Response to Flooding in West Virginia - Outreach Ministry

We all have been moved by the loss of life and property due to intense flooding in parts of West Virginia. Local United Methodist Churches, the WVA Annual Conference, and UMCOR are assisting governmental agencies for relief and recovery work in many areas of the State. UMCOR officials relate that at this time, there are adequate supplies of water, cleaning supplies, and other relief items that are being supplied by a number of different entities–including the UMC.

We have a number of pastors and church members who have strong familial ties to that part of West Virginia–among them being the Reverend Janet Balasko of Epworth UMC near Vanceboro. Janet will be taking a trip this Sunday (July 3) to take a car load of supplies that she has been able to collect. While there, she will be able to help identify unmet needs that our Conference might be able to meet.

The NC Disaster Response Team and the Conference Missions Team has been in close contact with Rev. Balasko and West Virginia UMC officials and feel that at this time, our Conference can best help by

(1) supporting UMCOR with monetary donations towards its US Disaster Response ADVANCE #901670,

(2) by helping to replenish cleaning bucket supplies at the MERCI Center at 676 Community Drive, Goldsboro.

UMCOR donations can be made online or through your local church treasury. Cleaning bucket supplies can be taken to the MERCI Center on July 9 from 9 am to Noon. Full cleaning buckets are welcomed, but so are ANY quantities of individual items for the buckets (a list of which is at http://www.umcor.org/UMCOR/Relief-Supplies/Relief-Supply-Kits/Cleaning )

Volunteers are needed on July 9 to assemble the cleaning buckets and to help receive supplies.

The West Virginia UMC Disaster Response Team will likely invite Emergency Response Teams (ERT) to assist in the recovery phase in the very near future.

Rev. Bruce E. Stanley, President and CEO of Methodist Home for Children writes: As I witnessed the west coast suffering conflagration and my home state of West Virginia suffering inundation, these bookends of devastation were near to overwhelming. Posts on social media from my Mountaineer friends make it clear that people are struggling to understand not only what has happened but why. Hearing that the WV floods are a “500 year storm” offers meteorological context but not theological comfort. As these literal storms occur in the midst of the figurative storms of stressed personal lives it is easy to become undone. It is perhaps for us unavoidable to ask “where is God?”

The Old Testament Lectionary readings these past few weeks have been from I Kings – The Elijah Cycle. The timing for we, the people of faith, could not be better. In I Kings 19 :11 and 12, it says “Now there was a great wind so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire there was a still, small voice.” Scripture is clear that our world is an unsafe place. The story of the Fall of Adam and Eve is not only about our individual brokenness, but about ALL creation being broken. Paul writes in Romans 8:22 “We know that the whole creation has been groaning…” These groans include the ashes of fires, muck from a flood, trees down in a hurricane and crops withered by drought.

Creation also includes our frail, physical bodies and fragile psyches. As part of creation we, too, groan.

I Kings 19 is clear that God is present throughout our disasters but is not the causal agent of them. We take comfort that as storm after storm occurred, that the voice of God was there to guide and lead Elijah with a way forward. In our own homes, in the homes of those “children, youth and their families we serve” we know storms occur. Our knowing this is the motivation for us to stand shoulder to shoulder with one another helping people to be comforted until these storms are passed. We join our voice to the “still, small voice” with which God leads Elijah. In times when the storms of life, literal and figurative are the worst, may God enable all of us to give our best.