Unique Ways Small to Medium Sized Churches or Organizations Can Help With Relief Efforts

Below I’ve printed a very recent text conversation I had with a member of Garnett Church of Christ and Girl Scout Mom, after the Moore tornado hit. I want to give this as an example of what we do to join efforts of others, rather than opening our own effort after a disaster.

My hope is that if you are part of a small or medium sized church or organization wondering what you can do, consider this approach and free people up to train, serve, learn more, do, give through established and experienced relief organizations. For example, after Joplin tornado, some church members wanted to go and help, and we asked them to join Red Cross or another official organization operating relief efforts, and they did. What they learned was that working through a large organization is most helpful, and donating money is usually better than clothing that needs sorted and creates a huge backlog and mess that needs managed. If clothing is donated, for example, we do it through an organization we know is on the ground consistently in these situations not one that arises just after the storm. Another time we helped with a major relief effort through our church was Katrina, and even then we worked through FEMA heavily.

What I’m saying is, our church body believes right now that there are other churches and organizations in town who do a whole lot better at large-scale relief efforts than we do, and so we joyfully join them rather than attempting to duplicate efforts. We had the same approach when we considered building houses a few years ago and we joined with other churches and Habitat for Humanity to build, rather than going out on our own and forming a new approach by our church.

English: President George W. Bush (R-TX) working on a Habitat for Humanity build site. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For example, this morning we sent out the following article from Tulsa World of ways to help rather than getting our own truck, which we believe would simply just cause more confusion in Moore. Tulsa World article about how to help Moore and surrounding area victims

OK, back to the text conversation. The text thread originated from a Girl Scout Mom, an adult named Holly Chiarello, who is also a member of Garnett Church of Christ, and she gave me permission to print our text conversation verbatim.

Holly: Hi Greg! Is our church doing any kind of donation drive or anything 4 the people of moore? My Girl Scout troop is goin 2 try 2 hold a drive sunday in BA!

Greg: awesome pls send that info to Beth W. so she can put
that info in bulletin — send before 12 thurs, tomorrow or text to
Beth at (number)

Holly: Ok will do! We will take anything! Monetary, clothes, food, water! All
i got left 2 do is get permission from a business in BA 2 use parking
lot 4 about 3 hours!

Greg: If you can’t find a place, use the church and you have my permission
for sure right now as peace of mind backup parking lot — I figure you
might want to use a Ba location but feel free to use ours

Holly: I’ll tell you what! Id be honored to use ours! Thats perfect! Thank you
greg! Im goin to say from 1pm to 4pm…longer if doing well! Is that
time okay?

Greg: Yes, time is perfect and if people know they can bring donations to
church so pls send plans ASAP so we can put in bulletin … our method
at Garnett is to partner with groups who already doing good, so if you
have a truck or place you are taking like Guts or somewhere that’s
great … who’s getting donations to Moore?

Holly: Were are trying 2 find a truck to take down or thinking to donate to
red cross here in town. or if possible a church of christ in moore is
my 1st choice! =) If you would like let beth know that we are for sure setting up at 1pm till 4pm. Taking all items..even gently used clothing and linens!Anything helps!

English: The official emblem of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Suomi: Punaisen Ristin ja Punaisen Puolikuun yhdistysten kansainvälinen liiton virallinen tunnus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Greg: My experience over the years, Holly, is to get a list from Red Cross and do not stray from it and insist people bring good items from the list and then take it to a distributor like Red Cross to transport but you have to be clear what you can bring and don’t try to duplicate
efforts … if Red Cross or Guts church doing something, get their list and have everybody bring what matches that distributor and take everything over there that afternoon after collection. The reason I’m directing you this way is because I’ve been in this situation many times and it always works better to work thru experienced
organizations already taking things and do collection together and arrange to take to the spot where a truck is already gettin filled … guts for example said they’ll keep filling trucks and taking when full so if you arrange enough folks just to take a few miles to guts at 4
pm that might work as long as someone on duty at guts

Holly: I sooooo appreciate your help greg! I didnt really want to have to try
to drive down there! And red cross is establisged…so is guts! I like
the guts idea! =)

Greg: cool

Holly: I value ur opinion and i like the idea of a couple trucks to guts!
much easier! Thank you Greg! I really appreciate the love & support!

Greg: I pray each day to let God show me someone to give empowerment, to
encourage to live out the calling of Christ where you are, so consider
this a prayer answered that both of us pray! Talk to you soon.

Greg: Holly, this is a strange request but would it be OK if I added this conversation to my blog and facebook just as an example of how we talk through relief efforts at our church?

Holly: Of course, sounds fantastic! I love the idea! We are the Three Feathers Service Unit from Coweta/Porter/Broken Arrow. Our Girl Scout troop is Daisy and Brownie Troop #301. I’m so happy!

Related articles

• Ways to Donate to Moore Relief Effort (whnt.com)
• How to Help Moore, Okla. Tornado Victims (5newsonline.com)
• OKC’s Durant gives $1M to tornado relief efforts (cbssports.com)

On Reading Revelation

My friend and co-author of Down in the River to Pray has posted on a reading group at our former church in Nashville, Woodmont Hills Church, who are doing the same thing we’re doing at Garnett Church in Tulsa: we’re reading Revelation! The goal of a preaching series I’m doing is to prepare us to read Revelation and to have a different “reading” of Revelation, one that goes through the goal posts between the poles of flat and simplistic platitudes, as Greg Stevenson says, that make simplistic statements about Revelation like, “we win” as an excuse not to read the 22 chapters John wrote and the pole of finding a current event under every beast. It is a reading that tries to understand how the 7 churches read it and then through that context come to understand what it means today, but it’s very difficult to understand it today when we fail to understand what it meant to John and the 7 churches. I’ll post more on Revelation but wanted to go ahead and Reblog this from John Mark Hicks.

John Mark Hicks Ministries

Last Sunday I began an extended study of the Apocalypse of Jesus the Messiah with a studious, gracious, and interested group of Bible students at the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ in Nashville, Tennessee. It will be a long journey but, I’m convinced, a fruitful one. I will post along the way as I have other texts we have studied (e.g., Mark, Amos, Zechariah; these and others are available through the “Serial Index” menu).

In this initial post I will address three major questions that shape how one reads the last book of the Christian canon.

First, when reading Revelation, we are reading an “Apocalypse.” It is the first word in the Greek text and it identifies the genre of the document. We should read not this as a historical narrative (like Luke-Acts). It is neither history, poetry, or even letter, though it may contain aspects of it.  It is…

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I don’t always get my way

Tell yourself today on the job, in your home, in your neighborhood the following mantra.

“I don’t always get my way.”

It’s a lesson we all should have learned when we were two, when we pitched fits and either learned the world centered around us or we learned to get off our backs, wipe the tears and join the party on the other side of the room.

I would have expected this lesson to be central to the 1980s book by Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I don’t remember this specific line appearing. Similar ones, yes. “Play Fair. Don’t Hit.”

But this one principle or mantra is very specific to how we as adults get along in life with our spouse, children, parents, siblings, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, people we lead.

It sounds like the self-talk end of the Golden Rule: I don’t always get my way.

Raining in Uganda 2

The first “Raining in Uganda” video was so popular, you are demanding another one. Here is “Raining in Uganda 2.” Enjoy and keep praying for our friends in Uganda.

Pepperdine Bible Lectures 2013 Free on Itunes

Matt, my favorites sessions were three part sessions: 1) Greg Stevenson, Slaughtered Lamb, and 2) John Barton in a dialogue with his Muslim friend, Saeed Khan, and co-teacher at Rochester College, Keith Huey.

Kingdom Living

This was a year of transition for the Pepperdine Bible Lectures. They recorded all the keynotes and a few of the other presentations but didn’t record everything. Instead, they allowed presenters to record and upload their classes via itunes. The advantage of this is that we can all retain the rights to our recordings and allow it to be completely free! Way to go Mike Cope and all the others who have this kind of vision and generosity!

You can download 59 different classes/keynotes here

My two favorites were Dave Clayton’s keynote & Rick Atchley’s 3 Part series on hearing God

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