(RNS) — This past Sunday, worshippers returned to Biltmore Church, a megachurch in Asheville, North Carolina, for the first time in person after Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina. It was bittersweet, said Bruce Frank, the church’s pastor. People were glad to be together, even as many are still grieving. “There is a lot of loss,” Frank said simply in his sermon.
Among the lost were Nora and Michael Drye, lay leaders at Biltmore, and their 7-year-old grandson, Micah, who became trapped on their roof and drowned in Helene’s flooding. Others in the church had lost loved ones, homes and their livelihoods.
Church members have rallied to support those affected, offering their parking lot to disaster relief groups and state workers and organizing drive-by centers where people can pick up water, ice, diapers and food for those affected by the disaster, said Frank.
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The church is also collecting donations through a website they created called 828Strong, named for the area code for Asheville and nearby communities.
In the weeks before the hurricane, the church had been studying the New Testament’s Letter of James, which contains the well-known saying that faith without works is dead. Frank said that passage has come to life as church members have responded by helping their neighbors.
The coming months, he said, will be like a “stay-at-home mission trip” for church members, as they’ll be helping others near home.
With the one-two punch of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton within two weeks of one another, faith-based disaster groups are getting ready for a long, slow recovery that may take years. “It’s going to take a long time,” said Frank, whose church is working closely with North Carolina Baptist Disaster Relief. Volunteers have already cooked more than 100,000 meals in the church parking lot.
Two hours away, in Boone, North Carolina, staff and volunteers from Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical humanitarian group led by the evangelist Franklin Graham, have been working to clear debris, set up water filtration systems and deliver food and other supplies by helicopter to communities cut off by the storm.
In rural communities the group has set up some 50 Starlink kits to restore internet service and has furnished generators to supply power. “We’ve also set up oxygen shelters,” said Graham, for patients unable to receive their usual supplies, “and refilled more than 1,000 oxygen tanks.”
So far, said Graham, more than 16,000 volunteers have shown up to help, with more expected. The group is working at sites from Georgia to Florida in Helene recovery, as well as close to home in North Carolina. More help will be needed in the months to come, said Graham.
But Graham said plans are already underway for long-term rebuilding, primarily recruiting leaders for that work and arranging with suppliers for rebuilding materials. Meanwhile, volunteers already on the scene are installing culverts to drain water and helping to temporarily restore gravel roads washed out by the storm.
Graham, a supporter of Donald Trump, nonetheless expressed relief the election has taken a back seat to disaster relief. “Nobody’s talking about Democrats or Republicans,” he said. “It’s kind of refreshing. Politics is not an issue. It’s about getting people back up and running again.”
The nondenominational Christian volunteer group Eight Days of Hope has been working on rapid response to both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, setting up mobile feeding sites as well as trailers with laundry and shower equipment.
“So if you need a warm shower or you need your laundry done, you could come and do that and get a warm meal while you were there,” said Hannah Fletcher, a spokesperson for the group. Having just wrapped up its Milton response, Eight Days of Hope planned to continue responding for much of October in areas affected by Helene, while making plans to return for rebuilding work once communities have a long-term plan in place.
The group’s more than 250 volunteer leaders nationwide specialize in mobilizing large numbers of disaster relief volunteers, working with churches and as well as long-term recovery leaders in local communities.
“We come in and we’re like an adrenaline shot,” said Fletcher. “We do a bunch of work on all the homes as fast as we can, and then eight days later, we’re gone. Then the long-term recovery group kind of carries the rest of those houses to the finish line.”
The Salvation Army, while continuing to respond to Helene, has sent relief workers to Florida to respond to Milton, where it has served nearly 6,000 meals to residents affected by the hurricane so far through 20 mobile feeding units. It has served more than 400,000 meals in communities affected by Helene. The group also plans to assist with long-term recovery.
Todd Unzicker, executive director of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, said that so far, more than 2,000 of its volunteers have been deployed to assist with recovery from Helene, but he is telling churches and volunteers who are ready to help right now that there is plenty of work ahead.
“The challenge is saying, hold on,” he said. “We are going to need you a month from now and six months from now.”
He worries that, with an upcoming election, people will move on. That’s something he hopes to counter — and believes that churches in the state will remain on the job for the long term. That’s something they’ve done when past hurricanes hit the state.
Unzicker said that, of the convention’s 3,000 churches, 1,100 are in communities affected by Helene.
He also said that Baptist disaster relief is working closely with state, local and federal officials in the aftermath of the storm. Those leaders are doing all they can, said Unzicker.
“North Carolina Baptists are grateful for all of our government officials,” he said. “We pray for them and we’re ready to stand by and work with them.”
Frank, the pastor at Asheville’s Biltmore Church, has been encouraged by the way people in his congregation and others have responded to Helene, noting that the church’s 828Strong ministry began as a way to respond to needs during COVID-19 and that the work has continued since.
“Unlike COVID, which kind of tore people apart, this has brought people together,” he said. “The church has stepped up, both our church as well as other churches.”
Bob Smietana, The Associated Press
