Ready.gov and the Red Cross already tell households what to keep and what to plan. A congregation is a different kind of thing. It is a set of relationships that meets every week, in a building with a hall and a kitchen and restrooms and a parking lot, run by volunteers who already know how to organize a meal, a class, a work day and a funeral. In a disruption, that is most of what a neighborhood needs, and it is already there.

Short emergencies are mostly inventory problems. Long emergencies become systems and relationship problems. A church is a relationship system with an address. This page is about getting it ready.

What a church already has

Look at an ordinary congregation and count what is there before anyone buys anything: relationships across generations and across the neighborhood; a building people know how to find; a kitchen that has fed a crowd; volunteers who show up; teachers who can run a room of children; caregivers; tradespeople who can fix, patch and improvise; nurses, medical professionals and people trained in first aid; vehicles, and people willing to drive; a food ministry that already knows who is hungry; members who speak the languages of the neighborhood; and a pastor and elders whose job is to be present when things are hard.

None of that needs to be created. It needs to be named, written down, and given a simple structure so that it works on a bad day without anyone inventing it on the spot.

Before

Preparation is mostly conversation and paper.

  • Decide who leads. Name a preparedness coordinator and a small team, and put them on the leadership’s calendar so the work does not fade after one enthusiastic month.
  • Know your people. A confidential list of members who live alone, who depend on powered equipment or refrigerated medicine, who cannot drive, or who care for someone who needs constant attention, each paired with someone who will call or knock.
  • Know your building. Where the shut-offs are, which rooms have no windows, how many people the hall holds comfortably, what the kitchen can produce without power, whether the restrooms work without it, and what the insurance and the fire code allow.
  • Know your skills. A skills inventory, kept current, so that the nurse, the electrician and the ham radio operator are known before the day they are needed.
  • Build the teams. The templates below, each with a lead and a backup, each with a short written description of what the team does.
  • Stock the basics. What the building would need to be useful for a short time: water, shelf-stable food, light, first aid, sanitation and cleaning supplies, blankets. Ready.gov’s guidance for faith-based organizations and houses of worship covers how to think about supplies and plans; use it for the amounts.
  • Train. Host first aid, CPR and CERT courses in your own hall; the people who attend will be your teams.
  • Write the communication tree. Who calls whom, on paper, with a way that works without phones.
  • Make agreements before anything happens. Introduce the church to the county emergency management office and to your state or local VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster). Ask what they would need from a congregation, whether the building could serve as a warming, cooling or gathering site, and how to register volunteers so that they are used well. These relationships are the difference between a church that is helpful and a church that is in the way.
  • Practice. Walk through a scenario with the team leads from time to time. Keep it short.

During

  • Activate. The coordinator decides, with the pastor, whether to open the building, and tells the team leads through the communication tree.
  • Check in. The vulnerable-person team works its list first, before anything else. Everyone on it gets a call or a knock, and what they need is written down.
  • Open the building, if it is safe. Someone who knows the building checks it first. Light, restrooms, water and a place to sit are the first services; a warm meal is the second.
  • Keep people safe. Simple things: lit entrances, a sign-in sheet so leaders know who is inside, adults with children at all times, a first aid station, no generators or fuel indoors, and 911 for anything beyond first aid.
  • Feed and water. The food team runs the kitchen the way it runs a potluck, with the sanitation team keeping hands, surfaces and waste under control.
  • Care for spirits. Prayer, a listening ear, a quiet room, worship if it is wanted. A crisis is frightening, and the church is one of the few places where saying so is expected.
  • Stay in touch with officials. One person relays what the county and the utilities are saying, in their words, and relays back what the church is seeing.

After

  • Account for everyone. Every member and every neighbor on the list, until each is known to be safe or in someone’s care.
  • Document. What was done, what was spent, who helped, what ran out, what would have helped. Photographs of any damage to the building.
  • Rest. The people who ran the building for days need to stop, and someone has to tell them so.
  • Review. Within a few weeks, the team leads sit down and change the plan.
  • Repair and give thanks. Fix what broke, replace what was used, and gather the congregation to say what happened and what was learned.

Team templates

Ten teams cover most of what a congregation is asked to do. A small church may have one person wearing three hats; a large one may have several people on each. Every team needs a lead, a backup, and a page describing its job.

Communication — keeps the tree current, relays official information, tells members what the church is doing, and keeps the phones and radios working. Usually led by an office administrator or a member with a communications background.

Food and water — plans what the kitchen can do with and without power, keeps a small stock, and runs meals. Usually the hospitality or food-ministry lead.

Medical support — sets up a first aid station, keeps the kit stocked, knows who among the members is medically trained, and calls 911 for anything beyond first aid. Led by a nurse or other medical professional; this team gives first aid and never practices medicine it is not licensed for.

Vulnerable-person check-ins — keeps the confidential list, pairs each person with a caller, and works the list first in every activation. Often led by the deacons, the care ministry or the visitation team.

Transportation — knows who has vehicles, who can drive, and who would need a ride to safety, to a shelter, to a pharmacy or to a clinic. Led by someone who already coordinates rides.

Facilities — knows the building, its shut-offs, its capacity and its risks, and decides whether it is safe to open. Usually the trustees, the facilities manager or a tradesperson in the congregation.

Childcare — keeps children safe, supervised and occupied while parents help or rest. Led by the children’s ministry, with the same background-check standards used on Sunday.

Sanitation — hand-washing, restrooms, trash and waste when water or power is off. Led by whoever runs the building’s cleaning, with public-health guidance from the county.

Spiritual care — prayer, presence, listening, worship, and the pastoral work of a hard season. Led by the pastor and elders.

Logistics — the record of what comes in and what goes out, what is needed and where it is, and the link to VOAD, the county and other congregations. Led by someone who is organized and calm.

A church is not a substitute for police, fire, hospitals, emergency management or government. It works alongside them: it cares for its people, opens its doors when that is safe and useful, and does what official responders ask. It never stands in their place, and it never blocks them.

Connect before anything happens

Two introductions now save a great deal of confusion later. The first is your county emergency management office: find its name and number, ask for the person who works with community and faith-based organizations, and tell them what your building and your congregation could offer. The second is VOAD, the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster network and its state and local chapters, which exist to coordinate volunteer groups so that help arrives where it is needed and no one gets in anyone’s way. Both are used to hearing from churches, and both would rather meet you on a calm Tuesday than on the worst day of the year.

The Church Preparedness Checklist below puts all of this on a sheet the leadership can work through together.