In 1983, a 6.5 magnitude earthquake rocked Coalinga, marking the beginning of California Southern Baptist Disaster Relief efforts.

Since then, California Southern Baptist Convention’s Disaster Relief ministries have responded to nearly 100 disasters, including tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, mudslides, and storms of fire, wind and ice. Civil emergencies such as the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and the 2001 terrorist attack in New York City that leveled the World Trade Center also drew Disaster Relief teams from the Golden State. 

Cooperating with Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and other humanitarian entities, California Southern Baptists have helped meet the physical and spiritual needs of disaster victims through a myriad of ministries: mass feeding, mud-outs, fire cleanup, debris removal, fallen tree removal through chain saw crews, chaplaincy, communications, water purification, shower trailers and other emergency services.

During recent wildfires in California, and also Hurricane Ike, California Southern Baptists’ Disaster Relief teams prepared more than 700,000 meals and cleaned debris from more than 300 home-sites.

“It wasn’t always this way,” said Don Hargis, CSBC’s Baptist men’s ministries specialist who oversees Disaster Relief efforts. “It’s nothing less than phenomenal the way God has blessed the growth and expansion of California’s ministries.”

Hargis said that, during the 18 years he’s overseen these efforts, the number of volunteers has grown from about 100 to more than 3,000. And ministries that once included only feeding and cleanup have grown to chaplaincy and communications. “Even to the sifting of ashes,” he said, “we have people who are specialized in so many ways.”

The ministry has spread from California across the United States, and over the world’s oceans, too: from Hawaii, to Haiti in the Caribbean region, to Indonesia, and to American Samoa in the Pacific Rim, and to Chile. 

“It’s one of the greatest things a Christian can achieve – reaching their own Jerusalem and then outward to the rest of the world as Acts 1:8 describes,” Hargis said. “Many of our volunteers have become true Acts 1:8 Christians.” 

The local, then global expansion of such ministry reflects this year’s California Mission Offering theme: “Reaching the World in California: The Great Commission Begins Here.” 

While statistics track the growth and breadth and depth of CSBC Disaster Relief ministries, the most important statistic of all entails the thousands who have come to faith in Christ because Southern Baptists take seriously Jesus’ Great Commission, and the biblical admonitions to help others. Such compassionate disaster assistance has helped open hearts and minds to the Gospel of Jesus Christ all around the world. 

As the ministry has spread, so has the Good News of Christ. The gospel is scattered as precious seed and is immediately watered by meeting human needs in the midst of catastrophe. Sometimes the spiritual harvest is almost immediate, among the most recent of which are the now former devotees of Voodoo in post-earthquake Haiti.

California Southern Baptists have been faithful to pray, and to volunteer for Disaster Relief projects. But they’ve also been faithful to give, Hargis said. “That’s the only way we can be so effective in these ministries is through the generosity of California Southern Baptists and the gifts that flow through their churches.”