Day 482 - Step 2: More Lessons for PDA from the Past

From time to time I’ve promised you a plain reading of the condition of PDA, here is another chapter. The next blog entry will be a reflection on some of my experiences in seminary this summer.


One very big problem with PDA in the Gulf is its (lack of) organization. This reflects overall on its effectiveness in most arenas. From my experience this is related to the ego of one person who has been involved in the Katrina/Wilma response since the beginning. As I said earlier, the people who blaze the path usually are not the people to lead the army down the path.

Any one who has worked in a technical organization, or for that matter in an effective organization knows the value of documentation. It is as fundamental as breathing. PDA has no effective process documentation.

Here are some gross objective shortcomings of PDA, as late as May 2009:

1. There are no written documents or procedures on how to set up a village in response to a storm in the gulf or elsewhere.

2. There is no written document for evacuating the gulf that benefits form the experiences of evacuation during storms of 2008. In fact I know that revision of the process has been on the plate of the manager in the Gulf for some time yet when the opportunity to draw on the experience of people who went through an evacuation was there, he shirked it.

3. The is no written documentation on how to set up a village in response to a major disaster.

4. The issue of logistics is treated cavalierly. Rather than position or station materials and equipment in specified locations, the local management just auctioned off almost all the tools, equipment and materials purchased for Katrina that could be used in the future in other disasters.

5. There is an absence of continuity of staff. Continuity builds corporate intelligence that is the basis for doing a better job in the future. As best I can tell, beyond the previous financial manager and case manager liaison whose contracts were not renewed after two years, there has been no tenure longer than 1 year (+/-) by any staff member. Except for me, I do not think anyone was requested to write something one would call a “report.” This is probably the greatest failure of leadership.

The consequence of all this is wasted donations, precious money. It costs far more to re-learn the actions required in the future by repeating the mistakes of the past than to rely on an objective, dispassionate real-time assessment and procedure based on past actions.

Why is this happening? The people who could make it happen have no authority and the ones who have authority are impotent, blinded by their inexperience.

Day 475 - Step 1: View of PDA Looking Backwards

Fountain City and The Blister Sisters

I plan to air a number of observations about the operation of PDA in the Gulf with the idea I earlier described, to ask what should PDA look like as a disaster relief agency to build an improved schema? I also point out that it is very easy to see and criticize flaws after the fact. The existence of, and search for flaws only represents an opportunity to improve - not the shortcomings of any one person. What PDA accomplished, good and bad, reflects the tireless efforts of the early implementers who stepped into the fray when a helping hand was truly needed. I am after "continuous quality improvement."

The following blog entries will be a stream of conscience review of PDA in the Gulf, specifically for Katrina/2005 hurricane relief.

One of the more remarkable consequences of my working with volunteers coming to the Gulf to work with people with damaged homes was the result of a trip by a staff group not associated with PDA.

I knew next to nothing about PDA in 2006 but was well aware of the challenge to the people in the Gulf hit by Katrina. (Read the "Down In Mississippi stories at the bottom of the blog page). I heard via my Presbytery communications about several relief groups going down to the Gulf area in the year after Katrina. I would get a general printed release in our church bulletin describing three or four groups going down. I never heard a word via any in-person communication to our church about exact what PDA was or was doing, except the story by our pastor of his experience.

When I decided to go down to the Gulf to help I linked up with a group from a congregation in the Knoxville area. It tuns out that was the best thing I've ever done.

What was remarkable was the fact these folks had been going down to the Gulf every three months since a couple weeks after Katrina hit, yet they had never been involved directly with PDA. In fact, they tended to avoid the local PDA villages due to some negative interactions.

This group was quite successful in developing relationships with local people through the Pearlington Recovery Center who provided living arrangements and helped identify and schedule work. For three years this worked smoothly.

They are a highly skilled group and found a niche primarily doing drywall. The have invested in tools, other allied equipment and a trailer. They bring down groups of 10 to 20 each time. In all respects they represent an ideal image of Christians providing help for people in need.

I began traveling to the Gulf with them and made about six trips over 18 months. On one of the trips I recruited some members of my own church in Chattanooga. They had less than a positive experience for a number or regrettable reasons.

But rather than just throw up their hands, the women of the group returned to Chattanooga at the end of the trip and energized an informal group of women who were helping people in need around Chattanooga. The group comprised mostly of women (and a man or two) from our church called themselves, "The Blister Sisters."

What is the message PDA might learn from these two groups?

Day 473 - Construction

I think it is a time for retrospection.

In the next blog entry or two I intend to consider what PDA has done, what it is, and what a new (future) vision might be were we to move it beyond its stumbling, but effective beginnings. The vision begins with the premise that the purpose of PDA is:

1. To be consistent with the tradition of the reformed faith.

2. To be a vehicle to facilitate the action of the church at large to:
a.) operate from the perspective of the sermon on the mount.
b.) facilitate the members of the church at large to provide christian compassion and action by offering a hand up to those who have suffered disaster in person, place or spirit.

I think this vision will build on what PC(USA)/PDA has done. That is, it will be a framework built on recognition of its mistakes and failures; and on the incidental blessings pursuant to its actions.

I proffer the hypothesis its form and implementation will be quite different from its current one, but be a blessing to the church and a move closer to home for us all.


Stay tuned.

Day 471 - The Chief Cause of Blindness

I hold very few things with certitude. There is one. It is a fundamental fact of my existence in this world that I do know because it is my nature.

I know that every day I will face the dawn and meet my dear friends. I will say, “You can trust me.” I know with certitude that no matter how hard I try to defend the truthfulness of that claim, I am lying.

I will violate that trust in some way.

This failure sits at the heart of the necessity for forgiveness. Yet such breaking of trust is not a justification for not trusting but for seeking forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a release, or justification of untrustworthiness to repeat the same failures time on end ignoring the obligation to seek to improve. The obligation to improve requires that I have my eyes open and recognize my failures.

I will say, I am painfully aware of this failure. In respect for it, I hope to try my best to “stay out of the fields of circumstance” that leads away from the narrow gate and towards failure.

With this prolog, I want to tell you more news of our friends and cohorts of the Gulf PDA effort to aid the recovery from Katrina.

I thought about Black Thursday back in June, of the miserable affair involving Louisville and Gulf managers who participated in the firing of Leslie Fedo. I thought, perhaps I was too hard on these people, perhaps my expectations of behavior is too severe. After all, they are human and prone to the same errors I make. And then, something happened to make me realize they are still wandering in the same field of circumstance wherein they found themselves in June. Are they blind or just enjoying the walk?

Kevin Henry is a good friend and a long-time, loyal PDA staff person in Houma. Many of you know him and have enjoyed his delicious cooking, have helped him with, or watched him repair things at Houma or Fish Camp or Orange Grove. Some of you also know the great burden of chronic illnesses in his family that he carries quietly, and of his remarkable humility. If you have traveled and worked at the PDA camp at Houma, Kevin is one of the persons who connect you to the Blue Bayou.

Our manager in the Gulf fired Kevin last week. As I understand it, the manager is in the same field of circumstance that he walked into previously with his eyes open.

It seems Kevin contracted a severe case of poison ivy at work while cutting the grass at Houma and had to stay out a couple or three days. He continued to submit his per diem. The per diem, paid out of PDA funds is about $40/day. I am told by my friends there that this was used as the pretense to fire him.

Oh, they also were not happy that he was driving his truck home. It seems our banker-manager in Louisville has decided the tax implication is too messy to deal with, volunteer staff need to move, buy their own car, ride a bike or walk to work, I guess. So let’s toss that on the pile of rationalizations as well. I know that the manager who fired Kevin used a PDA trailer to move from Orange Grove to New Orleans, I guess that personal use of a vehicle was ok. Or, maybe he didn’t see the parallel.

This Gulf manager who is responsible for this termination is paid maybe $60,000 or more from our PDA funds. I have no idea of the salary of the banker/manager in Louisville who is accountable for the HR issues, but I’m willing to surmise she lives comfortably, or to many of us, luxuriously in a large five figure, maybe more, atmosphere.

Isn’t it ironic that the people who are paid the least usually have the greater positive impact on operations and those paid so well have the more negative impact?

Of course Kevin could have sought worker’s compensation, I imagine. In other PDA cases of on-the-job injury that I know, the work site manager at Pearlington for example, PDA covered all the medical bills rather than file worker’s compensation claims. So much for the good man, Kevin – or corporate memory.

But getting back to Black Thursday, after all, I do know these staffers who are involved in this matter; and have met or worked with them. I find it as hard to think they, or I, have questionable motivation or sincerity.

I do know that they have only been to the Gulf a few times, or have recently come to work there in the last year after all the experienced people had left. I also know from observation that they have little appreciation and knowledge of how the mission actually works on the ground, or even what the reality of need is there. After almost four years of work, there is almost no written process documentation to use to set up new villages or to know what negative things happened to avoid them in the future.

We could do a constructive self-comparison by using UMCOR as a metric to see how we stack up but would we want to know the answer?

The longer I think about the predicament of these managers the more I come to the realization that while mismanagement is an immediate problem; an underlying problem is at work. It lies at the heart of what the church is about. It is the problem of not effecting service by personal example. In one context it is called servant leadership. (This also is the heart of good management, by the way for those with a secular view.)

There is an old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Let’s replace that unpleasant word “corrupts” and use “blinds” to be more civil. In my intensive Hebrew class we often times take a respite for a few minutes and talk about matters of faith and belief. We opined briefly about the moral spectrum of David (the king) one day. (I guess by happenstance my comment also applies to the governor of South Carolina who called on the life of David as a justification for his behavior.)

David was anointed to a great task and responsibility. It was a task of service to the Nation of Israel, actually to God. As with all good things, he started with great promise and heroic deeds but soon the power of his office overcame his vision of service and the office of privilege became his perspective on the world as it sank shamefully into murder, adultery and excess.

Perhaps that story remains as a sentinel for us. For what other purpose has a leader but to serve faithfully those who he (or she) leads? When service, not privilege, is foremost in one’s mind, so is probably humility, compassion, peace and justice.

One could argue it isn’t power but is greed, or vanity, but the argument begs the question. All three lead down to a very hard field. Once one steps over the line into this field and begins to think of leadership in the church as a job of privilege, all good is lost. One becomes no better than a hireling, or at worst, than a despot. (As some of my minister-friends know, a hireling has a free pass, no responsibility for the ends suffered by the sheep placed in his or her charge.)

I’m sure none of these PDA managers believe they are doing things wrong, are hirelings, or are doing a disservice to other people who are in service with them. In fact, I imagine they think they really haven’t done anything particularly wrong at all in these matters. After all, these people that have been dismissed are simply employees - they don’t even have the status or tenure of “real” employees.

I am sure that in some other place these people of management may have done good, but now they have obviously wandered into a “field of circumstance,” where exit, if an exit exists at all, can only be painful.

I was reminded that the chief cause of blindness is what we have already seen (or done). It is a painful thing to realize how privilege inures one to compassion, peace and just action. Compassion, Peace and Justice, does that sound familiar?

So, my good friends at PDA, my readers, and me, when Compassion, Peace and Justice come to mind, please think about the difference between privilege and service; and act accordingly. We aren’t a corporation. We are, ab initio, a church sitting on a hill.

Peace and Grace,

Day 464 - Home

A quote from an unknown source:

You are not home.
There is a home.
Anything leading home is a blessing.

Day 463 - In The Light of Morning

The light of this morning reveals a narrow door standing open before me. As I step through it in about an hour and a half, my past becomes a remembered presence. Contemplating with a little unease the challenges before me, the realization dawns that the word “return” has an uncertain meaning.

Day 460 - Black Thursday Reprise

Black Thursday needs a reflection from old history.

So, the two-way message for the prudent one among us is to recognize what people who negotiate with you expect of you.

Remember, life among people is mostly a negotiated process so live and learn.

(note: for the full text of this post. contact me.)