Jere Patterson came upon a family sitting on the slab that marked where its house stood before the devastating tornado hit April 27. He noticed that the only thing standing upright on the slab was a water heater. Engaging the family in conversation, Patterson discovered that the 14-year-old son had been at home alone when the tornado approached. The boy wrapped himself around the water heater and held on as his home was blown away around him and miraculously survived.
As chaplain coordinator for the district surrounding Morgan County, Patterson, retired director of missions for Morgan Baptist Association, was able to point the family in the direction of the counseling the boy would certainly need as a result of the trauma he had lived through.
Patterson’s district has 75 trained chaplains, many of whom were called into service to help survivors deal with trauma of the immediate aftermath of the April 27 tornadoes and then to help them deal with grief beginning a few weeks later as the shock wore off and reality began to set in.
Terri Norwood is a professional counselor at Riverside Counseling and Consulting in Decatur who had recently trained as a chaplain. She was deployed, along with her husband, Charles, who is trained for the chain saw team, to Rainsville the weekend after the tornadoes hit.
“This was my first time to be deployed as a disaster relief chaplain,” Norwood said. “I was attached to a food unit. People would come into the parking lot for food and snacks. I was the last person in line. By the time they got to me, many people were in tears. It was a wonderful opportunity to be the last contact, to hold their hand and say something encouraging.”
The office of chaplain is described as “a ministry of presence” or “a ministry of just being there and listening.” Patterson pointed out that chaplains are there to provide emotional first aid. They are trained in how to listen and what to listen for.
Since the April tornadoes, there has been an upsurge in Alabama Baptists interested in chaplain training. Patterson, who conducts training sessions, recently held a session at East Highland Baptist Church, Hartselle, in Morgan Association.
“We had 33 chaplains at the training. Five of those were already [credentialed] and were there for review, so we had 28 new chaplains trained,” he explained. “They have to be [credentialed] in critical incident stress management or operational stress first aid before we can allow them out into the field.”
The initial training can be completed in a weekend, which consists of Friday night and most of the day on Saturday, and includes background checks. The Southern Baptist disaster relief site outlines the requirements for being endorsed by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) Chaplains Commission as a chaplain. The candidate must be “a mature adult Christian who is a member of an Alabama Baptist church in good standing with their local association.”
There is no ordination requirement. Patterson pointed out, “We want lay people, not necessarily the ordained, although we have a number of ordained people. You just need to have a love for people.”
Although most chaplains are male, there is a growing need for females in the program, Patterson noted.
“Every time we send out a disaster relief team, like a chainsaw team or a feeding team, we want chaplains to go with them,” he said. “We want the ladies to go [as chaplains], because a lot of the time it’s ladies who are coming through the feeding line and ladies who are at home when chaplains are walking around in the communities talking to the people.”
About 10 of the 28 who participated in Patterson’s July training were female.
Norwood, a member at East Highland Baptist, had concerns initially. “I wasn’t sure I could do it. I’m not a Bible scholar, even though I grew up in church. Would I be able to pull out the right scriptures and say the right prayer?”
On her first assignment, Norwood was reassured.
“You know what? It’s not about that,” she said. “I’ve never not known what to say.
“The training has a lot of basic counseling skills in it,” she said. “The biggest thing is to be able to listen and identify when someone needs professional help.”
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