Billy Graham's Rapid Response Team

[Jewish volunteers helping build houses after Katrina]

[Southern Baptist Volunteers serving food after Katrina]

People do need comforting in times of crisis. They need hope.

Let's say your house is blown away in a tornado. You have two choices from which to receive comfort and hope: a government program that would provide temporary quarters and money to rebuild; or the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team. Which would you choose?


The Billy Graham Association has developed the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team. It is a "crisis chaplaincy" program. According to an article at christiannewswire, 2008 has "brought more tragedy -- and thus more deployments -- than any prior year in the ministry's history."

The Rapid Response Team "has offered hope and comfort in 30 different locations ... During the course of 2008, 433 chaplains have prayed with more than 17,000 people."

So far as I can tell, the Rapid Response Team offers nothing more than prayer and Christian-type counseling.''

Jack Munday, who directs the team, said "We've seen so much pain and heart-rending agony this year, but we've also seen hope and resilience in the eyes of people who are in the darkest days of their lives. We've witnessed the triumphs of neighbors joining together in love to confront their worst fears, and we've prayed with people who have wept in thanksgiving for the blessings they have when everything else has been taken from them."

It was because "the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team [has become] a welcome and relied upon presence during times of tragedy," said Munday who was invited to address the Department of Homeland Security's Faith Based and Community Initiatives Emergency Preparedness Workshop in Dallas.


Munday thinks the Team is a wonderful thing, naturally. "Pain is everywhere," he said, "and it's important for Christians to be prepared to respond with the love and hope of Christ."

There's a clue as to what this is really all about. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is about evangelism. It is about getting people to, as they say, made a decision for Christ. It's about altar calls, and rallies and broken people crying out, "Yes, I want to accept Jesus as my personal savior."

What the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team provides is a presence in time of trouble, and that can be a good thing, but ultimately it boils down to conversion.


I know a fine Christian woman in Wisconsin, who in the aftermath of Katrina, left her cozy home to travel to the Gulf Coast where she worked for a month preparing meals, sorting and giving away clothing to people who had lost everything. During that month, she slept on the floor of a store and did without most of her usual conveniences. So far as I know, she didn't wear her faith on her sleeve and didn't try to convert a soul.

There were many thousands of other volunteers who did exactly the same thing; some faith-based, others not.

That, it seems to me is more to the point.