During the night of Aug. 19-20, 1969, the remnants of Hurricane Camille inundated parts of southwest Virginia's Nelson County, producing devastating floods and mudslides. For Virginia Baptists' disaster relief ministry — and for key leaders of the ministry such as John Gordon — it was a seminal event.
John Gordon, a retired pastor, is representative of a generation of volunteers who have been instrumental in organizing and developing Virginia Baptists’ disaster relief ministry. He has served on numerous deployments in various states and several foreign countries, responding to disasters ranging from hurricanes and floods to ice storms and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But for Gordon it all began that night in 1969, as at least 28 inches of rain fell on mountainous Nelson County.
The next day, Gordon, who was pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Lovingston and also a major in the Transportation Corp of the U.S. Army Reserves, joined the search effort for those who were missing. Until the recovery operation ended several weeks later, he spent each day working with search teams combing the river banks and debris piles to locate and recover the bodies of those who had perished, more than 100 in Nelson County alone.
In their book about Camille’s impact on Nelson County, titled Torn Land, Paige Shoaf Simpson and Jerry H. Simpson Jr., describe Gordon as a man “who never flagged in the performance of what was one of the most gruesome and demanding jobs.” They note that he was regarded with awe and respect for the demeanor with which he accepted the most difficult recovery assignments and for the compassion and care that he demonstrated in performing them.
Because Gordon’s church had water and electricity, it became one of the primary feeding sites during this search and recovery operation. For about three weeks, church members prepared meals daily for hundreds of volunteers and rescue workers. In the months after the floods, Calvary also served as a staging ground for Virginia Baptist relief ministries. Repair supplies, hay bales and other relief materials were collected, and each Saturday teams of volunteers from Virginia Baptist churches across the state would gather there to be sent out to aid those who had been affected by the disaster.
Pivotal event
When Camille struck, Virginia Baptists had no organized disaster relief ministry. Gordon identifies this tragedy as “part of the agony that motivated us as people and as Virginia Baptists to be helpful to people when these types of events occur.” According to Lloyd Jackson, retired director of Baptist Men for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, Gordon's experiences in the aftermath of Camille “proved invaluable in the planning and development of organized disaster relief efforts eventually established by Virginia Baptists and coordinated through the department of Baptist Men.”
Inspiration also came from the example of the Mennonite Disaster Service. Mennonite volunteers from Virginia arrived in Nelson County the day after the storm and were soon joined by others from Ohio and Pennsylvania and as far north as Canada. The Mennonites were still there a year later, assisting with rebuilding efforts.
“Watching them work and seeing what they were doing as denominational people sort of motivated us as Virginia Baptists to develop some organization and to do some things that we saw they were doing well and that would be helpful in the event that something like this ever happened again,” said Gordon. “We started thinking how we could — through preparation and planning and teaching and organization — how we could respond better.”
After Camille, Virginia Baptists began developing their own organized disaster relief program. By the time Hurricane Hugo made landfall in 1989, a large team of volunteers was trained and ready to respond quickly to a disaster in another state. The next year Virginia Baptist Disaster Relief completed its first response unit. Funds from the previous two years' State Missions Offering had enabled the purchase of a trailer that was converted into a mobile feeding unit, which entered service in early 1990. Gordon was a team member during the feeding unit's first out-of-state deployment to Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and he soon moved into leadership positions.
Over the years, Gordon has held a number of leadership roles within the disaster relief organizational structure. He has been the feeding unit team leader (“blue hat”) for numerous deployments, including four to New York and New Jersey in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks. He has also worked as a site coordinator (“white hat”) both at the state level and at the national level through the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board, coordinating interaction between NAMB and the Red Cross during various disaster responses, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And he has trained local disaster relief volunteers not only in Virginia, but also in Jamaica and Costa Rica.
Recognition
Gordon's commitment to disaster relief has not gone unnoticed by his peers. In 2003 Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief and the North American Mission Board awarded Gordon their Distinguished Service Award, which is presented annually to five individuals for a specific performance during a disaster response that year. Acknowledging that the term “servant leader” may suffer from overuse, Jackson nonetheless says of Gordon, “ ‘servant leader’ is the most appropriate term and describes him quite well. But no term can fully express John's commitment to Jesus Christ, the church, ministry and mission endeavors.”
Reflecting on the developments since Camille, Gordon appreciates how Virginia Baptists have responded to the call to give time and money to disaster relief, because he knows that helping victims of disaster in the name of Christ presents a significant mission opportunity. “We’ve tried in all our associations to develop an awareness and a willingness, and the response has really been good.” For him personally, the most rewarding aspect of his many years of involvement in disaster relief has been “seeing the willingness of people to respond and to go when they had many other things personally that they could have been doing and maybe should have been doing. Disaster relief has been a very significant part of my life. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to be involved in it.”
Terry Raines, mobile mission and disaster relief coordinator for the VBMB’s glocal missions and evangelism team, is also grateful for Gordon's many years of involvement. “Leaders like John Gordon, Lloyd Jackson and others have laid a solid foundation on which Virginia Baptist Disaster Relief has been built. The leadership of their generation is still active and important, but we need to begin now to involve and develop the next generation of leaders.” Part of this development and training includes an apprenticeship of new leaders to experienced ones.
Gordon’s advice to new disaster relief volunteers is simple: “Be flexible, because every situation brings new and different needs.” This kind of wise counsel and the practical experience accumulated from years of service continue to make Gordon and other longtime leaders an invaluable part of Virginia Baptist Disaster Relief.