Amid despair, local churches find ways to rebuild community and hope

For some religious residents in Western North Carolina, Tropical Storm Helene not only left behind a trail of wreckage but also raised questions tied to their faith.

“And that’s OK,” says Keith Jamison, pastor of Living Waters Tabernacle in Old Fort. “It’s OK to question the ‘why.’ We may not always get the answer that we want. But in all of it, the key to always having hope is knowing who holds every tomorrow.”

The weekend before the storm, Jamison and his wife, Darlene, were surrounded by friends and family to celebrate their son’s baby shower. His aunt and uncle, Evelyn and Daniel Wright, were among the guests. Jamison had no way of knowing that would be the last time he saw the two alive. The couple were killed in their home in Fairview during the storm.

“That time to me is priceless,” Jamison says. “But our story is just one of many just like it.”

And he has used that experience to help others cope with the unfathomable losses brought on by Helene. Fortunately, Living Waters remained intact and served as a venue for post-flood fellowship.

“When I’m strong, I get to be there for somebody else, and when I’m weak, somebody else will be there for me,” Jamison says. “It makes a difference to be there for one another. Scripture says we’re the body of Christ if we join together, and if one part of the body’s hurt then the whole body’s hurt.”

Jamison isn’t alone in his religious convictions and recovery efforts. Faith-based organizations from around the country swarmed in after the flood, bringing resources, labor and support wherever they were needed. Jamison calls them “the hands and feet of Christ.”

“Everybody brought good, no matter where they came from, no matter how far they traveled, no matter how great, or how small, I never heard anybody ask, ‘What denomination are you? Who do you love? What color are you?’ None of that,” Jamison says. “The only thing I heard people say is, ‘What can I do?’ And that’s what we should have been doing for one another all along.”

Still, there are many within his church and other congregations who continue to grapple with what role their faith plays in making sense of Helene’s incomprehensible destruction.

Difficult conversations 

Jeff Dowdy is senior pastor of First Baptist Church Swannanoa. Although the church stands amid one of the worst-hit areas, it was left unscathed because it had been relocated to higher ground after the 1916 flood.

Dowdy says it comes as no surprise that the disaster prompted people to question their faith.

“People are searching, trying to figure out their way, and so those conversations have turned into a lot of very spiritual conversations about our faith and what we believe, and why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Dowdy says.

The church set up a counseling center to help people with these questions, and its relief teams often find themselves playing an additional role.

“Many of our disaster relief teams that have gone out and helped in the area have had wonderful conversations with people, helping them to come to some grips of what’s happened,” Dowdy continues.

Those conversations have been far from easy, however.

“I’ve got a couple of members, they’re in their 90s. They lost everything. How do you rebuild when you’re 90-something? What do you do? I don’t know,” Dowdy says.

He recalls another instance of a couple he spoke with who lived high enough to where they were untouched by the water but not by the tragedy unfolding around them.

“They were out that night and that morning when all the river was going, and they could just hear people hollering, ‘Help, help,’ and they couldn’t do anything,” Dowdy says. “That goes down to your soul — and they’re struggling. The survivor’s guilt is real. And so some of those things are things we’re going to try to help people to manage through. But some of those emotional realities … haven’t quite hit us all yet.”

Yet, the strength comes through, he says.

“You think about our volunteers — I was able to do things that first week, as far as just energy level, that I don’t think I was humanly possible to do,” Dowdy says. “I think there was supernatural strength to help make it through those early days. And so I think those are things we can see that God is doing.”

Come together 

Volunteers played a similarly crucial role at Marshall Presbyterian Church, where pews were overturned and its sanctuary was enveloped in mud.

“When the water came in, it completely submerged the street level, which housed some classrooms, what had been used as classrooms for the church, a food pantry, and just the whole downstairs,” says the church’s clerk of session, Lynne Simpson.

Volunteers were quick to respond.

“People from so many different backgrounds are coming together and not caring about the differences, but focusing on what we have in common and our common needs,” Simpson says.

Jamison notes a similar response in Old Fort.

“I hate that it took a storm of this magnitude to get people’s attention, but I’m thankful that it got people’s attention — to care about one another,” he says. “Life’s not promised, the Scripture even says, ‘Take no thought of tomorrow, because tomorrow will take care of itself.’ But life is just like a vapor, and when you realize how fragile life is and how short life is, I think it makes us better people because we understand the importance of doing the right thing the first time.”

And it is that mentality, local church leaders say, that has continued to propel their congregations forward amid the ongoing recovery.

Faith in action

At First Baptist, what started as a handful of water bottles brought by Dowdy and his wife, Melody, right after the storm grew into a bustling distribution center.

“We served hot food, we had water, we had charging stations for phones and medical devices. We had a missing-and-found board that we were using to try to identify people. We started getting in donations,” Dowdy says.

The church also housed between 60 and 100 volunteers a night Dowdy says, referring to the legion of volunteers from Baptists on Mission, a statewide network of 19 ministries.

Living Waters’ fellowship hall also transformed into a distribution hub. For four to five weeks after the storm, volunteers worked seven days a week, often starting their days at 6 a.m.

“There were nights that we were there after 11 o’clock at night, loading and unloading trucks and restocking areas,” Jamison says.

Meanwhile, other volunteers from the church participated in searches and rescues or transported machinery to clear debris and fallen trees.

Living Waters collected about $25,000 in donations for a relief fund to give to people who lost everything, Jamison says.

“We’ve had campers that have been donated to us, and we’ve been able to put people in homes. We donated over $13,000 worth of building supplies to one of the other churches in the area,” Jamison says.

At First Baptist, volunteers started “rapid rebuilds” to get people out of the cold and back in their homes.

There might only be a sink, a mini-split heating/AC unit, a cabinet and a toilet, but it’s a functional home.

“It’s warm, it’s insulated,” Dowdy says. “I don’t say it’s pretty. It’s not pretty yet, but at least it gets them back in the house, into where it’s warm,” he says.

First Baptist’s  distribution center also morphed into a winter clothing and Christmas-gift supply source.

Simpson at Marshall Presbyterian has been amazed by the work of volunteers.

“The presence of the volunteers in the town was and still is incredible. We referred to them so many times as angels in Tyvek suits and military fatigues because their presence was just — it was wonderful,” Simpson says.

Living with what’s left

Now churches are helping people look ahead and come to terms of what will — and won’t — be there.

“[It’s] the realization of what will never come back,” Dowdy says. “It’ll be different — maybe better, maybe worse — but it’s not going to come back the way it was. It’s that sense of loss.”

Simpson says she grappled with that loss from the beginning.

“I know I only had just a fleeting thought of ‘Can we survive this?’ That thought did not last long,” Simpson says. “I’m sure that some people in the church wondered how we were going to recover from this, but as a whole, I don’t believe there was any question that we were going to do everything we could to recover, and we received so much outreach from the community and from volunteers.”

The fabric of communities has to be rewoven, and bringing back what once was will be a challenge, Simpson says.

“People coming in can see the devastation, they can’t see what was there prior to the flood. Marshall was a very vibrant community,” Simpson says. “To be dealt this is really hard, but just like the church, they are determined to come back, and if a community can do it, Marshall can do it. It’s going to take a lot of work, but the church definitely wants to be a part of that effort.”

Meanwhile, Jamison says the storm brought several faith-based organizations and community members closer together.

“One congregation ended, and another one started because we just came together,” Jamison says. “This terrible terrible storm, though it was meant to divide and it was meant to conquer, it brought great humanity.”