Holston Minister Reaches Out to Suffering New Yorkers

W hile Americans struggled with shock and fear the day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Holston minister drove to New York to offer comfort to a fallen city.

The Rev. Jerry Everly, ETSU Wesley Foundation director, spent Sept. 12-16 ministering to New Yorkers at Marble Collegiate Church. From his post in midtown Manhattan, he saw smoke billowing from the hole in the cityscape where the World Trade Center towers previously stood.

“It was like seeing a beautiful woman with two front teeth missing,” he said. “It was just eerie.”

On the morning of Sept. 12, Everly was enjoying “quiet time” at his Johnson City home when he felt an urgent need to go where he knew people were suffering. Having served as an associate pastor at Marble Collegiate from 1983 to 1990, he thought his former church could use the extra help.

“I pictured the church with the doors open, people praying,” he said. “I knew how chaotic it would be for the pastors.”

After calling his former senior pastor, Everly was packed and ready to go within four hours. Lara Lundy, an East Tennessee State University student, asked to go along and help where she could. The two took off just after noon.

Carolyn Everly, a clinical social worker who works with her husband at Munsey Counseling Center, said she had “mixed emotions” about his decision to go.

“I had this personal need for him to stay here, because when something like this happens, we all want to connect with those we love,” she said. “But I also wanted him to go because he felt he needed to. It was my own inner conflict.”

Over the next days, Everly would comfort and pray with many New Yorkers who felt devastated by their losses. Wearing robes so passersby would immediately identify them as clergy, Everly and his colleagues spent most of their days standing outside the church on Fifth Avenue.

“Several people just shook my hand and said, ‘I want to thank you for being out where people can see you,’” he said. One man came by in a hard hat and said, “I’m going down [to the disaster site]. Do you have a prayer for me?”

Another person asked Everly to pray for a roommate who had been missing since the terrorist attacks. A crying woman confessed that she had escaped from the World Trade Center. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she said. “God saved me, and I don’t know why.”

“I could tell that people were stunned and shocked,” the Johnson City minister said. “When your roots are shaken, you want to find a solid place to stand. They saw the church and pastors in robes as something they could hold on to.”

Worship services held at Marble Collegiate – a part of the Reform Church of America and Norman Vincent Peale’s former church — drew high numbers, especially the 11 a.m. service on Sunday, Sept. 16. About 2,000 worshippers attended a service that usually attracts 1,200.

At one point during his visit, Everly went to the command post set up for families and friends to report missing persons. He intended to offer his services as a counselor. What he found was “chaos.”

“It was hot and crowded, with about four or five TVs set up and lines that went around three sides of the building.” When he finally located the right line to stand in, he was handed several forms to fill out before his counseling services could be considered. Everly gave up and went back to the church. “I was already where I was supposed to be.”

Back safely in Tennessee, Everly now tells his story at Munsey Memorial UMC and its counseling center. In a program he calls “Being at Ground Zero: Dealing with Emotions,” the minister draws on his experiences in a suffering city, using the same advice he offered to its victims:

“Love as many people as you can, as deeply as you can, as long as you can.”

back to The Call home

Get Your Church's Webmaster Involved with the NEW United Methodist Web Ministries Guild