Dear Cornerstone family,

As we prepare for First Fruits Sunday, we continue to weep and pray over the devastation faced by many of our neighbors to the north. As Elders, we take these situations seriously, and we consider them to be opportunities to show our love to our neighbors. When events like this happen, our zeal may cause us to simply throw money at any number of organizations or entities, sometimes without even knowing if they are trustworthy. 

As a church that participates in the Southern Baptist Convention, we are blessed to already be involved in the recovery process on the heels of this deadly hurricane. Southern Baptist’s Disaster Relief efforts, through the North American Mission Board (NAMB), is the third largest relief organization in the US, behind only the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. For instance, following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the SBC provided 10 million meals to suffering people. Please read that again—10 million meals! Southern Baptists also provided 120,000 days of volunteer hours to the community. This is how Southern Baptists help their neighbors.

We are a part of this process already. When you give your money to Cornerstone, a percentage goes to the SBC, and from that money, NAMB sets aside money for disasters like this. So, already your money is at work providing meals, showers, washing stations, and other levels of support. This is one of the many reasons that it’s exciting to be a Southern Baptist. 

With that said, however, your Cornerstone Elders are also praying about ways that we can be involved strategically in the coming days. Rather than just rushing to “do something,” we are exploring ways to encourage you to participate in helping our struggling neighbors. Initially, we made a donation of $10,000 today on behalf of our church to NAMB. This is money that you have already given, and it will be used to assist with disaster relief efforts in the coming days. Further, we are exploring the needs of Pillar Churches in the affected areas. We are confident that NAMB will be working to meet the immediate needs of food distribution in strategic areas. So, we are looking for ways that we can assist with clean-up and up-fitting for churches that suffered loss. We do this because we know that the greatest need in times like this is spiritual, and we want churches to be able to meet the needs of their communities. We are in dialogue with the Pillar Network to ascertain how we can best help. As a result, we look forward to having more information to share with you about service options in the coming days.

In the meantime, if you want to make a financial contribution of some kind, we believe that giving to NAMB is the best Christian option available. You can click the following button to give money. 

Donate through Send Relief

You can also click any of the following links to gain more insight into the work of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief.

Finally, we studied prayer this past Sunday. Let’s continue to pray for our hurting neighbors, and let’s ask God to use this difficult season as only He can, that He would help people who’ve lost everything find the one thing they need the most… Jesus!

I love being your pastor,
Pastor Bill