missions | SPIRITUALITY
HOUSE RAISING
Summit church builds hope, homes
and a future in Waveland
E TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY TRUDY BERGER
Every year during the first
week of June, First Baptist
Church of Summit sends out a
construction mission team. It
may be to build a church or to
help rebuild damaged homes,
but at this time of year a team
of anywhere from 30 to 70 peo-
ple, ranging from youth to sen-
ior adults, will hit the road on
this trip. This year, the trip was
to have been to Gallup, N.M.,
but due to a delay in obtaining
building permits, a substitution
was made and the trip was just
down the road, to Waveland.
Many people, even those of
us in Mississippi, assume that
the Gulf Coast has been rebuilt.
Not so. Waveland is in the
process of rebuilding, but the
damage there remains exten-
sive. The FBC mission team was
sent to Shoreline Park Baptist
Church to build a home for a
family that lost theirs to
Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29,
up construction job, to build an
1,100 square foot wood frame
house on 12 foot high piers,
under new hurricane construc-
tion standards.
“Scott,” the homeowner,
explained that he had been
injured on the job and was dis-
abled. Once Katrina hit and
destroyed their home, his wife
and child had to wait along
with tens of thousands of other
victims for their FEMA trailer.
2005. The project was a ground- Once settled in their FEMA
a cc e n t s o u t h m i s s i s s i p p i 51
trailer, it did not take long for
Hurricane Gustav to come along
and once again wipe them out.
FEMA regulations prevent vic-
tims from receiving more than
one trailer, so they then lost their
automobile to pay apartment
rent. This family was in a real
bind.
Left with nothing but the land
on which their home had once
stood, the Rev. Ed Murphy and
Shoreline Park Baptist Church
came to their rescue with the
church’s innovative construction
program. Scott’s home is the 16th
such home built under the aus-
pices of the church, this time by
volunteers from First Baptist
Church Summit.
Bro. Ed has seen a lot in the 10
years that he has been the pastor
at Shoreline. In the last five
years, he has seen loss for his
own membership. Waveland was
ground zero for the Mississippi
coastline during Hurricane
Katrina, and the Shoreline
church was hard hit. As he
recounts story after story, he
chokes up frequently at the
struggles and difficulties that
different people have faced. He
even had to bury a church mem-
ber soon after the hurricane, and
when he says “bury” he means
preaching and digging the grave
as well.
This is not your ordinary
Southern Baptist preacher. On
any given day he might be driv-
ing a tractor, using the bucket to
hoist sheeting on the job, hauling
construction materials to the job
site, hauling children around in
another van to some activity, tak-
ing a church member to a job
interview, putting Freon in a
deacon’s truck or just pitching in
on anything else that might need
to be done.
“I surrendered to the ministry
late in life,” Bro. Ed explains. “I
was 35 at the time and I had my
own construction business so I
know how to build houses and
do a lot of different things.”
As he drove around to the var-
ious sites of the 16 homes that he
has built since Katrina, recount-
ing the unique and touching sto-
ries of each family as we
approached each site, he says, “I
can’t believe there have been this
many. How did I do all this?”
When asked what he plans to
do next, he responds without
hesitation, “Sleep. I’m just going
to sleep for a while. You see, I
get up at 6 every morning and go
nonstop until 12 every night.
And from midnight until 6 in the
morning I don’t really sleep very
well because my brain is still
thinking about all the details
involved. So I really want to
sleep.”
Bro. Ed and his wife Karen,
originally from South Carolina,
have grown children and grand-
children scattered around the
country. They would eventually
like to travel out west and men-
tor pastors in smaller churches,
possibly doing short-term assign-
ments building Sunday school
classes or serving as worship
leaders in churches.
“When they finally lay my
body down, I’d like it to be total-
ly spent in service for the Lord,”
says Bro. Ed.