By Anna Swindle
Our difficulty is we have folks to volunteer but don’t have much for them to do,” said Rick Barnhart, director of missions for Baldwin Baptist Association. “It’s not like a hurricane or tornado or anything like that. Volunteer teams find themselves scratching their heads, saying, ‘We don’t know what to do.’”
The association has had to start from square one to figure out the best way to reach out to Gulf Coast residents following the recent oil spill.
For Nathan Diehl, who has been doing resort ministry with Baldwin Association since 2007, that first meant reaching out to oil spill workers, but now that the summer is gone, so are the workers.
“We held a special service for the spill workers one Sunday over the summer, and that was a big success, and we thought that would be a more consistent outreach,” Diehl said. “But then they ended up moving to a different part of the beach, and we don’t really see workers at all anymore.”
Reaching out to locals has proven to be a challenge as well. Barnhart said one especially big hurdle has been assessing the needs and deciding how to best invest time, money and resources rather than just having a “knee-jerk” reaction. That desire to really pinpoint needs led to the development of Love in Action on Wheels, a trailer-turned-food bank that traveled to churches for four weeks in September and October. Not only did it deliver much-needed supplies to congregations and communities but it also allowed workers to talk with locals about problems they face.
Now that the trailer has finished making the rounds, “I’m hoping to be able to take the information we gleaned from those families to see what needs are left,” Barnhart said. “One important thing we’ve already found is that the main issue isn’t unemployment — it’s underemployment.”
After all, Gulf Coast establishments have seen an extreme decrease in business in recent months.
“Basically there was no tourism this summer, and that meant so many businesses were hurt,” said Paul Smith, pastor of Romar Beach Baptist Church, Orange Beach. “And it’s not just been condos and restaurants; businesses like dry cleaners and walk-in medical clinics have also taken a hit, and right now, we don’t see an end to it.”
Pews and offering plates have felt the effects of the oil spill, too. Typically tourists make up three-fourths of Romar Beach Baptist’s congregation in the summer.
So Smith is looking for ways to bring people back to the region. He attended the National Quartet Convention in September and began recruiting gospel groups to perform in the Orange Beach area. His goal was to get a handful of groups to agree to come south, but ultimately 100 artists signed on to help the Gulf.
The first concert — featuring Squire Parsons and friends — is set for December at the convention center at The Wharf in Orange Beach, and Smith said the plan is to host about two such concerts a month through spring. In fact, he hopes that soon Orange Beach will become known as “the Gospel-singing Capital of the Gulf.”
Smith plans to encourage those attending the concert to donate a Christmas gift for local children, who might not have presents otherwise. The concert series is supported by the church’s Gulf Coast Disaster Relief Fund, and donations are accepted at Regions bank locations statewide.
“If we look back, every time we’ve experienced a disaster, God has made something good come of it,” Smith said. “I’m excited about how God is going to turn this spill into a wonderful positive.”
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