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Nga Phan, a Vietnamese-born woman and non-practicing Buddhist, worked in a casino as a card dealer until Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29. She now marvels at how quickly Southern Baptists set up a field kitchen the day after the storm, cooking lunch for 5,000 in Biloxi, Mississippi. "They are doing a lot to help people," she told Christianity Today. "They are the only ones doing that in our neighborhood."

The Baptists of Mississippi have often opposed honky-tonk evils like gambling. But Phan decided to overlook that in joining the volunteer corps at First Baptist Church in Biloxi.

This story is not unusual. Throughout the Gulf Coast region, thousands of Christians showed up unannounced with food, Porta Potties, diapers, and prayer. Historians may judge this mobilization as the largest in the nation's history.

Americans associate the Red Cross and the Salvation Army with home-front disaster relief on a grand scale. After Katrina, much of the $1 billion in private giving for relief efforts went to those two high-profile organizations.

The Southern Baptist North American Mission Board (namb) has been less known for disaster relief. No longer. The extent of Southern Baptist relief preparation was clearly evident after Katrina hit in late August and the less potent Hurricane Rita in late September.

From Mobile, Alabama, to Houston, Texas, the story was often the same. The leaders of a damaged church couldn't call or email anyone and were praying about what to do. More often than not, the brakes of a big truck pulling into the parking lot punctuated the end of their prayers.

That's exactly what happened in Hammond, Louisiana. Pastor Leon Dunn and his leaders regrouped to pray and a truck from Texas was waiting for them in the parking lot. "I couldn't believe it," he told CT. "It was such a joyous sight. I thought people had forgotten us. I just broke down."

Southern Baptists now field the third-largest privately funded relief corps in the United States. By Thursday, September 1, in Mobile, Alabama, the Baptists were prepared to serve 20,000 meals a day for ten days. By the end of September, they had prepared more than 5.1 million meals at 56 sites, a million meals more than they had prepared after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

The chart-busting disaster response by Southern Baptists began in 1966 with a "buddy burner" stove and one man's vision to help the helpless after catastrophes. In 1966, the Southern Baptist Convention appropriated $25,000 for relief preparations. Then, after the category 5 Hurricane Beulah hit the Gulf Coast in 1967, Bob Dixon demonstrated the utility of a camping-style "buddy burner." It's a single-flame stove that cooks one-pot meals. Southern Baptists warmed to the idea of becoming food specialists in relief efforts. In 1971, they rolled out their first fully outfitted tractor-trailer rig with a field kitchen, ham radio, bunks, and an electric generator.

By 2005, they were able to field 500 cooking units with 30,000 volunteers. The Southern Baptist relief effort is mainly the inspiration of Dixon. The Texan combined a love for camping, baseball, and government disaster and mobilization jobs into a philosophy of ministry.

Instead of programs driving the church, Dixon said that the church should be "opportunity-oriented." For Dixon, the gospel is itself event-oriented in that Christ is a disruptive event in people's settled lives. Christians, whose lives have been turned upside down by faith, should have the best background for handling a catastrophe.

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November 2005, Vol. 49, No. 11