wfn.org | [ENS] Hurricane relief partnerships blossom between congregations,

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Hurricane relief partnerships blossom between congregations, dioceses

By Mary Frances Schjonberg

ENS111705-03

[Episcopal News Service] Formal partnerships are already underway between
parishes across the country and those along the hurricane-damaged
Gulf Coast under the Episcopal Church's new "We Will Stand With You"
(WSWY) program.

About 10 partnerships have been made through WSWY. Another 10 partnerships
formalize relationships that already existed, according to Susan Blayer,
WSWY partnership coordinator. Those partnerships move WSWY into the
second phase of a four-phase program.

St. Paul's Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee has partnered with St.
Paul's Church in New Orleans in the first partnership of the program.

The second partnership pairs Church of the Good Shepherd in Lookout
Mountain, Tennessee with Grace Episcopal Church, also in New Orleans.
Both Tennessee parishes are part of the Diocese of East Tennessee.

St. Paul's, the third-oldest congregation in the Diocese of Louisiana,
is in the Lakewood neighborhood, near Lake Pontchartrain. Its church,
a pre-kindergarten through 8th grade school, and the rectory suffered
massive flood damage when a levee holding back the lake collapsed after
Hurricane Katrina.

Four feet of water poured into Grace Church on Canal Street during the
flooding. Grace's rector, the Reverend Walter J. Baer, held an All Saints
Sunday Eucharist outside the church on November 6. The service included
a procession through the neighborhood.

While the members of St. Paul's in Chattanooga had been involved in a
variety of hurricane relief efforts from the beginning, the parish felt
a need to focus its work, according to a recent parish newsletter article
by the Rev. H. Hunter Huckabay, Jr.

Huckabay, St. Paul's rector, told parishioners that the vestry hopes to
form a similar partnership with a parish in Mississippi.

"By focusing our relief efforts on these two parish churches, we believe
that we can be more effective in assisting in their recovery. While the
partnering relationship has not been specifically defined, our intention
is to offer to them what we can to meet their needs. This is a long
range commitment, because the recovery period will be lengthy," he wrote.

WSWY grew out of efforts that began immediately after Hurricane Katrina
to provide just that kind of focus and to assess the needs of those hit
by the storms and coordinate ways of meeting those needs. The program
is being run by the Office of the Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies.

The work began with simply fielding all the offers of help. Dioceses
on the Gulf Coast initially felt overwhelmed with the offers of
assistance. The dioceses and parishes were operating in a "chaos-trauma
mode of just trying to survive one day to the next," Blayer said.

"There was a lot of impatience" on the part of some people and
organizations as their offers of help were met with requests that they
put those offers on hold, she said.

Gulf Coast dioceses had to ask that people put their desires to help "in
the bank" while the dioceses and parishes assessed what they needed next.
WSWY worked "to slow down the rest of the country," Blayer said.

The offers of help were heartfelt and welcomed, she said, but people's
need to help had to be paced to other people's ability to accept the help.

Many of the offers of help came from congregations and dioceses that
already had relationships with their counterparts on the Gulf Coast. Those
offers needed to be augmented with deliberate coordination so that all
areas receive aid and not just those with such previous relationships.

The need to ensure even distribution and to "capture the partnerships that
were already in existence" formed the first phase of WSWY's four-phase
program. That phase has involved assessing specific needs and taking
inventory of the resources being offered to meet the needs.

This phase also allows the staff in the Chaplaincies office to get an
accurate inventory of all the work that is being done, Blayer said.

The second phase, which WSWY is in now, involves matching those in need
with those who can help. The actual work of those matches constitutes
WSWY's third phase. Evaluation every 10 days and improvement is the
last phase.

The Rt. Rev. George Packard, Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies,
called for partnerships that are enduring and relational. "Offers
of help must be sustained over the long haul," the program's website
(www.ecusa-chaplain.org/wswy_portal.html#wswy. notes.

Packard also envisions WSWY to be centered in Christ and grounded
in prayer.  St. Paul's in Chattanooga is doing just that. "At every
Eucharist, we will pray for our partner parish, St. Paul's, New Orleans,
and her Rector, George Walker. This means a great deal to them, and I
urge you to remember them in your private prayers," Huckabay wrote in
his article.

Blayer said there are still more partnerships to be formed. Such
partnerships require large commitments of resources and time and so. She
said WSWY encourages dioceses to consider partnering with a single parish.
"A collaborative effort on a large scale is preferable," she said.

Such large-scale partnerships allow parishes with differing resources
to get involved in the effort in ways they couldn't on their own,
Blayer said.

* Information about WSWY, including all forms needed to offer or to seek
help, is at www.ecusa-chaplain.org/wswy_portal.html#wswy.

* A DVD describing the WSWY program with a word from Bishop George Packard
will be available soon for use at diocesan conventions and other meetings.

-- Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for Episcopal
News Service.

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