Guest Article

Inter-Lutheran Emergency Response Team

By Bishop Dean Nelson, Southwest California Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)

For the last three years the Southwest California Synod, http://www.socalsynod.org, along with the other two Lutheran judicatories in southern California, have partnered with Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest (LSS-SW) for disaster preparedness and emergency response training. In the wake of the devastating wild fires in the fall 2003, Lutheran leaders came together to begin to address the current and future disaster preparation and response needs of their congregations and communities.

Leaders of the ELCA's Southwest California and Pacifica Synods and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod's Pacific Southwest District formed the Inter-Lutheran Emergency Response Team or I-LERT, representatives of Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR) and LSS-SW provided valuable guidance as we committed ourselves to prepare the congregations, schools, and institutions of our three judicatories for disaster response.

In the spring of 2006, LSS-SW hired Ms. Tempie Beaman, [see related story], to serve as Southern California Preparedness and Response Coordinator. This met I-LERT's request for a person residing in southern California to serve the area. Tempie was a recent graduate of our Synod's School for Equipping Leaders in Mission or ELM Program.

She selected the Diaconate Track which was designed to prepare people for a wide variety of care and advocacy ministries. She volunteered to coordinate our Synod's response to the Katrina and Rita hurricane disasters in the Gulf Coast. Tempie was well prepared to move into the position, which concentrated on providing disaster preparedness and emergency response training.

For the past year and a half, Tempie has conducted training sessions for the Synod and District staffs. She has held workshops at Synod Assemblies and the District Convention, and conducted numerous training sessions for clusters of congregations throughout the territory of our judicatories. Later this fall, she will conduct training for the Conference Deans and Circuit Counselors so that they will be able to better facilitate communication and response among the Lutherans of southern California when a disaster strikes.

Throughout this venture, Tempie in California and others from the LSS-SW staff in Arizona have been sources of inspiration and guidance to prepare for and respond to disasters. The training Tempie has helped to develop is proving to be an important tool not only for helping individuals and families survive a natural or human caused catastrophe, but also for enabling us as congregations and regional organizations respond to the human suffering those disasters cause. We all seek to respond to others in need as members of the Body of Christ, and the partnership that we have in I-LERT is preparing us to do that whenever an earthquake, flood, wildfire or disaster may happen.

For more information on I-LERT: http://www.socalsynod.org/ILERT.htm