Disastrous Preaching: Preaching in the Aftermath of a Natural Environmental Disaster

SECTION ONE

Introduction,

Or:

I get to ride on an airboat!

This book is written to help preachers and pastors understand preaching during natural environmental disasters (NEDs). It provides guidance for such preaching. It offers insights gained from personal experience and qualitative research for preachers to be better prepared for a natural disaster and to be more effective as preachers in the aftermath of such an event.

During a natural environmental disaster, there are many dimensions of pastoral and administrative ministry that a pastor is likely called upon to do that is beyond the routine of pastoral work. One may be expected to be a community chaplain available to many more people than just those of his or her own congregation. One may become a relief coordinator, or a shelter supervisor, or an advisor for civic leaders. One’s research skills may have to be better honed to glean accurate information to share with parishioners. One may have to gain some medical knowledge if not medical skill to help professionals.

Skills and terms once unknown to a pastor may become second-hand knowledge during the disaster rescue and recovery phases. Typical day-to-day activities and vocabularies of local pastors likely do not include mucking out¹ a house, knowing how to hang, tape, and float sheetrock, organizing food distribution, and assessing large-scale financial needs. But very likely these terms, activities, and more will become common place for a pastor during a NED.

In a NED, a pastor is as likely to be a victim as are those to whom one ministers. It is not only the church property nor the families within one’s church that need attention and help but one’s own family, home, property, and possessions must be cared for, accounted, and secured. Depending upon the nature and extent of the NED the most basic needs for food, water, shelter, and clothing must be procured for one’s immediate family while fulfilling one’s calling to the congregation and community. As the research from interviews with the pastors in this book project will indicate, preaching during a NED has challenges and rewards not necessarily experienced during the typical week-to-week pulpit ministry.

1

. Muck out is a common, non-technical term used for the work of general cleaning out the debris from flood water, removing damaged material of a building, and often sanitizing the building for preparation for restoration.

CHAPTER ONE

A True Story

The text came mid-Friday morning, August 12th, asking if I had heard that one of our church family’s house was flooding. Being surprised by what the text said, I doubted the information. Even a bit of water can easily be exaggerated into a flood. I called the family and immediately knew the text was correct. The sound of the voice over the phone told me the situation was not a bit of water. In a few moments I understood that the family’s situation was not going to be addressed simply by helping them gain perspective. Their house was flooding significantly for the first time in the history of the property. The voice on the phone was almost shrill.

I offered to come help and to see if others could be gathered to do the same. I was given assurance that everything that could be done was being done. I gave an offer for them to come to our house if necessary. I committed to stay in touch through the morning.

I did not give any consideration to the possibility that my family’s home may flood. As I went to bed that Friday night after non-stop rain, I looked out to check the water in the street. It was over the road up the street but rains like this often did fill that low area of the road surface with water. The next morning it should all be gone.

Awaking a little earlier than usual for a Saturday, I looked out to see that the water level in the street had not changed. That was good because it meant it had at least not risen. Going on with the routines of my morning, I stopped and called the family from the day before. I could not reach them on either home phone or cellphones. I decided that I would later drive over to see them.

A call from a next-door neighbor completely distracted me from later contacting the family from our church. Our neighbor informed my family that the residents in the back of the subdivision—about three quarters of a mile from our house—were flooding and had been instructed to go to the elementary school in our neighborhood for shelter. The alarm was that the water from the Amite River behind our subdivision was less than five blocks from us and coming quickly—prepare for water. Within minutes after the call the water level in the street in front of our house began to rise.

We took necessary precautions, helped our neighbors do the same, and watched as water continued to approach all our houses. Everyone was moving to the school located one block behind our address. We did the same anticipating that perhaps two to three inches of water may get into our house—not the thirty-five inches that did.

Other local pastors were beginning to handle a growing crisis, too. Before sunrise that Saturday, Pastor Clark² learned via a Facebook post that two older women of his congregation were unable to leave their homes due to flood water. The Facebook post was from the children of one of the women asking if anyone was able to reach them. The women—sisters—lived side-by-side.

Pastor Clark drove to the flooding subdivision in his SUV. The water was already in their houses when he arrived. Clark helped the women out of their houses and into his vehicle. He drove them to his own house where upon arriving it was discovered that critical medicine had been forgotten back in one of their homes. Ten o’clock that morning Clark headed back to the flooded house, but this time he could not get into the subdivision. He parked his SUV on higher ground at a nearby community college and walked through waist-deep water into the subdivision.

The moment Clark entered the house he saw the refrigerator that stored the medicine topple backwards and began floating in the water. With the refrigerator door being on the topside, he was able to retrieve the medicine. It was only later upon reflection that Clark grasped what actually happened. If the refrigerator had toppled on its front, he would not have been able to retrieve the life-sustaining medicine. This was one of many coincidences that he would later be able to recount.

No other pastor had quite the weekend as did Pastor Mitchel. He was with forty of his parishioners . . . and twenty of their pets. Families living near the church came to the higher ground on which the church was located as their homes began to flood. But soon the church property and facilities, one of the largest in the city, flooded as well. This included the parsonage. Mitchel and the families were in the upstairs of the church’s school with no air conditioning and no lights. Functional plumbing was in another building on the other side of a waist-deep wade through flood water.

For the next three days he and the others waited to be evacuated from the hot and humid building. Cellphone service was spotty. Fortunately, several of the families that retreated into the upstairs of the building had thought to bring some food supplies with them as they fled their flooding homes. The food was shared among everyone as they waited for the water to recede. They whiled away their time chatting, playing card games, and sleeping.

Pastor Brown’s experience that Saturday and the months that followed was different than several of his local pastoral friends. The church’s parsonage is located a few yards from the church’s main building and the church’s property fronts a major artery through the city. The four-lane-plus turn-lane road lays atop a roadbed that is several feet higher than all the surrounding properties. This road construction, done many years ago, formed a levee of protection for Brown and his church property. On the other side of the highway from the church most homes, businesses, and properties flooded.

But for Brown there was a different personal challenge the day of the flood which lingered with him for months afterward. So many neighbors, friends, and colleagues flooded. But due to a civil engineering road design, he was spared. Brown self-diagnosed his experience as akin to what is commonly called survivor’s guilt.³

A church of another denomination was located very nearby Brown on the flooding side of the highway. The two are located within sight of one another. As soon as the receding water allowed, the pastor of the other church, Pastor Johnson, got to his church’s property to survey what happened. He was confronted with the realization that this was his first experience of this kind. He had no training for such a situation. He did recognize that throughout all their facilities the sheetrock walls had to be cut out from eighteen inches down to the floor.

Pondering this, Johnson considered how the congregation was composed generally of older adults—many of whom were retired. Later he learned that 60% of the homes of families in the church flooded. But the pressing question arose: where could they meet for worship now?

That question began bringing together the stories of Brown and Johnson as Brown’s church became an answer for Johnson. Through the local pastors’s network in Central, Pastor Brown made an open announcement that their facilities would be made as available as possible to other churches that flooded. First come, first serve. Pastor Johnson arranged with Brown to use their gymnasium for worship on Sunday evenings since the overall facilities were too small for both congregations to meet on the same schedule. Johnson was seeing quickly after the disaster that God provides.

And Brown was realizing more the divine intervention he experienced in the sparing of his family and his congregation’s property from the turmoil of flooding. Their location and facilities within days of that weekend became a housing center for relief teams from across the United States. People and churches related to Brown’s denomination quickly came with labor, supplies, and finances to help the families of their church who did flood. The teams also helped in the community by mucking out flooded houses for occupants.

Pastor Keith was unable to leave his home the entire weekend of the flood. His house was dry but the streets and roads between him and his church were impassable. The chair of the church trustees who was charged with responsibility for the church facilities could not get to the property either. At the time, Keith was hearing reports of bridges being out. While later it was learned that no bridges had failed, the congregation was still unable to have services that weekend. It would be Monday before he was able to get to the church property.

Once there he was confronted with a flooded office area, choir library, gymnasium, associate pastor’s parsonage, and most other facilities. Thankfully, the sanctuary had not received flood water! But his initial sense of shock was in trying to understand what needed to be done to bring everything back.

Like other pastors in the area, he faced the challenge of checking with individuals and families to see how they fared. But this was compounded by the need for identifying volunteers who did not flood to do the immediate stage of work for recovering the church property. While making calls he learned that some of the congregants had been out that weekend rescuing other people from their homes. This was not surprising, as the church had a reputation for being a place where people could come and get the help they needed.

Among the many residences of my neighborhood sheltering at the school the