The following article was the “Give and Serve” feature in the latest issue of fellowship! magazine. Click here to read more from the October/November 2013 issue.
By Matthew Hensley
In 2004, the deacons of First Baptist Church of Pendleton, S.C., called on member Wayne Patterson to lead a team focused on congregational care in times of crisis. Within a year, Pendleton’s mission of congregational crisis care had expanded well beyond the church’s community in upstate South Carolina to the Gulf Coast more than 600 miles away.
FBC Pendleton’s Crisis Care Team was tasked with responding to pressing needs within the congregation resulting from an unexpected crisis such as death, illness or job loss. But, just a year after the team was established, a different kind of crisis emerged when Hurricane Katrina wrecked communities along the Gulf Coast from Florida to Louisiana.
Patterson and his team took action and promptly responded to Katrina, gathering a group of church members who traveled with Cooperative Baptist Fellowship partner churches in South Carolina to Bayou La Batre, Ala., and Pascagoula, Miss. During its first trip to the Gulf Coast, the team cleaned out home after home filled with water and mud. This experience led Patterson and his team to commit to providing continued relief to the Gulf Coast communities and to respond to other disasters.
Since the first trip in 2005, Patterson has led nearly three dozen relief trips to areas affected by other disasters including Hurricane Ike, Hurricane Gustav, the tornadoes that ripped through Alabama in 2011 as well as flooding in Georgia.
“Organizing groups is something I take pride in,” said Patterson, who serves on the newly-created CBF Governing Board. “Our trips are open to other churches. Most trips include a mixture of churches – our groups have been as small as four and as large as 50, but generally the group size is eight to 10.”
Patterson said that God’s presence is what makes disaster response work powerful. “We work with the poorest survivors of the natural event – those that have no insurance or are underinsured. Many of the homes we work in are in bad shape before a storm. After leaving, the work we’ve completed usually provides far better living conditions. Very seldom do we feel anything but appreciation for our work and can feel reassured that we have been the presence of Christ to the families helped.”
After nine years of disaster response ministry together, Patterson and his fellow team members have developed a warm camaraderie with one another, leading the team to discover new ways of serving in their own Pendleton community.
Disaster response is a golden opportunity for CBF churches to give and serve, Patterson said. “Even though we are not usually included in the first responder group, we do have the staying power to help families get their lives back. Often we hear comments like, ‘We could make it without FEMA because they are here such a short time. But we couldn’t make it without the churches that continue to return over and over again to help.’”
Give to CBF Disaster Response and other life-changing ministries online at www.thefellowship.info/give. Connect with CBF and learn about opportunities to serve at www.thefellowship.info/serve.