Here’s the letter I just received from Bishop Huie:
Dear United Methodist Friends,
Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am grateful already for your prayers and acts of compassion for all those affected by Hurricane Katrina. United Methodists throughout the Texas Annual Conference are eager to respond. We are receiving many calls in our office. This letter is your first update from me. Others will follow.
Our Conference United Methodist efforts are being coordinated by our Partners in Mission office, Disaster Response leaders and several large United Methodist congregations. National efforts are being coordinated by UMCOR.
Katrina is the largest natural disaster we have ever experienced in the United States. Rescue efforts are under the supervision of the public officials and National Guard, and we have been urged not to send anyone into the area unless it is specifically coordinated with persons in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Our first mission will be to assist refugees in our areas. East Texas and Houston is filling up with refugees. There are more people on the way. Several UM congregations are being opened up as shelters. A list of those churches appears elsewhere. Please feel free to contribute food, bedding and volunteer your time by calling them.
Refugees in the New Orleans Superdome are being transferred to the Astrodome. St. Luke UMC in Houston has been asked to coordinate volunteers to staff the Astrodome. They expect to need hundreds of volunteers willing to work 12 hour shifts for at least a month. Two people can team to work six hours each, but those persons need to volunteer as a pair. If pastors will send lists of volunteers to Susan Silvus (ssilvus@stlukes-hou.org) via email, they will try to coordinate. Volunteers can come directly to the Astrodome. However, please be prepared to be flexible.
We are encouraging people to volunteer at their nearest Red Cross shelter if there is one near you. Every relief organization will be asked to stretch deeper and wider than it ever has done before. They need our help.
This disaster truly invites extravagant generosity. I want to encourage you to give generously through your local church. There are two primary ways to give. If you will mark your check “Katrina,” these funds will first be used locally to assist refugees within the bounds of the Annual Conference. They will be used for food, supplies, bedding, gasoline, etc., as they are needed here. Remaining funds will be sent to UMCOR. The second way to give is to mark your check UMCOR Hurricane Response. Those funds will be used for rebuilding. Finally, you can give directly to Red Cross.
Pastors, we need a quick turn-around on “Katrina” funds to the conference office. Area food banks are already running low on food. They need to purchase in large quantities. We want to be able to disperse funds quickly to local churches and to agencies working directly with refugees.
Once the clean-up process begins, there will be a tremendous need for flood buckets, health kits, bedding and other supplies. You can learn how to create those kits by looking elsewhere on our Web site. Churches can begin collecting supplies and taking them to drop sites for later distribution.
A tremendous rebuilding process lies ahead. As the waters recede, and sites are available, you will hear from Kathie Mann, who leads our Partner in Mission teams.
Please pray for all those people who have been affected by Katrina. They need for us to hold them in the presence of God hourly. They need for us pray for their safety, health, future and much, much more. Through the grace of God, we will help them put their lives back together again, and re-build their homes and cities.
This situation is changing hourly. We will give you the best information we have. Kindly keep checking your email and the Web site for updates.
God bless all of us as we seek to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Grace and peace,
Janice Riggle Huie
UMCOR has a page with information on how to make a variety of disaster relif kits.
By now you’ve seen pictures and heard reports of the destruction in Louisiana and Mississipi (and beyond). WWL reports that “Residents will probably be allowed back in town in a week, with identification only, but only to get essentials and clothing. You will then be asked to leave and not come back for one month.” The monetary cost of being out of your (likely destroyed) home for a month, is high enough. The emotional cost of living in total uncertainty will likely be even greater. What about school? Will the schools where the homeless are staying be able to temporarily absorb the displaced children? What will adults who are used to filling their days with work going to do?
Time to pray and keep on praying.
To me the unimaginable thing is that things like this happen in places like Bangladesh every year. Hundreds killed by Katrina – absolutely horrible. But how often do we hear of a storm or flood somewhere else that kills tens of thousands?
UMCOR (United Methodist Committee On Relief) is always ready to jump in when disaster strikes. Hurricane Katrina is no exception. If you’d like to support their relief effort you can check in at their Website.
Update: Here are a couple UM news items on Katrina:
UMCOR Goes Into Action
UMs Begin Response to Katrina
I crossed the narrow narthex from exterior door toward the sanctuary. That there were people other than myself in the narthex registered, but I took no notice. Then my hand made contact with the handle of the door to the sanctuary. At that point I heard a voice say, “You can’t go in there.†With that voice I suddenly became aware that the narthex was, in fact, full of people. All of them besides myself were armed, uniformed police.
I briefly considered entering the sanctuary anyway. Who are the police of Caesar to tell me I cannot enter a Christian house of worship? After all, I am not only an ordained United Methodist Elder, but am also ABD in a PhD in Church-State Studies, so I knew better than that officers of the State ought to restrict admittance to a church.
I very quickly weighed my options and decided making my flight home that afternoon was more important than getting involved in my own First Amendment case. I was escorted through the metal detectors into the hallway to wait with the others who had gotten there early.
The church was The Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D.C. The occasion was a possible visit that Sunday morning by the President and First Lady. It was January 1999.
I understand there are security measures that must be taken before the President goes anywhere. Especially post September 11. But there is no excuse for allowing armed, uniformed agents of the state to control admittance into a place of worship.
I attended a city council meeting tonight. It opened with a public forum time during which interested citizens were invited to voice their opinions about the proposed property tax rate increase. I don’t recall the mayor also inviting questions, though he and the rest of the city council did their best to answer all questions that were asked.
I’d like to share some observations from that public forum session.
- It was clear that one citizen’s questions were focused on making sure everyone in attendance recognized his intelligence and experience. In doing so, he was also questioning and challenging the experience and intelligence of the city council and mayor. I wouldn’t expect this to be an effective method or persuasion. In his case, it was not.
- Another citizen repeatedly accused the council of not having made their budget recommendations available to the public. Though he was told repeatedly that he was welcome to a copy of the proposed budget, as was any citizen, he continued to ask questions based on presumptions about the budget he hadn’t seen in direct contradiction to how the council had explained the budget.
- Among several citizens there was a penchant for questioning the character of the city councilmen because they were not in agreement with those asking the questions. This is common at higher levels of politics, but I would have thought it foreign to small town local politics where we know each other outside the council chambers.
While I have to admit that several on the city council, including the mayor and city manager are personal friends of mine, I believe my assessment is fair. They did answer questions, many times the same question over and over again. The trouble was they didn’t give the answers those asking wanted to hear.
Which is kind of refreshing from elected officeholders.
You can listen to this week’s sermon, Learning From John Wesley: Holiness. I show from Scripture (main text: Colossians 3:1-17) why holiness is good for us and how it fits into the big picture of what God is doing in our lives. I also give some pointers on how to pursue the holy life.
In today’s New York Times columnist David Brooks summarizes Andy Krepinevich’s approach to winning in Iraq. The basic idea is to build up areas of safety for civilians rather than going after the insurgents. Sound an awful lot like Lewis Sorley’s description of Gen. Abram’s strategy in Vietnam. If Sorley is to believed, the strategy worked in Vietnam – in the short term, but fell apart when America neglected its role in the peace (and the North ignored the treaty it had made). If the Vietnam war – which, it is claimed, we lost – was part of a larger war against communism – which we won, then surely when we look at Iraq we must see it in context of a larger war. We still live with the loss in Vietnam (which was more a political loss than a military loss); if Iraq is lost – whether in reality or in the perception of the people – it will be with us a long time also.
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit reports on an email from Frank Martin:
The lesson to all small towns across America in regards to the internet is as clear as it was to small towns in the last century in regards to trains and highways, if you want people to come to your town, you need to have high speed internet. If you have it, you are part of the world, if not, your days are numbered.
Pittsburg, Texas is a small town – fewer than 5000 in the city, about 12,000 in the county. We have high speed internet available through CountryNet (radio), DSL (SBC) and Cable (Cox). So if you’re a telecommuter looking for small town life, be sure and check Pittsburg & Camp County.
Bishop Will Willimon waps the self-help movement upside the head with the Gospel, seeing altogether too much SELF in much of it. His final comment:
Hello, my name is Will and I am a preacher, addicted to the need to ask, “This is all well and good, but is it the gospel?”
Go Will!