NEWS FEATURE: Ministries Care for Hurricane Caregivers

c. 2004 Religion News Service (UNDATED) In the wake of Hurricane Ivan, Pastor Lloyd Stilley of Gulf Shores, Ala., helps members of his congregation pick through rubble and voices thanks that felled trees landed in his yard instead of on his house. What he has not done is tend to his emotional health. “To be […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In the wake of Hurricane Ivan, Pastor Lloyd Stilley of Gulf Shores, Ala., helps members of his congregation pick through rubble and voices thanks that felled trees landed in his yard instead of on his house.

What he has not done is tend to his emotional health.


“To be honest, I had not thought about that,” said the 43-year-old pastor at First Baptist Church. “I had not had time to stop and think about those things.”

Fortunately for clergy like Stilley, several organizations are providing care for caregivers during one of the most challenging hurricane seasons in recent memory.

Specialized religious relief workers focus on the particular needs of clergy and their families. They check in with ministers and other church staffers, develop workshops to help them face the days ahead, and sometimes simply offer comfort, food and a listening ear.

Bill Sage, a recovery program coordinator for Church World Service, conducted mid-September assessments in the parts of Florida hit by Hurricanes Charley and Frances to determine the needs of the clergy and other first responders.

He expects to set up four-hour interfaith workshops _ about as long as ministers will likely be able to pull themselves away _ to help them deal with the emotional and spiritual roller coaster they’re riding. At those sessions they’ll discuss how to draw boundaries _ realizing they can’t meet every single parishioner’s needs _ and how to prevent stress and try to save some energy for the long recovery ahead.

“If you don’t provide some kind of support and comfort and work on a network for them for the long term, caregivers are going to back out of it,” said Sage, who leads a trauma response team. “They’re going to burn out.”

That’s exactly what happened after Hurricane Andrew hit southern Florida, drastically affecting that area, including the Miami District of United Methodist churches, in 1992.

“I noticed that within two years after the hurricane was over with, every Methodist pastor who had served a local church that was directly affected either had left the local pastorate or had asked for a transfer to another church,” said the Rev. Warren Langer, pastor of Sun City Center United Methodist Church, located between Sarasota and Tampa, Fla.


The former Miami-area minister is using his training in crisis intervention counseling to help coordinate assistance for pastors who’ve been faced with the more recent hurricanes.

He’s located retired pastors who can spell others by preaching for them on a Sunday. Other retired clergy help coordinate a church’s relief work while the regular pastor spends time preparing a sermon.

For the longer term, a year-old agency called Shade and Fresh Water will be providing relief to pastors in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Trudy Corry Rankin, program coordinator of the agency that advocates for clergy families, is arranging retreats for clergy and their spouses to give them a chance to jointly experience the “catharsis” of processing what they’ve been through.

Rankin said some clergy were thrilled just to receive a letter saying support for them was available.

“He broke down in tears,” she said of one clergyman she called after sending him a letter. “Whether he was going to use it or not, he just had this sense that there was a support out there somewhere.”


Since Ivan struck, Lutheran counselors and relief workers have been contacting pastors and their support staff to check on their welfare.

They use a theologian’s suggestion of following the same guidance one does with an airplane’s oxygen mask _ taking care of themselves first, said Johanna Olson, associate director of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Domestic Disaster Response in Chicago.

“Are they seeing this not as a sprint, but as a marathon?” they are asked, she said. “That’s for us to constantly keep out there, that self-care. You need to put on your face mask first.”

Less than a week after Ivan made landfall in Alabama, a minister to ministers headed from Georgia, his vehicle filled with some large pizzas and dozens of doughnuts for staff members at the Alabama Baptist State Convention in Montgomery.

Dan King Sr., a Southern Baptist pastoral counselor, directs the Shepherd’s Staff, a division of his independent Living Well Family Ministries in Dublin, Ga. In an interview on his cell phone as he headed out of town, he said he hoped to help confront feelings of inadequacy when clerical caregivers can’t offer quick fixes for the long-term problems now facing their congregants.

“These people are human beings, we need to remember,” King said. “And they have the same emotional and spiritual issues as the rest of us, plus those of the people that they commit themselves to care for.”


(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

And as the experts try to help the clergy realize the long-term recovery ahead, some of those on the ground are just trying to get through the next few weeks.

Stilley, at his 600-member church two miles from the Gulf of Mexico, is working with other pastors to help elderly residents in his community, some of whom they have seen dragging heavy tree limbs in one hand and a cane or walker in the other.

“We’re trying to mobilize and organize where we can,” he said. “Just get a chain-saw-carrying, wheelbarrow-toting group that just starts down this block and does what we can do to get things cinched up in the short term.”

Gone, he said, are thoughts of the sermon preparation and hospital visits that usually fill his week.

“Attending to the normal ebb and flow of what life brings to the community and to our church membership _ that has all been jettisoned and I don’t know when that will end,” he said.

MO/PH END BANKS

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