider this a landmark event for Old First, and such an expression of our Third Mission. I believe it's a gift of God to us," Pastor Meeter wrote in his email.