Over 80 times in the past 20 months, Charis Fellowship churches in North America have deployed people to help people in need in disasters. Most of these deployments were in response to floods due to five hurricanes – Harvey (Aug 2017), Irma (Sep 2017), Maria (Sep 2017), Florence (Sep 2018), and Michael (Sep 2018). Now that Charis churches are getting experience in service responding to crisis, more and more of them are realizing that there could be some strong benefit to actually preparing in advance for the next storm that we know will surely come.
Five churches have expressed interest in forming crisis response teams in their local churches. These teams would be charged with preparing, equipping, and efficiently mobilizing teams to deploy to disasters. As one missions mobilizer said, “If we have been able to do so much good serving pretty much on the fly, imagine what we could do if we actually planned ahead to serve!”
A GROWING COALITION
On Thursday, June 27, (3-4 PM EDT) Encompass Crisis Response is hosting a forum on how to form local church crisis response teams. The information will be especially geared for those tasked with starting a Disaster Response Team in their church, but ten spots are available for those wanting to find out more. Contact Encompass Crisis Response (email: crisisresponse@encompassworld.org or by text: 574-453-6479) to find out more about how to join this call by computer or cell phone.
This one hour meeting could be the key to not just serving in the next disaster response, but serving in excellence.
