African-American staff to provide 'Project Relief' on coast

A UMNS Feature By Linda Green*

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, it caused considerable damage to many homes and neighborhoods, especially areas where people of color are the majority.

Work teams have been heading to the hardest-hit areas on a weekly basis since the August storm, and although grateful for the assistance, many relief workers and victims say they are not seeing all-black teams doing recovery work. African Americans are sprinkled among teams providing relief work.

In response, African-American executive and professional staff from the United Methodist Church are heading to Louisiana and Mississippi July 20-25 for "Project Relief."

Diane Johnson, president of the National Black Forum

Their goal will be "to model good leadership and to challenge and encourage African- American congregations to have a more visible presence among the countless congregations who have volunteered in the gulf region and continue to do so," said Diane Johnson, executive secretary for the Office of Urban Ministries at the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries and president of the National Black Staff Forum.

National Black Staff Forum comprises 208 black and Africana people who serve in executive and professional positions on the denomination's boards, agencies, commissions, annual conferences and districts, as well as 25 bishops and four top agency executives. Its mission is to serve professional staff members at all stages of their careers through networking, education and career development.

During the forum's annual meeting last March, members heard an appeal from the Rev. Connie Thomas, Louisiana Conference disaster relief volunteer coordinator, to encourage the leadership of Black Methodists for Church Renewal - the denomination's African-American caucus - to mobilize African Americans to serve on relief teams on the coast.

"Thomas wanted a commitment from us to come," Johnson said.

Opportunity for mission
Last February, two United Methodist pastors also called for African Americans to become more involved in recovery work along the Gulf. The Rev. Kelvin Sauls, then pastor of Downs Memorial United Methodist Church, Oakland, Calif., and the Rev. Lance Eden, pastor of First Street United Methodist in New Orleans - the oldest black United Methodist church in the city and one of the few that emerged relatively unscathed after Katrina - lamented the lack of a large African-American presence in the recovery.

"I am aware that African Americans have not been part of the recovery effort in the way our non-black brothers and sisters have been," Sauls said at that time. "It troubles me." A team of United Methodist volunteers from Downs Memorial went to First Street United Methodist last winter to assist in relief work.

Eden said that of the more than 60 volunteers to come through his church as part of recovery teams, fewer than five had been black.

African-American United Methodist churches have stepped up to the plate to provide dollar support for relief, but Sauls believes they are missing an opportunity to be in mission if they are absent from the front lines.

'Going is important'
"Going is important because, first of all, we should have been there as far as I'm concerned, but we weren't," Johnson said. "Sometimes you don't know what to do so you don't do anything, but after we heard the plea from Rev. Thomas, we decided that was something that we could do, we ought to do, and we embraced it."

The staff members will gut, clean, haul and paint. They also will perform administrative tasks, such as interviewing, telephone response, filing, data entry and case management.

Black Methodists for Church Renewal approved a petition from the National Black Staff Forum last March in which the group resolved to call upon the caucus "to actively mobilize its constituencies to become volunteers within the next 12 months in the Gulf Coast region, both Louisiana and Mississippi, and that we, the National Black Staff Forum, would commit to this volunteer relief work as model leadership," Johnson said.

"In other words, we're not going to tell you what you should do, we're going to model it," she said. "And we thought that if we stepped out as general agency staff to do this work, then others would follow, so we're modeling good leadership."

Cheryl Walker, president of Black Methodists for Church Renewal and director of the Office of African American Ministries at the United Methodist Board of Discipleship, said it is important that African Americans be involved in the work because most of the people affected are "our people. It is the call on all of our lives to be in mission with people who are need."

"It is important when people are suffering to see people of like kind providing support and care," said Amelia Tucker-Shaw, vice president of the Black Staff Forum and communications resource consultant at United Methodist Communications.

Black Methodists for Church Renewal has agreed to be the coordinating body for African-American churches and individuals who want to do disaster response work.

After arriving in Louisiana, Project Relief participants will fan out to New Orleans, other parts of the state and to Gulfport, Miss., and will work from various church sites.

"We need to go where there are needs for recovery," Johnson said. It is not known whether the staff will be spending time at the wiped-out Gulfside Assembly, the historically African-American United Methodist center in Waveland, Miss.

Other efforts
In a related matter, the National Council of Churches has partnered with six denominations, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North American and the Every Church a Peace Church movement to sponsor to sponsor "Churches Supporting Churches."

The program will help rebuild 36 destroyed or damaged churches in 12 predominantly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans, the NCC said.

Churches Supporting Churches' goal is to "restart, reopen, repair or rebuild the churches in order for them to be agents for community development and to recreate their community," said C.T. Vivian, chairperson of the program and longtime activist in the civil rights movement.

Congregations across the country will be offered the opportunity to help. A year long training program in community development will equip pastors and lay leaders for their expanded work as community developers, the NCC said.

As the Aug. 29 anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, the Congressional Black Caucus is also responding. "Insufficient and flawed action by the federal government has resulted in minimal progress in the Katrina-hit region," the caucus said.

It is hosting a series of briefings every Tuesday in June, "The Katrina Housing Series: How Congress Can Raise the Roof for Katrina Survivors." "The purpose of the housing series is to expose the challenges and complexities involved in assuring that a safe and affordable housing stock is created in the Gulf region," the lawmakers said.

For more information on the National Black Staff Forum's Project Relief, contact Johnson at (877) 870-3832 or dhjohnson@gbgm-umc.org.

*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.