Monday, June 30, 2008

NCBC Flood Relief 1
















One of our Flood Relief Teams
(click the pic for a slideshow)

New Covenant Bible Church, the church where I serve in Cedar Rapids Iowa has been intensely involved in disaster relief as we saw much of our city go under water just a week and a half ago. Our newly formed ministry SWAT (Service with a Tool) took on a whole new meaning when the flood hit and we have been busy ever since figuring out the logistics of hooking up around 170 volunteers with the overwhelming needs of our community.

Wednesday afternoon I received a desperate call from Serve the City who was trying to coordinate the city's volunteer effort and they asked if we could take 40 homes to help. Well, after I had to be shocked to start my heart pumping again, I said yes because I believed at the time we had a mechanism in place to deal with that number. I was nearly right.

Thursday morning I shared with our SWAT leadership team that we had been asked to serve 40 homes and they came up with an awesome solution. We would invite people to "just show up" at the church Monday-Friday from 5-6 PM and Saturday from 7:30-9:00 PM and we would form teams and train Team Leaders on the spot and deploy teams right then a there.

It worked.

To date we have sent out about 14-15 teams with a total of nearly 70 volunteers. What an awesome church I get to serve at! Tye out.

1 comment:

Kim Pagel said...

Thanks Tye for helping organize this. It's awesome to see the church in action! What a power for good the church is when we focus and coordinate our efforts!
Kim