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Saturday, July 5, 2008
TIPP CITY, Ohio It is not the fact that Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church sits in the middle of a Midwestern cornfield that makes it notable. Nor even that its pastor preaches in jeans and sandals to a working-class congregation sipping coffee in shorts and T-shirts.
More to the point: Of the hundreds of American churches, ministries and local faith-based organizations that for almost three years have poured themselves out on behalf of wounded New Orleans, few have matched the sustained commitment of this megachurch 15 miles north of Dayton.
Over 2 1/2 years, Ginghamsburg has sent 41 teams of volunteers to help rebuild the parts of New Orleans that were damaged in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.
They are still coming. Five teams have gone so far this year; six more are booked.
"We'll keep coming until people tell us to stop," said Craig Maxwell, Ginghamsburg's director of global missions. "And we'll keep promoting it, to make sure people know the need is still there."
The Ohio volunteers come out of a faith community so ferociously committed to aiding the poor, whether in Dayton or Darfur, that its pastor, the Rev. Mike Slaughter, 56, regularly admonishes his congregation, "You get no points for coming to church on Sunday."
Instead, the life of Ginghamsburg is mission work, sending church members as far away as Thailand and Ghana "to be the hands and feet of Jesus," one of a store of "Slaughterisms" his congregants quote during breaks from hanging drywall in New Orleans neighborhoods.
"That's our DNA," Slaughter said in an interview. "You love God by serving people. The poor have a special priority with God. . . . If it's not good news for the poor, it's not the gospel."
Like other volunteers, Ginghamsburg workers often talk of being shaken by the scope of the disaster and the depth of need even now. They are exhilarated by the rush of instant gratitude from people they help.
"People at work think we're nuts," said Gale Pence, 57, who works for a building supplier in Dayton. "Let's see, you're taking a week's vacation, paying money to sleep on an air mattress and working for free?''
"And we say, 'Yep.' "
About 4,400 attend services at Ginghamsburg each week, although the number of enrolled members -- people who have completed a three-month orientation class and promised to tithe 10 percent of their income -- is closer to 1,200.
