For Galveston church, disaster prompts showers of blessings

image_pdfimage_print

GALVESTON—Pastor Ray Meador never would have wanted a hurricane to strike his church and community. One year after Hurricane Ike, he insists his church is better for it.

Before the hurricane struck Galveston Island, Meador characterized First Baptist Church in Galveston’s outreach to the community as “minimal.” The church had a ministry to students at the University of Texas Medical Branch, assisted in ministering to the homeless through Mission Galveston and conducted picnics in local parks with praise music.

GraceMart volunteers placed plywood atop the pews in the sanctuary at First Baptist Church so clothing and other items spread across them would be available for people whose homes were damaged by Hurricane Ike. (PHOTOS/George Henson)

“But that seems like 100 years ago. Since the hurricane, we haven’t done anything like that,” he said.

The hurricane took its toll on the church. The primary building the church uses now was two feet deep in water after the storm. One foot of water filled the sanctuary.

And the equipment room—where all the church’s electrical controls, air conditioning and boilers for heater were located—was five feet below the slab, so it was six feet deep in water. Because of the damage to the equipment in that room, the sanctuary still cannot be used for services, and Meador can’t put a timetable to when it will be available for worship. But it has been used for ministry.

“After the hurricane, people just started sending us things—clothes and a lot of other things,” he said. “For a while we thought, ‘What are we going to do with it all?’”

The church decided to give the supplies to the hurting people of the island. Volunteers placed plywood across the top of the pews, and clothing and other items were spread across them. People took what they needed, and the church’s GraceMart ministry was born.

Three churches and a community ministry occupy the flood-damaged facility of First Baptist Church in Galveston.

Volunteers—including workers from Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas and First Baptist Church in Nacogdoches—helped with the new GraceMart ministry.


Sign up for our weekly edition and get all our headlines in your inbox on Thursdays


In November, a church in Katy held a toy drive that collected more than 2,000 new toys and brought them to First Baptist Church in Galveston. Volunteers prayed with families who came in need of toys for their children, and then helped them shop for just the right things.

Others needed diapers and clothing, while still more who had started moving back into their homes needed dishes, pots and pans, and furniture—all of which had been donated by churches throughout the state.

The church met another pressing community need through Mercy Clinic.

“When you have something like this, all the doctors are displaced. UTMB was totally out of business for a while. People who came back to the island needed refills on their prescriptions and things like that,” Meador explained.

Doctors from the church helped run the church clinic during that critical time with help from medical students, as well as physicians from other Texas communities.

After people started returning to the island to work on their homes, one of their primary needs was a place to shower and wash clothes. Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas brought a shower and laundry trailer to the church parking lot and left it more than five months. During that time, the unit was able to provide 10,000 showers.

Meador recalled a family who had been living in their car, and the children hadn’t bathed in two weeks. Most of all he recalled the volunteers —professionals, teenagers, medical students, retirees and countless others folding clothes and doing whatever was needed to help.

While the church’s sanctuary is not usable, from the outside it looks fine. Many homes and businesses in Galveston are in similar circumstances.

Students from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston join physicians from First Baptist Church in Galveston in staffing Mercy Clinic.

“The rest of the community is coming back like we are,” Meador said. “Once the flood goes away and you wash away the high water mark, you don’t know if it’s been cleaned up, gutted, fixed up and renovated or if its just been walked away from. You can still find water in some places.

“The salt water is just insidious. After we replace everything the salt water touched, we find something else. About the time you think, ‘OK, we’ve taken this step,’ you find you have to back up and rethink.”

Meador’s wife, Sherry, said the church is looking forward to returning to the sanctuary and getting out of the fellowship hall. She particularly recalled the splendor of the building during the Christmas season.

“They would like to be back in it. It’s very beautiful and they miss the beauty of it. I miss the beauty of it,” she said.

First Baptist in Galveston had a great deal of wind insurance, but since the damage was due to flooding, the insurance only covered $239,000. Just the clean-up cost $314,000, so there is no money for replacing anything.

“But that’s where the blessing comes in,” Meador said.

Wilshire, Park Cities, First Baptist in Nacogdoches, First Baptist in Graham, Southside Baptist Church in Tyler, First Baptist Church in Bryan and other churches throughout the state have blessed the Galveston congregation over and over again, Meador said. They not only have given money, time, manpower and materials, but also have bathed everything in prayer.

He recalled a deacon from First Baptist in Nacogdoches asking about the air conditioning. He told him the estimate was for $91,000 and the church was still paying for the one damaged in the flood because it was only two years old. The technician felt he might be able to get the old one running for $25,000 to $30,000 but it would always be damaged goods.

“After thinking for a minute, he said, ‘Tell them they’re good for $30,000.’ And the next thing you know, somebody knocks on the door and says, ‘We’ve come to fix the sheetrock,’” Meador said.

The blessings First Baptist Galvest received have changed the way the congregation sees ministry, he said.

“I told every pastor I talked to, ‘Whatever you give, we’re going to be a different church, and we’re going to give it back in ministry,’” he said.

For the year since Hurricane Ike struck, Galveston Chinese Church has also has met at the First Baptist facility. Island Community Baptist Church also meets at First Baptist.

Mission Galveston uses the church to minister to the homeless every Monday.

A home school co-op meets at the church every Friday. Christian Women’s Job Corps will soon meet there.

The hurricane and the ministry of so many churches has changed the way First Baptist Church in Galveston views its community, Meador said.

“We see the need we never saw before,” he said.

Members of First Baptist “have learned how to receive and how to give without worrying if the money has been spent right,” Meador added. “They also learned that missions is more than putting a check in the envelope.”

For years, First Baptist was known as the church across from the library.

“After the hurricane, we were the church with the showers,” Meador said.

And, he would add, showers of blessings.


We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.

Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.

More from Baptist Standard