Dan Holman: Local Churches Are Key in Crisis

Back in 2017, after seeing news coverage on the devastating impact of Hurricane Harvey just three hours from where I lived, I hopped in my truck to search for ways to help. I’d heard through the grapevine that an EFCA church in Houston was helping to “muck and gut” flooded homes around their church, so I joined in for a week and a half. 

I knew the devastation of Hurricane Harvey went well beyond this one neighborhood, and I wondered: were any other churches reaching out to their community?

As I traveled to other areas of Texas, I discovered most churches were overwhelmed, shocked and just trying to survive. Beyond that, I saw mountains of items donated that no one needed, while people were in desperate need for other basic items. I met with a pastor who admitted he was barely functioning and at a total loss for what to do to help the people calling him. He couldn’t see a path forward, much less how to plug in other people to help.  

After serving, I had even more questions. What would happen in Houston when the church “mucking and gutting” needed to get back to normal life? What would happen in the areas where the churches had no idea where to even begin? How could churches reach out in a way that had long-term and eternal impact? 

Driving back, I called someone serving in the EFCA to ask if she knew of any ministries that specialized in major disasters. She told me about EFCA ReachGlobal Crisis Response.  

Next thing I knew, I was sitting down with the Crisis Response directors in Houston. They told me about the unique mission field that follows crisis. Normally, people live their lives closed off to people around them and the gospel. But after a crisis, literal and figurative doors come down, opening an opportunity for holistic gospel outreach—if a church has a vision to engage. 

The key to long-term and eternal impact after crisis is to empower local churches. As I’d seen firsthand, most churches don’t know what to do after a hurricane, flood, tornado or fire hits their community.   

ReachGlobal Crisis Response is set up to help local churches assess the resources available, the gifts and passion of the church body, and the needs of the situation. From this initial assessment, they help churches develop a unique outreach ministry with the goal of sharing the love of Christ with their communities in crises for years to come. 

In that meeting, the directors encouraged me to apply to join Crisis Response. Amazingly, two years before Hurricane Harvey, my wife and I had felt led by the Lord to downsize into an RV with our three kids. We went through the application process and before we knew it, we were serving full-time with Crisis Response in Texas. 

Since that introduction, my family and I have been serving with Crisis Response for seven years. Having a knack for adaptability and thriving in hard situations, I joined the front-end response team and traveled into disaster areas while my family hosted volunteer teams in Houston. From Texas, my family moved to Paradise, California, where we oversaw the Paradise Wildfire Response until Fall 2023.  

Currently, I serve as the domestic response director, overseeing our North American operations. Our home base is still in Paradise, but I have the honor of coming alongside my fellow teammates all across the U.S. to help them get the support they need to serve well with joy and strength in difficult environments. 

One of the misconceptions about Crisis Response is that it’s a “construction ministry.” But our focus is always intentional disciplemaking, church strengthening and church planting. Rebuilding homes is one of the easiest access ministries when you have a lot of volunteers willing to serve, but not every church is led to rebuild homes.  

In Crisis Response we say, "When you have been to one disaster, you have been to one disaster." Every situation is unique, with endless possibilities of how the Lord can work. Not only is every disaster different, but the type of disaster changes the type of response. With a hurricane, volunteers can pour in immediately to gut homes. Fire is completely different. 

Paradise was a slow and difficult response, to say the least. Since fire survivors weren’t allowed to go back to what was left of their homes for up to a year, the main issues we faced were not only displacement, paperwork and immediate needs for goods, but also helping with emotional, relational and spiritual loss. Given that, we carried out the response in three phases.  

Phase 1 was immediate relief, which involved finding survivors a place to live, making sure they had what they needed, and assessing their emotional and spiritual state. Phase 2 involved helping Chico Evangelical Free Church (EFCA) rally a group of 40 volunteers to adopt five to 10 survivors each. Phase 3 involved setting up a community rebuilding effort with Paradise Evangelical Free Church (EFCA) that involved regular volunteer teams coming for two and a half years to help rebuild both the community and the church.  

Five years later, the town is about 25 percent rebuilt, and the church is thriving. Altogether, more than 620 survivors were supported through this outreach ministry. 

The Maui Wildfire Response had some of the same patterns as Paradise but has been very different because of Hawaii’s unique culture, history and geographical location. With the guidance of Matt Dirks, superintendent of the EFCA Hawaii District, we have tried to approach the response with a foreign missions mindset. We set out to connect with partner churches, learn the culture and see how the Lord wanted us to effectively minister on the island. 

We’ve partnered with multiple churches on the island and strategically used our resources to support local outreach. In Kula, we’ve provided trauma care training and support so churches there could start cleaning up and connecting with their community. On Oahu, we are helping churches send inter-island volunteer teams. In Wailuku, we are partnering with a church to provide food to the hubs on the island so survivors can get the food they need. We have witnessed these churches not only giving food, but also praying for people, connecting relationally and spiritually, and doing life with those just trying to hang on after this disaster. 

After one year, the Maui Response is coming to the end of Phase 1 as most of the homes have been cleared from Lahaina and Kula. The local churches are looking at how to continue to reach out as people still struggle with a lack of resources and clear path forward. Our hope is to provide support to the churches on the island as long as necessary and see Jesus glorified while they love their community in this time of need.