“This is what God intended our church to be – a center for our whole community. A beacon of hope for those devastated by the storm,” explained Rev. Adam Love. He shared his Hurricane Helene experience earlier this week while towing a disaster relief trailer to its next destination. There wasn’t a lot of time to talk because there was much recovery work still to be done.
His church – Oak Hill United Methodist in Burke County – is part of the current Faith in Rural Communities’ Connect Church cohort. Over the past nine months, their Connect team has been exploring how their church could serve as a community hub for their neighbors and local organizations. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the church received the call to serve as the community hub for disaster response and they responded to that call.
At the onset of the storm, officials from Burke County Emergency Management dropped off a generator to the church’s multipurpose building, and the church quickly became a Red Cross shelter. It was perfectly designed for such a time as this with showers and the electrical hook up for a generator. The local fire department provided water for the shelter with one of their tanker trucks. The Sunday School classrooms filled up with food and diapers, a semi-truck with water was parked in the parking lot, and helicopters delivering supplies landed in the church’s open field.
They are also serving as a staging ground for moving supplies to the harder hit areas in Mitchell, Yancey, and Avery counties. Their location is optimal for not only reaching the Oak Hill community but to serve several counties. The church sits on North Carolina Highway 181 between Morganton and Jonas Ridge. After the storm Highway 181 was the only open road to dozens of towns and communities up the mountain. Rumors claimed that FEMA had closed the road. That wasn’t true. The road was hit with trees falling and parts of the road washed out but it remained passable.
Immediate needs have shifted and flood clean-up supplies called “flood buckets” are being delivered by the pallet. Two-hundred and fifty flood buckets were in the last delivery, ready to be sent up the mountain to areas devastated by flooding.
Rev. Love speaks of the role of the church when disasters hit.
“Churches can initiate and move forward quickly. We are drawn together and support one other. We are all in this together. We have received resources from local Lutheran and Episcopal churches, the Morganton Area Ministerial Alliance, and other United Methodist churches. I have never felt our connection more alive than in the past few weeks.”
Reflecting on what the impact of Hurricane Helene means for Western North Carolina, Rev. Love sighed.
“We still haven’t heard the full story. People have died. Roads have been moved. Geography has shifted,” he said. “The trauma of this storm will follow people, especially children, for the rest of their lives. It is overwhelming how many hardships people have endured.”
He says that he is still trying to take it all in.
“Our church was blessed to be on higher ground. So that allows us to help more.”
Rev. Love skillfully backed the disaster response trailer into a parking place. And he returned to his work of being the heart of the Oak Hill community and beyond. In the next stage of recovery, the church will host disaster response teams coming from out of town to assist in the rebuilding of homes. They are perfectly equipped to serve the community.