Hurricanes Blow Away Traditional Relief Methods, By James Cavnar President, Cross International.

POMPANO BEACH, Fla. -- The following is an opinion editorial provided by James Cavnar President, Cross International:

While FEMA and the Red Cross hurriedly mobilize to meet the needs of over a million victims of Hurricane Katrina, an amazing network of thousands of grass roots organizations is already in place providing food, temporary housing, clothing, job hunting assistance, and spiritual support to the desperate evacuees and survivors.

Within days in one county, 90 of these groups already had organized into a collaborative effort to distribute food and supplies, track down trailers and apartments for evacuees, and create computer banks so they could start hunting for jobs and register with FEMA. Who are these rapid response heroes? Local churches.

Consider LifePoint Ministries in Douglasville, Georgia, an Assemblies of God congregation west of Atlanta. LifePoint helped pull together 90 local churches to meet the overwhelming needs of evacuees flooding into their community. Catholics, Methodists, Pentecostals, Baptists, Episcopalians and Mormons are among the faiths represented that have served the evacuees there.

As LifePoint Pastor Kay Walker said, "We were already ministering to the needs of the poor. When evacuees arrived it was just a matter of expanding."

LifePoint's relief effort was up and running two days after Katrina hit. Since then, more than 1,000 people have received assistance from the cooperative church effort. About eighty volunteers, primarily comprised of church members, work all day long serving lunch to evacuees, providing medical services, job assistance, groceries, household items, furniture and more. So far, 100 families have been placed in homes, children are enrolled in school and new lives have begun. All without one dime of government funds.

The Catholic Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana, also has stepped up to help hurricane survivors. During the week following the hurricane, the diocese served 6,000 evacuees from New Orleans in seven temporary shelters. Since then, the diocese has relocated 600 people from shelters to families or friends around the country. They have been helping the elderly and poor repair their homes and move back in.

Pastor Sollie Hicks' First United Methodist Church of Bayou, LaBatre, AL, has become one of dozens of church distribution points for food, charcoal cooking grills, clothing, diapers, and just about anything else a desperate family might need. He said 80 percent of the homes in the area are uninhabitable. So far, he said, FEMA hasn't made it there nor has any other big relief organization.

But teams from churches all over the country have arrived on their own to deliver supplies and help residents clean out their sodden, flood-damaged homes. Hicks worked out a deal with the local pharmacy to give urgently needed insulin and other life-saving medications to penniless survivors. Somehow he will pay the bill.

At St. Francis Cabrini Church in Alexandria, LA, just west of New Orleans, Fr. Jose Robles Sanchez launched Project Going Home to help the 3,000 evacuees from New Orleans make contact with family and friends around the country and then provided the bus and plane tickets so they could leave the mass shelters and find refuge with loved ones.

The stories are repeated in the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi, Christ United Methodist of Mobile, and hundreds of other churches throughout the Katrina-impacted region.

Pastors tell us at Cross International the same basic story. FEMA aid takes time; the Red Cross is overwhelmed. But the survivors and evacuees need immediate help.

Truckloads of goods are pouring in, mostly from church groups. Volunteers from their own congregations were there from day one and now are being supplemented by others coming from churches everywhere. What these local churches don't have is cash to buy medicine, pay for temporary housing, buy bus and plane tickets, pay first month's rent on an apartment, pay for gasoline, and other pressing needs.

When Cross International offers to Fedex a check immediately, some pastors break down and cry.

While FEMA and the Red Cross will do the heavy lifting for the long haul, churches are valiantly filling the immediate gap supported by their members, dedicated volunteers, and private organizations.

Working through existing churches and local faith-based ministries already on the scene is a proven method that Cross International employs and knows well in the Third World. The right aid gets to the neediest people quickly and efficiently. It looks like the same strategy is exactly what's working here, too. As Walker said, "No one has slept in their car on my watch."

Though not yet fully recognized by the media, the real star of these first few weeks of post-Katrina relief is the local church.

Jim Cavnar is president of Cross International Alliance, comprised of Cross International and Cross International Catholic Outreach, devoted to serving the poorest of the poor throughout the world. Cross International Alliance has distributed $750,000 in Hurricane Katrina relief in the last three weeks.