Faith in the midst of disaster
Oklahoma Baptist leader is chosen to head national disaster relief.
Sam Porter’s career has been one disaster after another.
Floods. Earthquakes.
Hurricanes.
Wildfires. Ice storms.
Tornadoes.
Instead of running away from these catastrophes, Porter, as longtime director of Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief, ran toward them.
Now, retirement looms for the on-the-go preacher, but it will be short-lived. Porter, 65, is set to retire from his post on Aug. 15.
However, a month later, he will be back in calamity mode. Porter will become national director for the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board disaster relief organization on Sept. 15, succeeding the current director, Mickey Caison, who is retiring.
The energy, optimism and faith that went into his acceptance of the national post isn’t that surprising for those who know Porter.
After all, this is a man who has weathered many storms, so to speak. And he didn’t turn back on the day he experienced “baptism by fire” leading response teams in the wake of one of the state’s deadliest tornado outbreaks just over a year into his job.
He said that day — May 3, 1999, was a game changer.
Plenty of practice
Porter said up until that spring evening in 1999, being the leader of disaster relief teams was just one facet of his role as men’s ministry leader for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.
A Marietta native, Porter went south to Waco, Texas, to attend college at Baylor University on a football scholarship. He said he had started preaching in high school and once out of college, he pastored Southern Baptist churches in Eakley, Bartlesville and Sapulpa.
The Oklahoma Baptist convention hired him in January 1998.
Initially, he helped put mission teams together and find places for them to serve in his role as men’s ministry leader. Porter said at that time, disaster relief teams were mostly made up of men so his disaster relief role fit hand and hand with his men’s ministry role.
He said the volunteer disaster relief teams started out with one feeding truck and a child care ministry trailer.
The ministry has grown to include more female volunteers but also much more equipment as Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief crews have responded to natural and man-made disasters both nationally and internationally under Porter’s lead.
From those early years of having two pieces of disaster relief equipment, the state Baptist group currently has 17 mobile kitchens, 22 flood recovery trailers and four shower trailers. Also, a new expansive disaster relief center has been built on the grounds of First Baptist Church of Moore.
Porter said he and the volunteer disaster relief crews have learned how to respond effectively to all manner of natural disasters over the years. Part of that is courtesy of living in Oklahoma, which is part of a region that sees more than its share of mayhem and adversity.
Flooding, wildfires, ice storms, hurricanes, earthquakes and, of course, tornadoes, have ravaged parts of the Southern Baptist disaster relief region that includes Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri and Arkansas.
“We get more practice than any body in the country,” Porter said.
“I say it kind of tongue in cheek, but we have more natural disasters.”
The tornado outbreak on 1999 was a mindblowing prelude to the disasters to come.
Porter said he was preparing to preach at a revival that night. He made it to the church house, but before his sermon was completed, he got a call that disaster relief teams were desperately needed in the aftermath of several deadly twisters.
Porter calls the May 3, 1999, tornado that pummeled its way through Moore “the granddaddy of them all.” He can recite the numbers of homes demolished and other statistics related to the storm as if it occurred yesterday.
He said the tornado was a game changer because it still is the strongest tornado in history. But also, the Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief teams expanded their repertoire in the storm’s aftermath to include things like operating chain saws to help clean up debris.
Serving state and beyond
Porter said he’s proud that Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief has answered the call over and over again when Oklahomans have been in need. That relief work has been extensive throughout the years, but the Oklahoma Baptist Convention donated $500,000 in disaster relief funds to build a storm shelter at a Moore middle school in the aftermath of a May 2013 tornado.
The organization also furnished refurbished mobile homes for 77 families whose mobile homes were destroyed in Bethel Acres and other areas by twisters in 2013. Also, nine underground storm shelters were installed at the Bethel Acres mobile home community, purchased with Baptist disaster relief donations.
Porter said Oklahoma Baptists also have been called to help survivors of disasters outside the state, and they readily responded.
He said they responded to Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York in 2012, the 2012 wildfires in Colorado and New Mexico, Hurricane Matthew in 2016 in North Carolina and Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and other parts of the Gulf in 2006, to name a few.
Porter said the volunteer teams also responded to the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti and the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, and they built water wells in Iraq just months shy of U.S. military forces capturing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Some of Porter’s most vivid memories stem from the response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City.
Porter said many leaders in the disaster relief arena knew that Oklahoma Baptists had trained chaplains who had been a part of an organized faithbased response to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
He figures that’s why he got a call from the national Baptist disaster relief director even before the second airplane struck New York City’s twin towers, requesting that he bring chaplains.
Porter said he and several chaplains flew out to New York the next day courtesy of a special dispensation by the Federal Aviation Administration which had grounded all planes because of the terrorist attack.
Porter said he wondered how the Oklahoma group could help, but they realized as soon as they got there that there was a need to organize a temporary chaplaincy program. He said the Oklahomans spent 39 days at ground zero sharing their faith as they prayed and counseling with firefighters and others who were bringing bodies to the morgue.
“I knew that’s why God allowed us to go,” he said.
“We laid hands and prayed over every body bag that came out of that pit. We got it (chaplaincy program) started, and then we passed it on to the New York City folks.”
Staying put
Although the North American Mission Board’s headquarters are in Alpharetta, Georgia, Porter says he has no plans to move there. He said he will office from home in Oklahoma City. After all, he has learned the lessons of a lifetime by responding to disasters all across the state, country and the world from the metro area.
No need to change that now. “I’m in the middle of the country, and I think it will be easier to fly out of here,” he said, grinning.
Porter said his goal will be to come alongside and help each Baptist disaster relief director leading one of the 42 state convention disaster relief agencies around the country. “I’ll be his cheerleader and his best friend, working with him,” Porter said.
He said he would also like to recruit more college students to be part of disaster relief crews. He said “most of our people have gray hair like I do,” but in Oklahoma, he has intentionally recruited college students and now more than 300 of them has joined the disaster relief team.
The main thing is keeping Baptist disaster relief teams ready to go, with their equipment and Bibles “wherever the world is falling apart.”
“I’m kind of like taking the show on the road,” he said. “That’s really what I love to do.”