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Having a church family in time of tragedy

"What do people do when they have a tragedy and have no church family?" is the question that I get asked frequently. People who do not have a church family or who have never been in a church that functions as a family will find that question to be a bit strange. I share the following situation with the permission of the person involved:

Last month, a woman in our church received a devastating telephone call. This lady, who is retired but works part-time as a home health nurse, lost her husband to an illness a few years ago. She keeps an eye on her elderly parents and has a daughter and her three children living with her. She also serves on the church's worship team and keeps certain records for the church. Her plate, as seems obvious, is full.

Then came the phone call which informed her that her 44-year-old son in Kentucky had suffered a heart attack. She immediately packed and made the nine-hour drive to the hospital in Louisville. Someone called me and I called her. Immediately, the members of the congregation began to pray for her and her son.

A few days later, her two adult daughters, one of which also attends our church, decided to join her in Louisville. Here is where the church family began to help in a more temporal way. A family in the church obtained airline tickets for both daughters, even though one goes to another church. A family with four children offered to keep the three children of one daughter for "as long as it takes." The family took the kids to school in another district, picked them up, fed and cared for them, and even helped with homework and school projects.

Thinking it would be a good thing to provide pastoral care, I called The Most Reverend Donald Miles, one of our bishops who serves in Louisville, and asked if he could send a priest to the hospital. Within two hours, Bishop Miles himself walked into the hospital and prayed with and ministered to the family. The next day, the bishop came back to the hospital and served Holy Communion to the family and administered "last rites" to the son. What a demonstration of love and concern! This family will never forget Bishop Miles.

On the day the bishop was serving Holy Communion to this family, I was making the nine-hour drive to Jewish Hospital in Louisville. I arrived around 8 p.m. on Sunday evening and, three hours later, was with the mother, her daughters, her son, and the son's wife when the son passed away in the Intensive Care Unit.

The next day, we all made the 90-minute drive to Campbellsville, Ky., and the day after that, I met the friends and family at the viewing in the funeral home chapel and drove out into the beautiful Kentucky countryside for the graveside services at the little country church.

The son's wife, now a young, heartbroken widow, sang a gospel song under the little tent at the cemetery, and I shared incidents from his life and read scripture and prayed. The gathering of friends and family, mostly United Pentecostal Church folk said, "Amen," and smiled through their tears. Afterwards, they prepared a dinner for the grieving family.

During the time we were all together, we took nearly every meal together and laughed and cried together. I told every Baptist joke I knew, since the eldest daughter is a Baptist. Sometimes, a "merry heart doeth good, like a medicine." After the service and the lunch, we caravanned back to Georgia keeping in telephone contact during the nine-hour trip.

The son had received a head injury when he was 12 and was diagnosed with a serious physical condition in his late teen years. As a result, he was unable to get life insurance and he did not have any savings to speak of. The financial burden of the funeral fell upon his mother, who had already spent a great deal of money in Kentucky staying in hotels and eating in restaurants and cafeterias for two weeks. So, the people in our church, when they heard of the situation, paid for the funeral. Why? Because we love this family. Because they are a part of us. Because it was the right thing to do. Because we "bear one another's burdens."

We get calls nearly every day from people in the community asking us to pay bills of one sort or another. We turn down almost all of these because we are not a large congregation and our resources are limited. Rather, we have chosen to focus on those people that we know or those who are known by our people. We do care about people outside the church membership; almost every winter we have a coat and blanket drive, we give away from 15-20 percent of our income to concerns beyond our church walls, but we do believe that family comes first. We may not be able to meet every need, but we do what we can.

"What do people do when they have a tragedy and have no church family?" I don't know. I honestly don't know, but I imagine that many situations can be incredibly difficult. To me, the real question is, "Why do people choose to have no church family?" And to that question, my answer is the same. I don't know. I honestly don't know.

[Father David Epps is rector of Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church, which meets at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Sundays at 4881 E. Ga. Highway 34. He may be contacted at 770-252-2428, at frepps@ctkcec.org.]