Faith-Based Disaster Response Training -- Bring a team from your church, and be prepared to respond to local, regional, national disasters

Leader for the day

Christy Tate Smith is a native Kentuckian, transplanted to Tennessee by circumstance and education. She considers herself a full-fledged citizen of her adopted state.

A graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, she worked briefly in the publishing industry before marrying. She lived three years in Japan where she taught English to Japanese high school students, as well as math and English to American Army personnel who wished to pass the GED and receive high school equivalency certification. While living there, she also worked as education advisor to American soldiers wounded in Vietnam who had been transferred to hospitals in Japan.

From1985 until 2001, she was editor of the Brownsville States-Graphic newspaper.

After the destructive May 2003 tornadoes in West Tennessee, she was executive director of Disaster Recovery Services of the Memphis Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Disaster Recovery Services coordinated the volunteer response for tornado survivors and partnered with storm survivors in West Tennessee who had long-term unmet needs. “This introduction to direct ministry with disaster survivors was a wonderful personal blessing,” she says. “Seeing lives and homes made whole by God’s people bringing God’s love to courageous people in great need was an incredible, joyful, spirit-filled adventure.”*

Since 2004, Smith has worked as a disaster consultant for the United Methodist Committee on Relief, traveling to Methodist conferences to provide disaster preparation and post-disaster consultation.

“UMCOR is the church on feet,” she says. “The greatest blessings come from everyday moments when we get to be the visible presence of God’s love to someone in need.”