Relief Teams Bring “Help, Hope, and Healing” to Flooded Central Vermont Homeowners for a Second Consecutive Summer
Exactly a year after rain-soaked rivers escaped their banks, filling many basements with mud and many hearts with despair, torrential rain returned July 10 to Barre and other Vermont communities, destroying or causing major damage to more than one hundred homes, according to a preliminary report.
The deluge also brought a measure of hope when Baptist disaster relief volunteers reported for duty in the Green Mountains. Working closely with Barre officials and in some places alongside Salvation Army crews, the Baptist ministry teams came from Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia—and other regions of Vermont. Some crews are still on duty in St. Johnsbury, Lyndonville, and other flooded communities.
The volunteers extracted many cubic feet of mud and debris—one bucket at a time—from forty-nine homes. Many of the homes they scrubbed were flooded in 2023.
They power-washed walls, applied Shockwave to mitigate black mold, served 5,928 meals from the centrally located Enough Ministries, opened showers and a laundry room on wheels, prayed with those who welcomed a chaplain’s listening ear, and gave homeowners a Bible.
By serving Vermonters faithfully, the volunteers were following the words of Paul to Titus (3:14, NIV) to “. . . devote themselves to doing what is good, in order to provide for urgent needs, and not live unproductive lives.” The crews offered “help, hope, and healing,” which is the national motto for the Southern Baptist’s Disaster Relief.
Ed Lucas, the facilities manager for thirteen years at Northeastern Baptist College, Bennington, VT, leads the Baptist Churches of New England’s disaster relief ministry (hereafter DR). A native of Dubois, PA, and a biblical studies graduate of the college, he organized the visiting relief teams, kept the DR vehicles and equipment ready for service on short notice, and, with military-like precision, coordinated multiple details for efficient deployment of resources when called upon by Barre and regional officials. He also arranges DR training.
He most enjoys “serving the Lord, taking care of those [facing a crisis], and bringing forth the Word. In our disaster relief, [spiritual care] is our biggest concern. It isn't [only] about the disaster or the people’s property—it’s about their spiritual welfare,” said Lucas, a former firefighter. He added, “I’ve always been into community service and helping others in time of need.”
The first action the DR teams took after checking in with Lucas on location in Barre was to dispatch a chaplain and an assessor to a devastated home. While the assessor surveyed the flooded property and noted details of the damage, a chaplain sat with the homeowner, listened empathetically, and offered spiritual comfort if that care was welcomed. Most homeowners in crisis expressed their appreciation for the two-person team and some prayed with the chaplain.
A larger crew then arrived at the flooded home with shovels and buckets. While the chaplain stayed with the homeowner, the crew went to work to restore the home to its previous condition—as much as is possible—or at least to make it livable.
If the homeowner is amenable to the spiritual care offered—and a few are not—“We’ll get in a circle and pray. Then we go do our work. After the job’s complete,” Lucas explained, “we present a Bible to the homeowner that is signed by all the team members, and then we pray with them again. And then we leave.”
The New England DR team sent a twenty-foot “quick response” vehicle and a “support unit” to the Barre Municipal Auditorium before moving food distribution to Enough Ministries, where they have been providing meals to displaced neighbors from their “Garden of Feeden” soup kitchen.
Enough Ministries is an urban-focused congregation that serves homeless and addicted people in downtown Barre. In 2014, Dan and Cathy Molind started the contemporary, Bible-believing, evangelical church, which “seeks to impact our community for Christ.”
Molind also started The HOPE Coalition, a collaboration of the faith and business communities, and other local nonprofit organizations, with the mission of helping rebuild and repair residential homes in central Vermont after the summer floods of July 2023. Their housing ministry continues after the 2024 flooding.
A twenty-foot aluminum trailer with four shower stalls, two washing machines, and two clothes dryers was parked at Faith Community Church, Barre. The trailer carries a banner that Lucas said is an inspiring comfort to all who read it. “Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me, for my soul takes refuge in You; and in the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge until destruction passes by” (Psalm 57:1, NASB).
Ohio Baptists Offered “Help, Hope, and Healing”
John Heading, Disaster Relief Director for the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio, and his team drove 750 miles and served for a week beginning July 28. They helped distressed residents of Cabot, Plainfield, Orange, and Barre. They served without a fee and went “wherever the work was, wherever folks had flooding and needed help,”
The Ohio team mostly “worked with individuals who didn’t have the strength or the ability to clean up. Most of the houses we worked in were built in the early 1800s. Most of them had considerable amounts of water in their basements,” he reported. “A couple of the homes had upwards of six to twelve inches of mud and dirt that had to be dug out, and lifted out by five-gallon buckets.”
Brian Naess, associate pastor of Violet Baptist Church, Pickerington, OH, was helpful in orienting his Ohio colleagues to Vermont because he grew up in Barre. Heading, who was a senior pastor in Beavercreek, OH, Naess, and others had an unusual experience when they arrived to assess flooding at a dilapidated and fire-damaged structure in Randolph.
The house “was pretty horrible. It’s probably the worst I’d ever seen, and I’ve been connected [with DR ministry] for a very long time. As we continued, it just didn’t seem right. People started coming out of different places. There were people sitting in a parked car out next to the house [and] just a lot of things felt ‘off.’”
As they approached the basement, which had raw sewage, he observed “things that seemed to be drug related. All I could do was write up what we saw, and then we left.” A police officer in Heading’s team advised the Ohio DR crew to immediately depart the “crack house.”
By contrast, the Ohio DR leader also reported that “We had a chance to meet some really cool people” including a woman named Vicky in South Barre. When the crew visited the house of her recently deceased brother, they found whirlpools of water that, Heading noted, “had drilled a hole down the outside of the house and then dumped water and mud under the foundation and into the basement.”
When she woke up that morning, Vicky (whose last name was not given) told Heading, “I felt bad because nobody’s willing to help me. Then you called!” The team removed the dirt and filled the hole with concrete. Meanwhile, Vicky reportedly was so excited that she played her favorite gospel music “blazing real loud” and she was dancing in the front yard.
Barre Church Will Celebrate Twenty Years
Between eight and twenty Baptist relief volunteers a week slept on folding cots or in sleeping bags at Faith Community Church, Barre. “We basically gave them free reign of the church to set it up as they needed,” said Pastor Trey Cates. For four or five weeks, the teams lived there and cleaned the building before Sunday worship services. Other midweek activities were rescheduled, moved to homes, or postponed for the summer.
Once again, church members were “serving the servants” who spent their days assisting flood victims and their nights sharing stories of the Vermonters they helped and praying for them.
As a result of the DR teams’ ministry, Cates stated that he has “already been able to follow-up with a view to establishing relationships with people who either prayed to receive Christ, are looking for a church, or would like to speak to a pastor.”
BCNE Executive Director Terry Dorsett, his late wife Kay, and two other families started Faith Community Church twenty years ago. The congregation will celebrate their founding September 13-15 with “a community birthday party”—a giant block party—to which everyone in the Barre area is being invited. Dorsett will be the special guest preacher on Sunday.
“Twenty years is a milestone for the life of a church and an opportunity to cast a vision for the next twenty years. We’re going to be renewing our membership covenant with each other, basically reminding ourselves of our purpose and focus as a church, which is to glorify Jesus Christ and to celebrate what he’s done for us, and to grow in our faith, and to share his love and the gospel with others,” said Cates.
A Vermont Atheist Comments
After South Carolinians “fogged our freshly mucked basement against mold,” a self-described atheist from Plainfield wrote on Facebook that he approached the Baptists to thank them and “they asked if I would say a prayer with them and receive this Bible as an additional gift. He showed me the title page with their signatures and good wishes.”
“I said yes to it all. How could I not? They had just provided a key part of getting this house back up on its feet,” the Vermonter added. They held hands in a circle and prayed together. “They never asked me about my beliefs. They never asked for a donation,” he wrote above a photo of the gift Bible.
“As they got in the Suburban to leave, I told them that I was a big fan of Matthew 7, verse 12, which is about all I know of the Bible: “So in everything do to others what you would have them do to you.” They nodded and smiled with agreement.
Despite his reservations about God and evangelicals, he said, “maybe THIS is proof of God,” “Unconditional love or service or something—I don’t have a name for [it]. Thank God this godless heathen kept his mouth shut for once.”
A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor