Southern Baptists already have 65,000 trained volunteers; the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) disaster response is so massive it financially trails only the Red Cross and the Salvation Army—and has more trained disaster relief volunteers than either one. In September, President Trump acknowledged each of “the big three” for their Harvey response.

The Southern Baptist North American Mission Board (NAMB) almost missed them. And it would’ve been a big miss.

Mike McDaniel is an electrician and handyman who specializes in restoring power after natural disasters. He’s seen the wreckage of nine hurricanes, including Hurricanes Andrew (“the worst”) and Katrina.

And for years, the two of them have wanted to volunteer to help after disasters.

The McDaniels attend a Baptist church, and Linda would go online to look up the North American Mission Board’s disaster relief efforts.

“They said you had to be trained,” she said. But training was offered only a few times a year, and not always locally. So the couple always passed.

But this summer, NAMB waived the training requirement, experimenting to see if it would lift the falling Southern Baptist volunteer base.

“It seemed to be a big success,” Mike said. “There were twice as many blue shirts (worn by untrained volunteers) as yellow shirts (worn by trained volunteers).”

Mike and Linda pulled into Vidor, Texas, several weeks ago, surprised to see the lingering mess. “I expected to find more done,” Mike said. “I didn’t expect to see the devastation I saw.”

The couple pitched right in, tearing out flooring, assessing damage, making repairs, and getting one family connected with a shower, laundry, and a hot meal.

“What broke me was that in most of the cases when I would hand people a Bible, they would start crying,” Linda said. “They had lost their Bibles—some of them it was their grandma’s Bible, or their childhood Bible. There were no stores anywhere around to buy one.”

The two loved the work. In fact, at the end of the week, Mikesent Linda home with their church team and stayed on. (Though he declined NAMB’s request that he stay through December.)

As soon as they got home, Mike and Linda looked up the training courses again. “We’re both going to do the training,” Linda said. So next time, they won’t have to wait: “When there’s a disaster, [NAMB] will call you up.

Southern Baptists already have 65,000 trained volunteers; the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) disaster response is so massive it financially trails only the Red Cross and the Salvation Army—and has more trained disaster relief volunteers than either one. In September, President Trump acknowledged each of “the big three” for their Harvey response.

Receiving presidential praise was a big moment in a big year for SBC disaster relief, which also celebrated its 50th anniversary and spent 500,000 hours tackling one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

But changing the volunteer structure will easily have the biggest long-range effect.

“We jumped in the deep end not knowing if we could swim,” said David Melber, who heads up the SBC’s disaster-relief efforts. The new system has some bugs in it, and has caused some anxiety, he said.

But responses have been positive enough for him to say that “without question, it’s going to work.”

NAMB president Kevin Ezell is confident, too: “This is like getting in on the first floor of Mary Kay. It’s time to buy stock.”

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