Fellowship flourishes in flood outreach program
Faith communities work together to to aid victims
BY MELISSA KARSH Staff Writer

Members of St. Thomas Episcopal Church and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, both Red Bank, work together to assemble buckets containing emergency supplies for flood victims.

RED BANK - Two local churches have found that working together has many benefits, including raising more funds than originally projected to aid flood victims.

With approximately $3,000 in donations raised by the community and the congregations of St. Thomas Episcopal Church and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, both Red Bank, church members joined forces to assemble 60 emergency cleanup buckets, or flood buckets.

"This project has strengthened our partnership and our fellowship, while we don't have anything [planned] on the horizon, we see ourselves being joined even more tightly in ministry in the future," said the Rev. Dean Brown, pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on River Road, of future fundraising projects with the congregation of St. Thomas Episcopal Church.

The congregations of both churches had planned to gather at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church Nov. 4 for a brief service and a potluck dinner in celebration of the joint outreach program called "Buckets of Love."

Representatives of the Lutheran Social Ministries of New Jersey and Episcopal Relief Development will be on hand to pick up the finished flood buckets and Mayor Pasquale Menna also plans to attend the Sunday night festivities, said Brown.

Inspired by Hurricane Katrina and the lack of readiness during the aftermath, the Buckets of Love project kicked off at the end of June, according to Brown.

"It's very easy when things like Katrina go off the airwaves and people still have problems two years later," the Rev. Terrence Rosheuvel, pastor of St. Thomas Episcopal Church on East Sunset Avenue, said previously. "It's just a joy to be working with another congregation on something so important." The emergency cleanup idea was sparked when the congregations met on Tuesdays during the past season of Lent to learn about the other's social outreach programs and found that both share disaster relief outreach, according to a press release.

The actual collection effort started on July 3 and the original goal was to assemble 50 of the buckets by the end of September, but because of community support, this number has been exceeded, according to Brown.

"The managers at Lowe's in Holmdel … were really helpful by giving us a discount on supplies and transporting them to the church," said Brown.

The buckets, which were all assembled on Oct. 13 at Holy Trinity, cost from $45 to $50 to assemble with the receipt of a discount from Lowe's in Holmdel. This figure includes the 25-pound, 5-gallon bucket, scouring pads, disinfectant, detergent, clothesline, dust masks and other specific items. The items needed to assemble the buckets are inspected before being warehoused.

"We were surprised we gathered at the church at 8:30 in the morning and we were done [assembling] at noon … we thought we were going to be there all day Saturday," said Brown.

He said the process consisted of collecting all of the items for the buckets first because of the specificity of those items, then assembling the buckets in one day and double-checking them to make sure each item was included and the buckets were assembled correctly.

According to Brown, the remainder of the funds, around $500, will be donated to Church World Service, the organization that distributes the buckets, to be put toward the assembly of more Buckets of Love.

The finished buckets will be inspected, and then they will be warehoused at a facility run by Church World Service and distributed nationally as needed.

"It's a very good project to do though, and the number of buckets we put together we found is quite significant," said Brown.