Bring Hope and Healing When People Need It Most

Sep 2

3 min read

Hey Pastors and Ministry Leaders,

One of the things I’ve learned about our Disaster Relief volunteers is that serving on a Disaster Relief team is a little like being a firefighter. There are times when you’re training, preparing equipment, organizing teams, and getting ready. Other times, you’re simply going about life knowing that at some point the call may come and you need to be ready to go.

A little over a month ago, that call came in Eastern Washington.

On August 1, three fast-moving wildfires swept through portions of Spokane and Stevens Counties. More than 10,000 acres burned, approximately 67,000 people were forced to evacuate, and around 850 buildings were reportedly destroyed.

Those are staggering numbers, but behind every one of those numbers is a person or a family. Someone lost their home. Someone had to evacuate not knowing what they would come back to. Someone is now trying to figure out how to put their life back together.

In the middle of all of that, Northwest Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers and our churches in the area began doing what they had been preparing to do. The mission of Northwest Baptist Disaster Relief is to Bring Hope and Healing, and over the last several weeks they have had some incredible opportunities to do just that.

Our Disaster Relief team provided coverage every day the Disaster Assistance Center was open, averaging three volunteers a day and giving 162 hours of service. Through their time at the center and while serving meals, they prayed with more than 500 people and reported sharing the Gospel 408 times. The Rock Church and Valleypoint Church have worked alongside the effort, preparing 1,200 sack lunches that were distributed from Salvation Army trucks.

And the work is still going on. Our teams began with around 120 requests for assistance. Some have cancelled or have not responded to follow-up, but dozens are still moving through assessment, scheduling, and completion. As Spokane and Stevens Counties continue clearing the way for recovery work, we expect there will be even more opportunities for our churches to serve.

KREM recently spent some time with James Tower and Zac Minton and told a little of the story of what our churches and Disaster Relief volunteers are doing. [You can watch the report here.]

I love seeing our people serve like this, but there’s something else I want you to know. If your church gives to the Northwest Impact Offering, you are a part of this story.

A portion of the Northwest Impact Offering helps make our Disaster Relief ministry possible. Long before these fires started, volunteers were being trained, equipment was being prepared, and resources were being put in place so that when the call came, we could respond. That’s the part of Disaster Relief most people never see. We see the gold shirts when disaster strikes, but the preparation that allows those gold shirts to show up begins long before the disaster happens.

That’s one of the reasons I am so grateful for every church and every person who gives to the Northwest Impact Offering. Your gift may not put you physically in Spokane, but it helps put someone there. When a Disaster Relief volunteer sits with a family who has lost their home, when someone receives a meal, when debris is cleared from a property, or when someone who is hurting is prayed for and hears about the hope we have in Jesus, you helped make that possible.

So before I ask you to give, I simply want to say thank you.

Thank you to the churches that have given in the past. Thank you to those who have promoted the Northwest Impact Offering. Thank you to those who have prayed. Thank you to our Disaster Relief volunteers who train and prepare so they are ready when the call comes. And thank you to The Rock Church, Valleypoint Church, and the other churches and volunteers who are serving people in Eastern Washington right now.

This is one of the things I love about being a family of churches. Most of us will never put on a gold Disaster Relief shirt. We may never sift through the ashes of someone’s home or hand a sack lunch to someone who has lost almost everything.

But together, we can make sure someone is there.

And through our prayers, our giving, our churches, and our Disaster Relief volunteers, we can Bring Hope and Healing when people need it most.

by Faith,