CHURCHES: Religious groups put faith into action in communities
Just before floodwaters rushed into Tom Mayne’s Spring home, he put some of his furniture onto paint cans, hoping six additional inches might salvage pieces like a beautiful old shelf from the 1850s. It didn’t help; much of his property was damaged by the waters of Harvey.
But after the water receded, as Mayne faced the onerous task of cleaning up, he found the work load lightened by a team of about 15 masked and gloved volunteers from nearby Champion Forest Baptist Church, who showed up to mud out his home, dragging compromised furniture and sheet rock to the curb.
“Who’s ready to cut?” one said, eyeing the sheetrock along the garage
wall, the last of it remaining in the house. After working on Mayne’s house, the group moved across the street to help another neighbor. By midday Wednesday, Champion Forest Baptist had mudded out more than 500 homes in the area, with plans to continue doing so for another two weeks.
In the days since the rains ceased and parts of Houston wait for civic and federal relief, local religious groups have proved to be hives of activity, many of them doing the tough, dirty work, like mudding out homes, on a block-by-block basis in various communities.
Larger religious centers in the metro area have offered shelter, while smaller ones have distributed food and supplies. Others have grilled food in the evenings to feed communities that have no access to their kitchens, or provided meals that fit with specific religious law to observant people in need.
The organization and mobilization effort has run counter to general perception of disaster relief as being stuck in place due to red tape. These religious groups, representing several different faiths, have often taken the lead in the recovery efforts — especially in their own communities, where they have gained knowledge of how to help.
David Fleming has learned a lot since becoming a pastor at Champion Forest Baptist Church shortly before Hurricane Ike hit the region in 2008.
Then, he said, “We didn’t quite know what to do, so we went out to the parks and cleaned them.”
Meyer Park, just down the hill from Champion Forest, was again awash in debris after Hurricane Harvey. But following this catastrophic storm, Champion Forest took a much more active role in leading relief efforts in the community.
The ‘now responders’
They weren’t alone. About a mile away, St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church was clearing out damage from the storm. Even though St. Ignatius was forced into Klein High School Auditorium for services, the church pulled weight in the relief effort, with an online form so members of the community could request “repairs, muck outs, meals, etc.”
“There are the first responders, and they’re the heroes in all this,” said Fleming, whose house flooded during the storm. “Our role is to be the ‘now responders.’ We can’t wait for FEMA or outside relief. And the thing you’ll find about a lot of churches in the area, they’re already organized in a way that there’s easy communication with the people in the community. So we could mobilize immediately.”
“Ike taught us to get organized before the storm,” he said. “Yesterday we got help from two state agencies. And we were glad to have them here. But we’d been running hard for seven days at that point. Our goal was to run ahead and then hand this over to them.”
Steven Miori, Champion Forest’s communications director, added, “We can help in many ways. But mudouts are what we do best.”
Sure enough, a long hallway at the sprawling church’s Family Life Center had become a staging area for volunteers to get appropriate gear for cleanup efforts. Shovels, hammers and crowbars were all caked with sheetrock residue. Tables were piled with bleach, gloves, masks, contractor’s bags, bug spray and first aid kits.
Learning from previous storms was a recurring theme among religious organizations.
Trinity Episcopal Church, in midtown, had pastoral care teams and a designated relief coordinator to aid families in need and to help with meal distribution. Rev. Hannah Atkins said that after Hurricane Ike, “we’ve learned how to better help. You don’t ask, ‘What do you need?’ You ask specific questions about specific needs. ‘Can we bring hot meals on this day?’ ‘Can we pick up or drop off supplies at this time?’ We’ve become smarter about considering what people need and what we can accomplish. And I think you’re seeing that citywide.”
Just north of Bray’s Bayou, Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church oversaw an enormous amount of incoming supplies. Palmer Episcopal served as a shelter and has been collecting necessities. It also provided a day camp for parents who had to return to work while schools remain closed. And Robert Beren Academy, Houston’s Modern Orthodox private day school, has become a daily Kosher kitchen, providing meals for observant Jewish people who are displaced.
Some area religious centers figured out their roles without experience.
Ahmad Khan, imam at the Islamic Center of Baytown, has been in the region less than a year.
“I’m a pretty young imam, this is my first year, this is my first storm, but I saw a community motivated to help, youths coming through floodwaters to assist,” he said. “Our doors were open, but we didn’t house anybody because the city annexed Lee College and put people there. But we found we were receiving more resources than were needed. So we had to figure out how to sort and distribute them. We became one of the smaller distribution centers helping support the bigger shelters. And it was everybody: Christians, Muslims, Jewish people, all holding hands together for humanity.”
‘We have the manpower’
Juan Martinez traveled a crooked road to Houston.
“I came here on a dope deal and got saved,” he said. Now, Martinez runs the Get Wrapped Church in Spring, where he leads a congregation of about 400.
“We’re a small church, but we’re mobilized,” he said. They’ve been sorting donated goods and shipping them out to shelters daily. The volume became so great they’ve had to expand to five apartment complexes in the Spring area. And they’ve been cooking outside each evening, grilling hot meals for the community — both volunteers and those displaced by the storm.
Joel Montes, pastor at New Life Church in Denver Harbor, and his wife Linda Montes have helped with all phases. They found a family of three unable to clear the sheetrock from their home. A New Life team cleared the house over the weekend, and more recently have been transferring 50 pound bags of beans and rice into small sealable bags and dispersing them.
“We’re trying to be where the help is needed,” he said. “We have the manpower to get in and gut houses, cook food and take plates of food to people. Yesterday, we went house to house, delivering supplies and giving an encouraging word or a physical touch or a prayer. People have been moved by the smallest things like that.”
Each of these faith leaders also expressed hope that the community knitting extends beyond this particular disaster.
“The beauty about this effort is it’s not about religion, and it’s not about racial divides,” Martinez said. “For months everybody seemed mad at each other. But we are changing that. We have this storm, Harvey, but there are storms with different names: depression, alcoholism, human trafficking. We should constantly be united against them. That could revolutionize America, if we don’t just go back to our lives the way they were.”