Spotlight Interview with Pastor Rob McClelland: Helping those affected by Hurricane Helene
If you look at a map, there are some towns that you’re hearing about in North Carolina that you would’ve had a hard time finding on a map prior to Hurricane Helene. And now they’re essentially gone. But there are Christians in communities throughout the region who are in a position to respond to their own communities having been affected but not devastated in the way that their neighbors have been.
As the story continues to unfold, the needs of people in the affected region are going to continue to develop and unfold, and that’s one of the reasons that we want to talk with my friend Pastor Rob McClelland. He joined us from the Hendersonville Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Rob is a friend I know and trust, so if you are looking for a way to give to those affected by the hurricane, I am sharing Hendersonville PC’s donation link as a trustworthy option. A hundred percent of your donations are going to go directly to serving people in very real and desperate need. Give here: https://onrealm.org/HendersonvilleP/-/form/give/now
This transcript is edited for clarity and space. Listen to the full Mornings with Carmen interview on FaithRadio.com or wherever you get podcasts.
Carmen: Good morning my friend.
Rob McClelland: Good morning. How are you this morning?
Carmen: Well, I am just fine. It is cold where I am. And so I have wondered, has it also gotten cold in western North Carolina?
Rob McClelland: Yes, it has. We already have some snow coming in, some of the mountains around here.
Carmen: Rob, tell us about the place that you live, the place that you serve, and maybe how things have changed since Hurricane Helene came through.
Rob McClelland: Well, so we’re in Hendersonville, North Carolina, right in the middle of Henderson County and just a cute little mountain town. People found out about it a few years ago, and so we’ve got a lot of people that were moving here from up north and down south to just spend some time in the mountains this fall, we usually have an influx of tourism that really boosts the economy in our town because of the change of seasons and they call it leaf season here, but the storm has utterly devastated that it’s impacted the economy. It has destroyed homes.
There aren’t any hotel rooms to be had for people to come. Most of the Airbnb industry in this area is now housing families or insurance adjusters or government workers who are looking for places to stay while they’re here to help. So it has changed the community a ton already, but we’ve been blessed in a lot of ways when we look at some of the communities around us that have been just completely destroyed. And so we feel very blessed in that, but it’s given us a big opportunity to impact other communities and help.
Carmen: Because I know what your voice ordinarily sounds like. I can make this observation about you and that is that you sound tired,
Rob McClelland: Exhausted.
Carmen: We want to encourage you. And we also just want to recognize that it’s already been a long haul and the haul ahead is, I don’t even know how to see the end of this. So can you just honestly talk with us about what you’re experiencing? What does a day look like? What has a week looked like? What has the month looked like?
Rob McClelland: Yeah, that’s a big question. There’s a lot that happens right now in days and weeks and since the storm we started right after Helene hit, the storm ended on, I think Saturday was the first day that roads were starting to open up a little bit main roads, but most neighborhoods were still blocked in. So that Sunday I was able to walk out of my neighborhood and I had parked my car about a mile and a half from my house and I drove up to the church and opened up the doors and we had nine people show up for worship the Sunday right after the storm just to pray. Many of them, I think about a third of them, were from the community that just saw the doors open and I think we’re looking for a place to come and just be with people. We spent some time praying and then went about starting a process of working and the week after the storm began early, we would get up and get set up here at the church.
We had some that had cut their ways out of their own neighborhoods and we didn’t have power at the church, but we would get up early, come up and meet, and we continued to do this meet every morning at 9:00 AM for prayer with anyone, any volunteers or anyone from the community that wants to come pray. We meet and pray from nine until nine 30. And then we split up responsibilities even though we didn’t have power at the church that first week, we had someone that would go around and reach out to restaurant owners who didn’t have power, who were getting rid of all of their supplies, and they started donating food to us so that we could feed people. And we would spend from nine 30 until six or seven at night making meals and we fed about 2100 people the first week, even though we didn’t have power, we had camping lanterns set around the kitchen and then in the evening is when deliveries would be able to make it in for supplies as they started coming. So many nights, I’m here at the church until 11 12, 1 in the morning and then back up here at seven the next morning in between time making visits to congregants to make sure that they’re okay, tracking people down that we hadn’t heard from and equipping our leadership to participate in that.
Carmen: Rob, I want to talk about the word hope. I want to talk about the experience of hope. I want to talk about the value of hope. What does hope look like right now from where you’re standing?
Rob McClelland: Hope is something that people have seemingly lost in a lot of ways. There’s such a hopeless feeling coming through this experience. There’s a lot of information on the news and on social media that talk about how many lives were lost and how many towns were impacted, but none of them actually really understand the true loss that’s taken place. I mean, I know we talk about 200 or so people that have lost their lives, but it’s really in the 10 to 20,000 range in western North Carolina. They haven’t been able to identify people, people are missing, communities are gone. We just took a shipment of supplies, winter supplies to the Swannanoa area and neighborhoods that used to be there are gone and people are living in tents as the temperature dips down in the low thirties. And it seems like a very hopeless situation to many. But what we’re finding is by showing up, by letting people know they’re not forgotten, by coming alongside them and praying with them, that we’re able to point them to the true hope that this world means, which is the hope of Jesus, and that there is something more that is to come in the wake of a storm.
And I think probably one of my favorite conversations was with a woman who had lost everything and we were standing outside of her home that had been flooded up to the ceiling and everything that they had was gone and they were sharing how in the midst of that they remembered the passage in scripture that talks about how God is not, you don’t hear God’s voice in the storm. It’s the still quiet voice after the storm that reminds you that God is present. And for her, that was what was holding her. That was what was lifting up her family. And after sharing that, she said, I knew that I needed to do more. And she and her husband thought they were escaping from the floods that came so quickly, they were able to rescue four other people who were caught in the flood water and people who were stuck in their homes and they were able to get in and get them out. And she said it was knowing that there’s something more that God is bringing in the midst of the wake of this storm. So hope looks and feels like people connecting and loving the Lord enough to love others and serve them well.
Carmen: What kinds of help is needed right now? What are the things that you guys, people are asking for, and I’m not saying that those are the things we’re going to supply. I’m kind of getting a sense of where are you in this process in terms of a conduit, what are people asking for? And then when you think of a timeline, I don’t even know if we can talk timeline yet, but if we can, can you forecast a timeline?
Rob McClelland: Sure. Yeah. Thank you for asking about that. Right now we have opened up our church building to host mission teams coming in and we actually partnered with not just our denomination but across denominational lines for bringing in a mission organization from the Evangelical Free church that does disaster assistance incredibly well, and they’re actually here already. We built bunk rooms in our church and we are accepting work teams coming through their registration site on their denominational website and starting Monday morning, we have teams that are coming from different places around the United States to help and that help looks like whatever people are able to offer. So we have some that are coming to help take trees off of homes and some to gut houses and clean up after the flood, some to distribute goods as we drive things up into the mountains and some to cook and provide meals for those who need them supply wise, we have just started transitioning this week to continuing to give out shelf stable food that people can pick up.
Cleaning supplies are necessary, and we have a way to limit per person how many they’re able to grab, but make sure that they have enough. Some churches have been running into people coming and taking more than they need so that others don’t have cleaning supplies. Then we’ve also started this week making runs up into the mountains to drop off blankets and warm clothes, warm sleeping bags, small propane heaters that can be used inside camping heaters that can be used inside tents. As you mentioned earlier, it is getting cold here. In fact, this morning in Hendersonville, it was 34 when I left the house this morning, and we’re not the highest altitude around. So there’s people that are without homes that are living in tents that are very cold or they’re living outside and just trying to survive. So things like that would be great. The financial donations will be wonderful. We use a hundred percent of donations that come in through our giving to go into the community. None of it comes to the church, it goes to the community. We use it for people who are in need. So those are the big needs right now, people and then warm supplies and shelf stable food
Rob McClelland: I think the biggest inspiration for me has been through people, the people that I’m meeting and listening to their stories, but then also personally, those that just came and have poured into my family. We had a young man that grew up in the youth group that I used to lead back in 2000 in Harrisonburg, Virginia. His name’s James Weaver, and James is now an attorney with the US Navy and stationed in New Orleans, and he called me not long after the storm just to check on my family. And then this past weekend, he knew that we were out serving everyone in the community, but that our house was incredibly damaged as well. And so he and my brother coordinated coming up here this past weekend to gut part of our house that had flooded our whole basement and didn’t mind that our life was in chaos.
He just showed up and started to help. And for us, that was a huge, huge inspiration because it showed us as we’re serving others with the love of Christ, that there are others that have not forgotten about us, that cared for us, and it was just so inspiring to have someone come and pour into us. The other story that just first came to mind was we had a Hispanic gentleman ride his bike by the church and he would ride by many of the days that we were working, and one day he just stopped and came in and asked to volunteer because he saw how we were helping people and he said, I saw the gospel being lived and since the storm, he’s been not only here every day, that since he stopped by, but he’s also been in worship with us and inviting others in the community to come and experience the truth of the gospel being shared as we worship together in the midst of the wake of the storm, and it has been so inspiring to just see people coming alongside people and out of a love that God is instilled in them to love others.
Carmen: Rob. Everybody on the text line wants to know when you’re coming back, and so just know that we are going to anticipate that and we’re going to do that obviously as your time and energy allows. But can I pray for you as we part company today?
Father. Thank you for your son, our brother in Christ, Rob and for his family. Thank you for his congregation. Thank you for giving them this opportunity, this strange opportunity to advance the gospel in the wake of the storm. Father, we would ask that you would provide for his every need. We ask that you would encourage him, that he would delight in you, that the power of your Holy Spirit would renew him in ways for the task and mission set before him. That’s just supernatural. We do pray for his family, asking that you would protect and strengthen them. Father, for Rob’s heart, I ask that you would guard it, tend to his health and give him rest. Father, bring around him. Surround him with men and women who can uphold his arms in the midst of this time of extraordinary service and get yourself glory in and through his life. We thank you for him today. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Feature Image attribution: This image was posted to Flickr by Bill McMannis under Creative Commons 2.0 license https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Devastation_in_Asheville_after_Hurricane_Helene.jpg
