Responding to disasters since 1998, Christ in Action (CIA) of Manassas, Virginia, is training a national coalition of volunteers to help people impacted by the next flood, hurricane or wildfire.
"Christians should be the first ones to respond in a disaster location," says CIA Executive Director Denny Nissley, a nationally appointed Assemblies of God chaplain.
Nissley founded CIA with his wife, Sandy, in 1982, originally as a street evangelism ministry.
"I carried a cross some days, was beaten, shot at and cursed by gangs and hostile bystanders," Nissley says. "But people got saved."
Converting a semitrailer truck into a stage with a 14,000-watt sound system for inner-city preaching and concerts, the Nissleys gave out hot dogs and hamburgers. Prompted by a board member, they began shifting into disaster relief.
Feeding emergency crews at the Pentagon and Ground Zero after the 2001 attacks catapulted CIA onto a new level. The ministry now owns $1 million worth of trucks, tents, chainsaws, and cooking, refrigeration and washing equipment capable of serving 15,000 hot meals daily. It has served victims and emergency workers at 12 major disasters, including providing millions of dollars in goods and services for Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, Mississippi, and New Orleans.
People are grateful and open to the gospel. For example, during the 2008 wildfires in Ramona, California, a Buddhist woman came to salvation in Christ through CIA's feeding program and three months later her husband converted.
The White House asked Nissley in 2006 to organize a coalition of faith-based groups and individuals to respond in the national Capitol region as well as a nationwide rapid response network for future disasters. To accomplish this, Nissley has launched a Faith Based First Responders (FBFR) course that has trained more than 1,000 laypeople in Critical Incident Stress Management. In August 2009, a team of FBFR graduates ministered to high school students in Culpepper, Virginia, when a 17-year-old student was killed in an auto accident.
"The team was very well trained and did an awesome job," says AG chaplain Liz Danielsen. "I felt privileged to partner with them in ministry."
The U.S. military tapped CIA in 2006 to respond to a nuclear, chemical or biological terrorist attack in the Capitol region. However, CIA does not receive any government funding.
When the earthquake struck Haiti in January, the Christ in Action team was ready to help. "Although the earthquake in Haiti devastated millions of people, Christ in Action is working with fervency to help these survivors," Denny Nissley said.
Nissley gathered equipment and traveled to Haiti to perform a housing assessment to determine how desperate the need was for new homes.
Nissley knew of the need for homes concentrated on protecting the people and not appearance - with this knowledge, he was inspired with a dream to build affordable housing for the Haitian victims that would withstand a significant amount of structural damage.
As part of an initiative called "Homes for Haiti," Christ In Action is taking steps to build these homes inside a 50,000-square-foot warehouse in northern Virginia. Other warehouses across the nation are also constructing the kits.
CIA is partnering with an organization called Friend Ships, an organization that has several ships available, to send food and water to Haiti as well as the custom-designed homes. The homes, costing only $600 to construct, will sleep 8-10 people and will last up to 10 years.
"We are intending to build a few thousand of these homes," Nissley said. "We expect the first shipment of homes to arrive in late March."
According to Nissley, once the homes are constructed in the warehouse, they will be stacked, banded, trucked to the Port of Miami and shipped on the Friend Ships fleet. Upon arrival in Haiti, volunteers will clear areas of debris and work on assembling the houses, which take about two hours to construct.
The homes aren't the only thing CIA plans to build in Haiti. "We are beginning to work with the Haitian government to provide large tracts of land where we intend to also plant a church or work with an existing church," Nissley said. "We are also exploring the idea of building a school and a medical clinic with the church so we can rebuild the entire community with these resources."
Nissley says he's always looking for volunteers (http://www.christinaction.com) so when the next disaster strikes, CIA will be ready to serve.
"Denny has a compassionate heart for people," says Scott Leib, a participant in CIA events and senior pastor of Manassas AG church in Bristow, Virginia. "He will go anywhere, anytime and is one of the AG's best-kept secrets."
From: Pentecostal Evangel, with contributions by AG News
