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When chainsaws cut a tree, lumber is not the only thing to fall sometimes. Bill Johnson’s eight months of work in Southern Baptist Disaster Relief is proof of that. The testimonies of dozens of others like him are proof, too.
Johnson, a member of Sandy Lake Road Baptist Church in Coppell, was part of a small team of SBTC DR volunteers trained in chainsaw ministry who went to Malta, N.Y., last month to train a church there on how to begin a chainsaw ministry.
The work at Cornerstone Community Church, part of the Hudson Baptist Association with which the SBTC has a missions partnership, was partly routine?four hours of abbreviated classroom training on a Friday night and Saturday field training on the properties of church members?and partly providence, it seems.
Johnson’s testimony is one of God using willing hands to touch hearts, with the Christian of four years sharing his faith with enthusiasm following hurricanes Dolly and Ike this summer and fall and seeing seven people come to faith in Christ?two directly from his verbal witness and the other five with fellow team members. Disaster relief ministry, he said, opens doors for the gospel.
In New York, Johnson was presiding over the felling of a pine tree on a church member’s land near the property line of a neighbor. The group believed they had clearance to drop the tree on either side of the property line. The tall pine landed on the neighbor’s side, causing a loud commotion and, unexpectedly, an angry neighbor who had been awakened by his wife wondering what the racket was.
After apologies, a lengthy discussion about the downed tree, the pastor showing up, and an offer from the DR team to do whatever could be done to rectify the problem, Johnson asked the man if the team could pray with him. He sheepishly agreed, then replied afterwards, “It’s kind of hard to be really mad when everybody’s trying to be nice to you.”
Cornerstone’s pastor, Terry Stockman, said he has visited with the man since then and is trying to build a friendship.
“Actually, it’s really turning out to be a good situation,” said Stockman, who was associate director of missions in Sabine-Neches Baptist Area before answering a call to pastor in heavily Catholic upstate New York. “He’s a work in progress. Eventually, one of these days, I think we’re going to see some fruit there.”
At another location that day, Stockman said a divorced woman saw the men working and asked if they could help her move some furniture. She wished to compensate them for their work, but Stockman told her, “the only thing you could do would be to come to worship in the morning at 10:30. She came and really liked it. She was another contact that was a direct result of what we were doing.”
A Louisiana native, Stockman said the 12 men from his church would now be ready to minister after ice storms; they are only the second chainsaw unit he knows of among New York’s Southern Baptist churches.
Johnson said he and his wife, Donna, came to Texas from Kentucky to be near their son and his family, but disaster relief ministry is the more significant reason God led him to Texas, he said. Johnson has progressed to train others in chainsaw rigging and has deployed three times since last March.
Working in the aftermath of hurricanes this year, Johnson said he felt strongly that he needed to witness to the family in whose home they were working. He told a fellow DR team member who used the Roman Road of evangelistic scripture verses to witness, “I don’t know the Scripture like that, but I really want to talk to these people.”
Having recently completed a study through Ray Comfort’s “The Way of the Master” ministry, Johnson simply asked the couple, “Do you want to go to Heaven when you die?”
Sure, they responded, everybody wants to go to Heaven. Johnson explained to the Catholic couple that Jesus had made a way for us to get there that didn’t involve their own work, or the mediation of a priest. After some discussion, the man and his wife both stated a desire to receive Christ, and did so with Johnson there.
“Man, from then on I couldn’t wait to tell people at church or tell my wife [about the salvation decisions]. What a feeling. It’s just an awesome feeling to know that God is working through you.”
That kind of enthusiasm comes from a guy who wasn’t a Southern Baptist until recently and had never heard of disaster relief ministry until last spring.
“The people we serve know we are do
