HOUSTON – Southeast Texas has weathered the storm but can it survive—and even flourish—in its wake? The task is incomprehensible. But local, state, and national SBC churches and ministries are planning the next phase of Hurricane Harvey recovery – getting people back into their homes and churches. And they are depending on God to move in the hearts of their brothers and sisters across nation to accomplish the impossible.

Estimates of the damage are hard to comprehend Terry Wright, pastor of Vidor First Baptist Church, told the TEXAN. Just in Orange County, where his church is located, 80 percent of the homes went under water—some up to the eaves. Throughout the storm’s 54-county path of destruction an estimated 270,000 homes sustained flood or water damage and 80 percent had no flood insurance. Nearly 800 SBTC churches are in the affected zone, and about 250 have indicated they might be in need of some assistance. Many of those were underinsured or had no insurance at all.

Churches don’t qualify for Federal Emergency Management Administration grants (see related story on Gov. Abbott’s request to President Trump). And the maximum $33,500 payout to qualified homeowners only covers a fraction of repair and replacement costs. So without donations of construction materials and volunteer skilled laborers many Texas homeowners face incomplete or insufficient repairs and cash-strapped churches may be forced to close.

But in the midst of the overwhelming disaster God has already been at work. The wayward are returning to church and the lost are coming to faith in Christ. Wright said he knows why.

“They’re looking for something bigger than the storm,” he said.

And thousands have found it in church people acting outside of the church walls.

Texas Rebuild, launched last week by the SBTC, will focus recovery efforts on the “lighthouses of hope for a community”—churches, said Kenneth Priest, SBTC convention strategies director. By assisting in the repair of church buildings and pastors’ damaged homes the convention hopes to shore up what should be the source of spiritual and material aid in a community.

Jim Richards, SBTC executive director, on Wednesday tapped Kyle Sadler to coordinate the Texas Rebuild effort. Sadler, a wealth management advisor and investment property owner, is no stranger to floodwaters. His own home in New Caney has flooded three times in the past 18 months and First Baptist Church Humble, where he and his family are members, took on two feet of water during Hurricane Harvey.

“The church has to take care of the church. That’s biblical,” Sadler told the TEXAN.

With its church building shored up, a congregation can more confidently and effectively minister within the community he said. Inspecting the hundreds of damaged churches from Rockport to the Sabine River is Sadler’s first task as Texas Rebuild coordinator has put out the call for donated supplies and skilled and unskilled laborers.

Complementing the Texas Rebuild effort will be Nehemiah’s Vision the ministry birthed in the Texas Golden Triangle in the aftermath of Hurricanes Rita and Ike (2005 and 2008, respectively). When it became apparent that some residents, particularly widows and the indigent, could not afford to repair their homes.

Nehemiah’s Vision has been dormant for six years but between 2005 and 2011 ministry crews repaired or completely rebuilt 1200 homes with the aid of 35,000 volunteers from across the country. The call has already gone out to those former volunteers to return. The ministry reboot will also assist with church repair.

In an interview with the TEXAN two years ago marking the 10 anniversary of Hurricane Rita, Wright told the TEXAN he hoped they would never have to relaunch Nehemiah’s Vision.

“It’s obviously not anything anyone wants to do. It’s a lot of work,” he said Thursday. “But when the board met to consider doing this again [the vote] was unanimous—to help churches and help citizens. We want to do this for the kingdom’s sake.”

And 95 miles east of Vidor, in the heart of Houston’s flooded west side, leadership from Houston’s First Baptist Church met this week to discuss its disaster relief transition from rescue to recovery. After clearing almost 700 homes, deployment of their mud-out crews ended September 22 and a head count of the church’s skilled laborers, electricians and plumbers came up wanting.

“We can’t get into all of that,” Eric Reed, HFBC men’s minister, told the TEXAN. “We’re going to find a dance partner for that.”

But that won’t keep the HFBC from continuing the ministry that Harvey began. As their talents allow, repair crews, teamed with out-of-town volunteers, will continue to work in the city. And donations, including $6,000 from a church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for sheetrock, keep arriving at the church. Contributions like beds and furniture are being warehoused until selected homes are ready to receive them.

Mickey Caison, NAMB disaster relief executive director, agreed. Any rebuild effort requires knowledge of local building and permitting codes, inspection requirements and skilled labor. Long-term rebuild efforts will take the coordinated efforts of state and local non-profit organizations, including both Texas Baptists conventions, whose primary focus will be assisting the communities’ most vulnerable populations.

Caison said last time he checked there were about 700,000 applications for FEMA assistance. And if 6-10 percent of those have no means of repairing their homes that could mean at least as many as 70,000 will need volunteer aid and donated supplies.

“Those are staggering numbers when you begin to look at it,” he said. “And we haven’t even considered Florida, Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands.”

Because the need is so overwhelming, Mike Ebert, NAMB PR director, said the agency is trying to create more opportunities for people without formal disaster relief training to assist. National and state SBC disaster relief coordinators say the recovery efforts can only continue as long as volunteers and financial support continue.

To date about 1,000 volunteers from churches across the nation are scheduled for Send Relief weekend and week-long projects through the end of October. Caison said NAMB is considering coordinating work crews of college students over Thanksgiving break.

Texas Rebuild has begun receiving requests for assistance while Nehemiah’s Vision has received 100 applications and 800 requests for more information.

As Southeast Texans seek to replace what they pitched to the curb, SBC volunteers will continue to step into the void and share the good news. Sadler believes the storm will bring revival. For some it already has.

For information on applying for assistance from Nehemiah’s Vision assistance go to https://www.nehemiahsvisionrecovery.org/media

For information on applying for assistance from Texas Rebuild go to: www.sbtexas.com/txrebuild

NASHVILLE Christian parents need the gospel and grace-powered effort to rear children faithfully, a capacity crowd heard on the first day of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s 2017 national conference About 1,300 people gathered Aug. 24 for “Parenting: Christ-centered Parenting in a Complex World” at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville. 

Parents are powerless without the gospel, said J.D. Greear, lead pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh/Durham, N.C.

“The Bible teaches us our kids have more than an information problem,” Greear said in an address based on Psalm 127. “They’ve got a heart problem. They are spiritually dead. Their loves are disordered. … Only the power of God can change that.”

After sharing an illustration contrasting a helium-filled balloon with one that is not, Greear said, “The gospel is the helium that transforms the heart.”

The wise parent is not seeking just obedience but “a heart that obeys God because it craves God,” he told the audience. “There is no technique that can guarantee the right heart to be developed in our children. That is something that only the new birth can do.” 

“It is faith, not technique, that is the most important element in parenting.”

God “does not give you success as a parent because you did everything right, but it’s because you hoped in his grace,” Greear said. “The well of his grace never runs dry, never.”

Dean Inserra, lead pastor of City Church in Tallahassee, Fla., told the crowd, “A grace-driven, gospel-fueled effort is essential in the war on pornography.”

While filters and warnings “are wise, they are not enough,” he said, adding that Christians need a different approach.

“[A] gospel-centered approach is the only way to truly have teens who are not resembling the world,” Inserra said, noting that a “gospel-centered home” fosters a deep respect for women is learned and practiced.

Parenting is about cross bearing, ERLC President Russell Moore said. 

“Parenting shows that the only way we can gain our lives is by losing them and the only way we can win is to lose,” Moore told attendees, “so we have the freedom to pour ourselves out for the next generation not because we want everyone to see how successful we were as parents, not because we feel the obligation to always do the right thing but because we love and in that love we have the ability to risk.”

Greear also urged parents to recognize their goal.

“Our kids were given to us for the purpose of sending them into the mission, and that changes how we think about rearing them,” he said. 

If Christian parents treat children like furniture or art to be kept in the home instead of arrows to be sent out, they discourage them from discovering God’s plan, Greear said. “The ultimate mission of the family is not to protect children from all harm but to mobilize them for the mission of God.”

Bible teacher and author Nancy Guthrie shared four ways God uses the hard seasons of parenting in Christians’ lives:

• To train them to trust God in new ways.
• To turn their focus toward what really matters.
• To make them desperate for God to do what only He can do.
• To persist in prayer.

“Nothing has put my claim of trusting God to the test quite like parenting,” Guthrie said. While two of her children died after six months because of a rare condition, “it’s trusting God with my living child that I have found so very hard,” she said.

Guthrie told the audience, “Give up fixing, but never stop praying. Give up worrying, but never stop praying. Give up despairing, but never stop praying.”

Focus on the Family President Jim Daly encouraged parents to allow their children to experience failure.

“Give your children the chance to fail … the chance to walk through adversity, and when you do it when they’re young, you can control it,” Daly said. “Love your kids, let them fail … and train them up in the faith.”

Videos of all sessions are available at erlc.com/resource-library.

BEAUMONT—The losses that are going to hurt the longest after Hurricane Harvey are the invisible ones, pastor Rick Warren told a group of Southeast Texas pastors at Calvary Baptist Church in Beaumont as he counseled them on how to help people recover in what could be “the church’s finest hour.”

“If unbelievers like what they see in the mud-outs and all the stuff we’re doing, then they will listen to what we say,” Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., said Sept. 18. “Many times outreach to people starts with a hand and then moves to the heart and the head.”

Southeast Texas holds a special place in his heart, Warren said, because First Baptist Church in Lufkin was the first sponsor of Saddleback when it began, and he spoke to the pastors from his experience ministering in the aftermath of more than 30 different natural and man-caused disasters throughout the world and over the years.

Life is filled with loss, and the Book of James says not to be surprised when it happens, Warren reminded the pastors. “This is not heaven. This is earth, and everything on this planet is broken because of sin. The weather’s broken, the economy’s broken, our bodies are broken, our minds are broken, our relationships are broken.”

People want to look at a natural disaster such as Hurricane Harvey and pronounce God’s judgment, but Warren said, “Never use a disaster to make political or theological points. Just help people!”

The hardest part, he said, “is going to be what happens in the minds and the hearts of people after we’re already cleaning up the property and the possessions.”

“We can see the devastation of property and we can see the devastation of possessions, but what is not seen is, for instance, the loss of the glue that was holding a marriage together that was very fragile and about ready to come apart,” Warren said.  “A crisis often doesn’t cause a problem in a relationship, but it reveals a problem.”

Some people will not get over Hurricane Harvey; they will only get through it, he said. “That’s a phrase that you’re going to want to say over and over again to people. … Right now all you can think about is surviving, but at one point you will be thriving. You’re not going to stay in survival mode. The surviving will become thriving over time.”

The problem with grief, Warren said, is people get in a hurry with it.

“We don’t like grief, so we often try to resume without reflecting. That’s a mistake,” he said, adding that there is no expiration date on grief and life may never return to normal for many people.

“Nobody can tell you how soon you’re to get over it,” Warren said. “The fact is you’re not going to get over it but you will get through it, and it’s going to take as long as it takes. Recovery takes time. It’s different for every disaster and it’s different for every person in that disaster.”

Warren has been asked thousands of times how to find the strength to go on, he said, and he points to Romans 8:28.

“Anybody can bring good out of good. God specializes in bringing good out of bad,” Warren said. “He loves to turn crucifixions into resurrections. That’s the kind of God we serve.”

The Apostle Paul said in Romans, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,” Warren noted. 

“People who come out of it are going to come out because they know certain things, and when they know certain things then they’re going to have greater stability in their lives,” Warren said.

Nathan Cothen, pastor of Calvary Baptist in Beaumont, thanked Warren for being there to “stand with us in our hour of need.”

Warren reported that Saddleback has already given about $1 million in disaster relief funds for Texas, and he wanted pastors at the gathering to fill out forms letting him know what their churches needed. He also is making available to them six months’ worth of crisis-related sermons because “when you’re doing mud-out you don’t have time to do sermon prep.”

Jeremy Bradshaw, pastor of Liberty Baptist Church in Bridge City, told the TEXAN he watched Warren walk around the room giving hugs and handshakes to pastors who have been laboring in disaster relief. Bradshaw said what Warren shared with them was good for his soul and helped him think through how to help his congregation.

“For a lot of us pastors that know each other, it was the first time we were able to sit down and catch up,” Bradshaw said. “It was a good break.”

GRAPEVINE—Jared Wellman, pastor of Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, announced Sept. 20 that he plans to nominate Joshua Crutchfield, pastor of First Baptist Church in Madisonville, for vice president of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention at the annual meeting in November.

“I had the privilege of meeting Josh during our time together at Criswell College, where the Lord gave me a friend and a contemporary in the ministry,” Wellman told the TEXAN. “Since then I’ve not only seen how God uses Josh, but I’ve heard how God uses Josh—his remarkable pastoral ability is an open secret, which is evidenced by the churches in which he’s served. He leaves churches better than he found them, and the emphasis of the Great Commission is obvious, even from an outside perspective. I believe the SBTC will be well served were Josh to serve as its VP. He is one of our great young leaders who will serve and love the convention well.”

Crutchfield began serving as pastor of FBC Madisonville in 2016, having previously served at First Baptist Church of Trenton and Parkview Baptist Church in San Saba. In 2016, FBC Madisonville gave $128,052.97 through the SBTC to Southern Baptist causes, including $81,001.16 through the Cooperative Program.

He received a Bachelor of Arts in biblical studies with a minor in preaching as well as a Master of Divinity from Criswell College, and he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Dallas Theological Seminary. Additionally, he served on the SBTC executive board from 2012 to 2016 and received the Paul Pressler Award for Distinguished Denominational Service from the convention in 2015.

In August, it was announced that Juan Sanchez, pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, would be nominated for SBTC president at the annual meeting.