America's Relief Mission
The work of Florida's Baptist Relief in response to Hurricane Ian and floods in Kentucky
As Hurricane Ian prepared to hammer the Gulf coast of Florida in October 2022, Florida Baptist Disaster Relief was already mobilising nine mobile kitchens in order to prepare meals in for southwest Florida its residents. After the hurricane hit, as half million people had no electricity, volunteers set about recovery work - some of the organisation's volunteers were returning to Florida from Kentucky's mountains where they had been providing disaster relief to home-owners flooded out by catastrophic storms in late July.
The presence of Baptist relief organisations at US climate-related disasters is striking - they can seem as visible on the ground as federal government organisations. In this documentary we hear how relief workers responded to these disasters - and in early 2023 to tornadoes that struck parts of the USA. We'll hear how their relief work is inspired by their mission as they support people who's lives have been turned upside down. As they say - this is God's love in action.
David Coggins is the director of disaster relief for the Florida Baptist Convention. He is based in Jacksonville, on the Florida panhandle, where he was the key contact for Hurricane Ian, coordinating other Baptist disaster relief groups as they came to help from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas and North Carolina. Each state in the USA has its own Baptist Disaster Relief mission.
David takes as his motto - 'God said - it's your responsibility to help others in time of need.' He's one of two paid positions with Florida Baptist Disaster Relief where he has 4000 volunteers in Florida - up to half of them may respond to a call out. They focus on mass care feeding partnering with the Red Cross and Salvation Army, as well as the State of Florida. What that means is David's people start up a kitchen and are given the resources to buy food so they can deliver between 10,000 and 30,000 meals a day. In response to Ian, the nine kitchens provided 700,000 meals.
Volunteers tell of their work in Kentucky and Florida, their specialism is clean-up and recovery - using chainsaws to cut away trees and debris, install temporary roofing, and do 'mud-outs' - as the term suggests, clearing our the mud from flooded homes.
One of the striking aspects of this work is the extent to which Baptist relief volunteers pour into a state when it is hit by natural disaster - in response to Hurricane Ian, Baptists from 30 other states converged to help David out. As other states face their own problems we hear from the Pastor of a church hit by a tornado in Georgia in March 2023.
In central Florida, where clear-up work continues, we鈥檒l hear from an organisation called SendMeMissions, which has been coordinating recovery work for the community, and the spiritual motivation in the face of repeated devastation from hurricanes and flooding.
The kitchens are set up in Baptist churches like the McGregor Baptist Church in Fort Myers - we speak to it鈥檚 Pastor Russell Howard, who told his church "It's an axiom of the Christian faith that you learn in the light the truth you're going to need in the dark. I hope that that is providing you the bedrock stability that you doubtless need to cope with horrific difficulty in these days."
Some Baptist Relief volunteers respond repeated, they say they are "ready to respond with practical help and the hope of Christ in the aftermath of disaster." But what do they make of the increasing number of climate-related disasters - like the floods in Kentucky or the Florida hurricane?
Providing disaster relief is also a way to express faith to non-believers, or people who are no longer involved in church-going. David says some people who experience hurricanes or flooding are angry with God - he says he and his volunteers offer help with no strings attached.
