Church Serves the Servants After Central Vermont’s Historic Flooding

Disaster relief volunteers gather for a meal at Faith Community Church in Barre, VT

Everywhere people looked in usually tranquil Central Vermont they saw compromised homes, devastated businesses, washed-out roads—and shattered lives. Portions of Montpelier and Barre were nearly washed away in July by what the governor called “historic and catastrophic” flooding.

Disaster relief teams from the Southern Baptist Convention, Samaritan’s Purse, and other private groups from across the region and the country soon arrived with their tools, expertise, and willingness to help those impacted by the more than eight inches of rain that fell in just a few hours.

Many of the disaster relief volunteers have departed. The media attention and the disaster relief teams have moved on to the heartbreaking death and devastation caused by wildfires in Maui County, Hawai’i. While the relief phase in Vermont is ending, rebuilding efforts are just beginning.

Trey Cates, pastor of Faith Community Church in Barre, said the rebuilding phase following Vermont’s worst flooding in a century will take “months if not years for the full recovery because of the cost involved—and winter’s coming. There’s only so much you can do between now and when the first snow hits.”

The flooding “has been devastating for many families. The hardest part of it,” he commented, “is that many of the homes destroyed were inhabited by low-income families. They got the worst of the damage; they are worse off than before. We already had a housing crisis in our area, and now we have a worse housing shortage. It went from bad to worse.”

Vermont home damaged by the recent flood

The disaster relief volunteers included 266 volunteers in a four-week period. Samaritan’s Purse volunteers camped inside “almost every square inch” of Faith Community Church’s building and the Southern Baptist teams were housed at Faith Community Church’s missions houses and at the Barre Evangelical Free Church. They gave a combined service time of over 16,000 hours of work to relief efforts in Central Vermont.

Volunteers shoveled mud, drained standing water, swept debris from many homes, set up portable showers, served meals to hungry people—and shared the gospel. “Our local church members tagged in with them in supporting roles,” Cates noted.

More than forty Faith Community Church members served meals and snacks for the relief teams, transformed the church building into a makeshift dormitory, cleaned the building each day, helped navigate the volunteers around backroads, and otherwise made them feel at home. They also answered phone calls to process disaster relief requests. Some church members rolled up their sleeves and “got down in the dirt and did the work” with the teams.

“Our church members have been trying to serve the servants, and they have done an amazing job!” the pastor reflected. “It’s going to take a lot to get our community back in shape. We [BCNE and other churches] will do whatever we can do to get houses back to being livable.”

Almost immediately after the rain fell, Cates was receiving messages from individuals and churches from the South who wanted to support the effort financially. Because of their generosity, Faith Community Church was able to fund repairs to the furnace at an emergency shelter for women and children. The church donated a portion of gifts received to Connecting Hope, a Christian not-for-profit ministry that provides for benevolence needs in Central Vermont. Faith Community Church is continuing to raise funds for redevelopment and is networking with many people across the United States.

Miraculously, Faith Community Church, which is located near the river that runs through Barre, did not experience any flooding. When asked about how worship services were interrupted, Cates reported that they did not miss even one Sunday gathering. “We didn’t miss a beat!” The congregation demonstrated flexibility in building usage for the four weeks Samaritan’s Purse used it for operations.

The Baptist Churches of New England is coordinating church mission teams to serve with the relief efforts in Vermont. There are projects available every Saturday in September and October. Learn more at bcne.net/serve-vermont.

Volunteers and church members shared their faith with those they aided. “We obviously did not want the disaster to happen—nobody would,” Cates explained, “but if God used this [disaster] to draw people to him, we want to be faithful in response.” He reported more than sixty people committed their lives to Jesus Christ last month. “When people come to know the Lord, that’s what motivates us. It’s kingdom work!” When interviewed for this story, Cates was busy following up with people who made professions of faith during the relief phase.

Faith Community Church was started in 2004 by Terry W. Dorsett, his wife Kay, and two other families, when he led the Green Mountain Baptist Association. When Dorsett, who is now Executive Director of the Baptist Churches of New England, was the pastor in Barre, the church counted about 120 worshippers each week. Even before Covid-19, the church was experiencing a steady decline. During the pandemic, attendance shrank to fewer than fifty people on a typical Sunday. Cates, who has been the pastor since Spring 2023, said the congregation is in a “rebuilding phase.”

“Vermonters are resilient. Their determination, mixed with assistance from our SBC Disaster Relief volunteers, will help families recover from this once-a-century flood. I am proud of our BCNE churches in Vermont for leading the way,” Dorsett said.

Trey Cates, who was raised in Trussville, Alabama, has a long history with Faith Community Church. He, his wife, Robyn, and their children, Rachel and Joshua, moved to Vermont for the first time in 2006. While preparing to plant a church in a nearby Central Vermont community, he served as Faith Community Church’s associate pastor. He learned Dorsett’s church planting methods of working with an existing congregation, being mentored by an experienced pastor, and then acclimating to a new location “before parachuting in.”

After nearly two years with Dorsett, Cates started New Life Community Church in nearby Northfield, a small town that is home to Norwich University, which is the oldest private and senior military college in the United States. Northfield presented Cates with an opportunity to train “disciple-makers” for Vermont and for the world, where the university graduates serve.

Trey Cates and his son, Josh

After nine years in Northfield, the family heard God’s call to Huntsville, Alabama, where for seven years they developed and led a Christian camp and retreat center and were part of a revitalization team that resulted in a new church plant. During the family’s time in Alabama, Cates was able to keep his position as director of the technology department of the Central Vermont Supervisory [School] Union.

The school technology job provided him with several opportunities to visit Vermont each year, so while there he spoke at partner churches and had “a lot of relational currency banked up” when they heard God’s call in 2021 to return to the Green Mountains. In addition to being Faith Community Church’s pastor, he is planting Williamstown Community Church—with sponsorship and encouragement from Faith Community Church. He leads small-group prayer meetings in Williamstown as a prelude to the new congregation, and he wants to start weekly gatherings on Sunday nights when a meeting place at a school or a restaurant can be located.

Cates and his family live at and manage The Calef House and Retreat Center, which was established in 2005 by Dorsett in the village of Washington as a ministry of Washington Baptist Church. When asked for insight about how he can lead an established church, plant a new church, manage a retreat center, and work full-time as a technology director—in three different towns—he laughs and replies, “I just don’t know how to say ‘No.’”

Why would someone raised in Alabama, where summers are among the hottest in the United States, want to return for a second time to a life in Vermont, where winters routinely see temperatures fall below zero? “The thing we love about Vermonters is that they are real,” Cates commented. “You do not have to wonder what they think about you.” He also enjoys a sense of “community” found in northern New England that “you do not get other places. We love the community, the people, and the pace of life. It’s where God has called us and where our hearts are.”

A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor.