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[00:00:17] The Missional Life - Dan: Welcome back to Mission Life podcast today. We have Daniel Geraci joining us. Daniel is the founder and CEO of United in Crisis, an organization dedicated to equipping churches to be the frontline responders in their own communities during disasters.

[00:00:29] The Missional Life - Dan: His new book, United in Crisis,

[00:00:37] The Missional Life - Dan: Daniel's passion is inspiring churches to reveal Christ's love through practical action in times of crisis. Daniel, welcome to the show.

[00:00:44] The Missional Life - Amanda: Welcome.

[00:00:45] The Missional Life - Dan: Hey, thank you both for having me on. It's a blessing to be here. Amen. Daniel, disasters are something most people hope they'll never have to face, yet they're becoming more frequent and severe.

[00:00:57] The Missional Life - Dan: What first inspired you to step into this space and start United in Crisis?

[00:01:02] Daniel Geraci: Well, all the people I've talked to about this same very question, none of us ever expected to be in the business. No one ever said, mom, I want to be in disaster relief. Maybe a few, but very few of us. But my journey actually was working on a healthy fast food concept until Katrina happened in the city of Austin, where at the time I was still very involved with churches, working with churches to pray for the transformation of our city, Austin, Texas.

[00:01:30] Daniel Geraci: And when Katrina brought over 6000 evacuees into our community from that devastating storm in New Orleans, we suddenly were faced with a massive crisis that our city had never seen before. And it was in the middle of helping these evacuees to get out of a very. In, you know, very tight, tightly squeezed, filled with survivor convention center where a lot of people weren't doing well in there when we began to pull them out and get them to be housed by churches to, to, to take and give them more space, maybe even members house them at their house.

[00:02:08] Daniel Geraci: The Lord suddenly spoke to me in the midst of that crisis. And and that's where a vision came in just a flash, wrote it down on a napkin of how the Lord wanted churches to work together in time of crisis, how he wanted to mobilize them, how he wanted them trained, equipped, and prepared, and also to shepherd families or walk alongside of families until they are back on their feet.

[00:02:33] Daniel Geraci: All of that came in a download and I went about in the greater Austin area talking with churches, key leaders leaders over denomination saying, what do you think about this? They, they felt like it was from the Lord tried to, to launch it back then, but it wasn't the right timing. The Lord had me sit on it for about three and a half years until 2009 is when we launched.

[00:02:57] Daniel Geraci: The first, what we call crisis response church network, and that was the Austin Disaster Relief Network, and that was in March of 2009. So that's kind of how I got in the business, focusing on fast food, healthy fast food, which still would be a great concept out there for the church and the people of our community, our world, but that's not the plan that the Lord had in place for me.

[00:03:23] Daniel Geraci: So.

[00:03:23] The Missional Life - Dan: You know, sometimes God speaks to something and it takes a little bit longer. We all want to hear from God and started immediately. And sometimes he's placing that vision and dream inside of our hearts and it's for a little bit different time. We just need to be patient sometimes for the right time to unfold and when it does It it really happens.

[00:03:42] The Missional Life - Dan: And so, you know, it's amazing how really out of such difficult situations God can bring something really good. And I know you've written a book about this and your book outlines a model for churches to begin to prepare for crises.

[00:03:54] The Missional Life - Dan: Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

[00:03:56] Daniel Geraci: Yeah, great question. So with the Austin Disaster Relief Network over the last 15 years, the Lord helped us build that model by allowing a lot of disasters to happen. Now, I think it wasn't built and it will come, you know, it was like God so loved greater Austin area that he was going to raise his churches up together to mobilize together, knowing Disasters are coming.

[00:04:21] Daniel Geraci: To give it context, prior to 2009, there had been a total of nine major disasters in the greater Austin area. When we launched between the next 14 12 years that I was director, executive director for ADRN and founder 16 major disasters, three of those catastrophic, seven of those historic, I mean, we became the fourth most disaster prone city in the nation over those 14 12 years.

[00:04:48] Daniel Geraci: We got a lot of practice from fires, floods tornadoes you know, everything but an earthquake and a volcano. We even had a bomber. We had a plane crash into the IRS building. We had mysterious gases released downtown to the city, ran out of water three times. And that's not, you know, The other 16 are outside of that.

[00:05:14] Daniel Geraci: We had the winter storm. We had just some catastrophic events that shook our city And so through that the lord really began developing the model on how to mobilize the church the kinds of trainings the church needs to be equipped in and Most importantly how to walk with survivors and help them get back on the feet and this is where the the gospel really has the best chance to not only be spoken, but for the survivor to receive it because by this time of getting through the ABCs of making sure they have food, water, clothing, they're back in some form of safe and clean place to stay in for a temporary spot.

[00:05:54] Daniel Geraci: They're not quite ready yet to hear the gospel until once they, they get past that point of some of those necessities. And so, and then the midst of all this, we begin to have other people. Other cities say, wow, we love what you're doing. Can you train our city? And next thing you know, we have trained 24 other cities in this model and 12 of them launched their own crisis response church network.

[00:06:18] Daniel Geraci: And out of that, we basically formed United in Crisis because we realized ADRN, for short, Austin Disaster Relief Network, was great with the community response and even helping and quick trainings. other cities when they needed it the most, but they didn't have the capacity to walk with these cities for several months, which really what it takes to have a successful church launch of a network.

[00:06:43] Daniel Geraci: You know, what we do is, is, is kind of like building a fire department for the body of Christ to organize them in a way with tools, equipment, training setting them up with the government to be really one of the best assets that government will have in their community. Disaster strikes or any form of Christ strikes.

[00:07:01] Daniel Geraci: They can depend on the church to mobilize thousands of volunteers in order to be able to respond and ultimately meet the needs of the people impacted by that crisis. And at the end of the day, it helps the government look amazing. They love it. The church is now exalted very much like the way Daniel had front row seats with You know joseph with pharaoh there's that name daniel joseph you know, but the combination of those two and that kind of favor really is what the church wants in a community Because you ultimately want to be relevant in the eyes of the community So that way they say they step back and say I never knew the church was this good So the model will help the church really Function well with the government and function well together, at the same time glorifying the lord most importantly Amen,

[00:07:55] The Missional Life - Dan: there's so much in that and a couple things that stood out to me.

[00:07:58] The Missional Life - Dan: First of all, is that you Identified a problem. You didn't go in there and say I have this great idea. Let's go put it into action you responded to a situation a problem and that's often how god works in our lives He works with us allows us to see something and you know, we start praying about it and you know, there's that song like hey Like god, you got to do something.

[00:08:18] The Missional Life - Dan: He's like I did I created you right there you probably all heard that song and I love how you were willing to to respond to that and in that you have seen growth and you've been able to help through so many different situations and what else stood out to me is the phrase depend on the church that the government can depend on the church.

[00:08:38] The Missional Life - Dan: And I, I love that because so often we see church and, and a state or church and government at odds. And here we see them linking and coming together to solve a problem. And. Really, the church should be reliable. We should be the number one advocate that comes in there and say, Hey, there's an issue. .

[00:08:56] The Missional Life - Dan: Let us come in here and help solve this problem. And I love how you have created a model that allows the church be The church that God truly intended it to be.

[00:09:07] The Missional Life - Amanda: I just wanted to ask as well, you know, pioneering this sort of ministry that does these incredible things.

[00:09:14] The Missional Life - Amanda: What was that like pioneering this and how did God build your team?

[00:09:20] Daniel Geraci: You know when your face was something that hadn't been done before according to my good friends at Samaritan's Purse or some of the other Large organizations like that. They said we we've never seen anything like this. It was yeah, we could we could look to anything else any other example out there, but you know It made us look to the lord.

[00:09:37] Daniel Geraci: So it was You know, whenever god gives you something you can't put your arms around praise the lord, right? you feel weak and Unequipped but that's exactly where he can use do something big. We always say he makes you look like you know what you're doing at the end of the day. If you can submit, you ultimately will look like, you know what you're doing as long as you depend on him.

[00:09:59] Daniel Geraci: So, so it was daunting. But the, you know, our prayer was Lord, if the Googles of the world, the intels of the world, the Dells of the world can have the kind of people that have surely why not the church of greater Austin send us the best people possible. Volunteers and then ultimately staff that can have the mindset that are willing to surrender God But they're gifted also in these areas and you know what the Lord's are bringing the most amazing team together You know right from the start we loved each other We became one united body first in order to raise up a body of Christ United body you have to become one internally And so that's what we became right off the bat.

[00:10:41] Daniel Geraci: And so it was just through prayer. Nothing, you cannot launch anything at this level. You know, the devil's not cheering you on to unite the church because he wanted them divided. You know, he's not, you know, cheering you on to equip the church because he didn't want them equipped. He surely doesn't want you to sponsor a walk with families and share the gospel.

[00:11:01] Daniel Geraci: So he's coming at you at every one of these angles, unless you build a prayer team. Really, I have to go back and say that was the First step was building a team of friends and family that would pray weekly for us that we would send out prayer request, and it was just piece by piece, block by block. You know, this this network was built.

[00:11:22] Daniel Geraci: The good news is now for those listening. If you're your heart's being stirred, you might be a Daniel kind of anointed guy or Joseph for your community that we can take you from zero to 100 much faster, kind of like a McDonald's can. If you become an entrepreneur and an owner of McDonald's, you go through Berger University, get training.

[00:11:43] Daniel Geraci: That's what we created United in Crisis for us. We can help launch a church network and they could become. pretty strong route to shoot just because we have all the tools and all the docs and all the equipping and training for them to come around the bat and to begin with their network in their community.

[00:12:03] The Missional Life - Dan: I think that's so important too, because systems matter, right? You look at a football coach and the athletes come in and they trust the system. They do what he tells them to do. Or you look at a physical trainer and you want the results. You just do what the trainer tells you to do.

[00:12:17] The Missional Life - Dan: And I love how you guys have built the, the system and you've been through this. You know, it's not your first roadie. You've been through it many, many times and there's no need to reinvent the wheel there. It's just, hey, use these systems. Here's some steps. And there might be obviously a little bit different depending on the situation and the scenario and the context and the geography of the situation.

[00:12:39] The Missional Life - Dan: But all in all, there are some very, very, very Okay. Similar building blocks and you don't need to find out what those are. It's already been discovered And so how does united in crisis go about? Training the local churches to be effective and training responders in the community

[00:12:55] Daniel Geraci: Yeah, well, it typically starts two way either one a disaster strikes a community Which is not a great place to rise up because it's an exhausting position.

[00:13:06] Daniel Geraci: You're going to be very tired but still worthwhile. They could reach out to us. We would be like Los Angeles. We've already put many feelers out to several pastors. Now we can't. Tell them what to do. They ultimately have to be invited, but we could go out there and pull together the church and cast vision of what it could look like and begin organizing them in such a way where duplicated services would not happen where Cleanup would happen in a very organized manner where sponsoring or shepherding, walking with families, because every one of those families that have been impacted, the goodness of God is on trial in their eyes.

[00:13:48] Daniel Geraci: You know, the, the, the insurance companies and governments already saying this was an act of God. And then at the same time, the devil's whispering in the ear. God doesn't love you. If he did, why would he allow this to happen to you? Or if there was a loving God, you know, if it's such a loving God, why would he allow this to happen?

[00:14:05] Daniel Geraci: So see the goodness of God's on trial. And if the church is not organized, prepared and ready, And not there. We have to be there, or these people walk away with this crisis, which is actually worse than the actual physical crisis they're going through, because ultimately, if they spend eternity in hell, that is the greatest disaster of all.

[00:14:26] Daniel Geraci: And so our hope is to get the church in there to walk alongside these families, organize them, prepare them. The other way would be, it's blue skies, it's beautiful outside, but hey, a guy like. A guy that's feeling called to be the Joseph, so to speak, for the community to rally the church to get the church repaired and ready.

[00:14:46] Daniel Geraci: Maybe they are running a nonprofit now. Maybe their former executive director or a business owner that's just on fire for God or a pastor that's stepping down can make a great leader. They can come out where we would spend the first six weeks with them, walking alongside of them, training them here at our headquarters.

[00:15:06] Daniel Geraci: And then we walk with them for over a 12 month period to make sure that their network is, is fully up and running and thriving in their community. You know, we teach them how to connect with churches, how to have those meetings, how to put on trainings, you know, the trains that you would put on. We have it all set ready to go.

[00:15:24] Daniel Geraci: And of course, they don't have to use any of it. There's just five things that we ask every church to do. We're just asked him to establish prayer because you cannot do it without it. Unify the church in their community. Quip the saints for the work of the ministry. Shepherd families as the Good Samaritan story tells us that what we're to do when people are in crisis.

[00:15:44] Daniel Geraci: And then lastly, preach the gospel. Those are the five key points of of what we do to help raise up a Christ response church network. So important

[00:15:55] The Missional Life - Dan: that number five preach the gospel because , There's not really a big difference between secular organizations that come in and do emergency Response and christian if you don't preach the gospel that number five you can they can do all those four really but man, it's really important and that's what's most important is that we do indeed preach the gospel And I was just thinking too even in like in the personal development space.

[00:16:16] The Missional Life - Dan: They talk about this equation, right? They say preparation plus opportunity equals success or success equals preparation plus opportunity and I think about that Applying that in this situation that preparation Plus unfortunately, we would say opportunity here.

[00:16:30] The Missional Life - Dan: This would be a crisis equal success, right? So if you can be prepared and you have a crisis come you can be successful And so I'm just wondering what are some practical resources that churches can start gathering now to be more successful? better prepared for a crisis because it's so much better to be ahead of the game versus behind the game, right?

[00:16:47] The Missional Life - Dan: It's hard to be a blessing if you're not prepared yourself, right?

[00:16:49] The Missional Life - Dan: So how can people and churches have practical resources , and start gathering those now? What can they do?

[00:16:55] Daniel Geraci: You know, outside of forming a network and working with us I would recommend a couple things. Number one is a lot of times when a big disaster happens in your community, if you yourself were not prepared at home, you didn't have, you know, a week or two weeks of preparedness items, because a lot of times when these big events happen, all the resources are gone within the community.

[00:17:16] Daniel Geraci: So suddenly now you're struggling, your family, you're going to have to take care of family. So you're basically out. No longer able to help somebody else out So number one make sure whether it's the whole church or the people within the church are prepared and one of the best Programs out there is called preparedness peace If they go to preparedness peace.

[00:17:37] Daniel Geraci: org, it's a six week a great bible study over six weeks where it's week by week you get together with a group of people and you get together Play the videos and they'll tell you how to get your family prepared or in context how to get your church family prepared. The second one would be I would, if I was a church pastor, I would have my own church coordinator for disaster response or crisis response and build a core team.

[00:18:05] Daniel Geraci: That was one of the ideas the Lord's gave me. It's, it's detailed in the book, so the book will help out give ideas also. But When crisis happens, one of the first things that happens with a church is the pastor and the staff get involved heavily And they lose focus of their work their focus of, you know, making sure that their own community, their own people are doing well.

[00:18:28] Daniel Geraci: And now they're sucked away into this vortex of disaster relief and they get burned out. And sometimes the church either implodes. I've seen that happen. More than you can imagine. I've even seen pastors quit because they're so overwhelmed of what has happened to their city. So having that team in place and relying on that team where the pastor can still pastor and the staff still being the staff with some involvement, obviously, but but this group being under the leadership of the pastor.

[00:19:00] Daniel Geraci: That has helped the greater Austin churches. Everyone on the network there has that team in place or at least should have that team in place. And man, they can they can walk with 80 families while still doing church as we normally know it. And, you know, big disasters in play because you have a network mobilizing volunteers.

[00:19:20] Daniel Geraci: And so the pastors, it's the perfect team. Set up for for any city. It's another reason why you'd want a church network. But I will say this one last point on preparedness. If you're not prepared, I found out this very in the early stages of doing what I do. I've heard this for more than than handfuls of emergency operation directors leading cities and their operation centers.

[00:19:45] Daniel Geraci: They said the church is the second disaster. We're in a time of disaster. I never knew that. And I said, Well, why is that? And he says, because they're not prepared. They come with the right heart. They knock on the door and say, where the church let us in. Kind of not in the best humility and what happens is because they don't have the training, they put their foot in their mouth, they tell people they're going to hell on day one while they're standing in the rubble.

[00:20:11] Daniel Geraci: I have been called out so many times thinking that it was our volunteers that were preaching the hell and brimstone message to an old lady that's A tornado just happened like 30 minutes ago, and she's just wanting water, food, and she's dazed and confused, and she's being told she's going to hell. That has happened so many times, and so the government tells us they would rather not see the church at all out there you know, in those kind of events, so you know, we not, we need to get trained, we need to be prepared and ready.

[00:20:45] The Missional Life - Dan: Preparation matters and, and leadership matters too. The story that came to my mind biblically is , talking to the Moses, like, look, like you can't do all this stuff yourself. You have to , get some teams, get some people out there that handle some of these things for you.

[00:20:59] The Missional Life - Dan: And I think so many times leaders are so used to doing things themselves that they, get burnt out. Anyways, I just think that's just so important. Can you tell us about a story or give us an example of what it looks like when everything goes fairly well, according to plan or, or has a system of churches in place that can help.

[00:21:21] Daniel Geraci: Yeah, you know, as you know, disasters aren't planned, right? So they're not on the calendar. Now there's been circumstances where the Lord has given us through our prayer teams up front notice that something's coming or we suddenly see a shift in donations coming at new levels and people losing their jobs or they say, Hey, I 40 hours a week until I find another job.

[00:21:46] Daniel Geraci: It's amazing how that kind of stuff and we all kind of look at each other going. Yeah. I think a disaster is about to happen. Then boom, something big happens like Harvey. So I'll give you the story of Harvey. Actually, I'll give you a winter storm because winter storm, Texas winter storm, we're in winter season now.

[00:22:01] Daniel Geraci: So people can identify this. They're both catastrophic events, but the winter storm that hit Texas in 2021 is a disaster. It wasn't that it was cold. So for those up north listening to this, it's nothing to do with that, but we're talking about ice half an inch ice along with a foot of snow, which Austin, Texas, we might get two, three inches, not a foot, but it was the ice that crippled everyone and three degree temperatures that because We don't have the kind of pipes are wrapped like the North does.

[00:22:32] Daniel Geraci: We're having buildings with busted pipes all over the place. 400 apartment complexes had busted pipes thousands of homes busted pipes. So no AC, no, no heat because the power's out, no water because the water system's down because the trees fell over on them because they had ice on them and all those.

[00:22:53] Daniel Geraci: Those big oaks, Texas oaks are falling all over the place. And so it was a catastrophic disaster. People that were inside their home were freezing. They're getting sprayed with water from their pipes. So they're wet, cold, no heat. So this is life and death condition. And no one could drive on the roads because you have inch of ice.

[00:23:15] Daniel Geraci: Not even, we had to pick up fire department people to get them to the fire department because they didn't have a four wheel drive. And even with four wheel drives on ice, it's not the healthiest thing to do. But the, the, the 9 11 call center was so jammed. 9 1 1 call center was so jammed with calls that the fire chief asked us if our call center, the body of Christ, could take on calls for them.

[00:23:40] Daniel Geraci: And they would handle fire, will handle all the other. calls that were emergency like need food, need a ride to a warming shelter. So our call centers taken anywhere from 1000 to 20, 000 inbound outbound calls. This is the church. Keep in mind, we have our own command and call center just like the city does.

[00:24:00] Daniel Geraci: And so they were beginning to take in all those calls. And overnight, the mayor asked us to raise up a brigade of four wheel drive vehicles in his desperation. We're talking about desperate 1. 4 million people. Everyone's being impacted. Phones are ring off the hook. And so within 12 hours, we had an I. T.

[00:24:20] Daniel Geraci: Guy step all night long. Build a dispatch system. This is what I tell you. The Lord makes you look like you know what you're doing. We're not Uber. We never dispatched a single car prior to that. Next thing you know, we had over a thousand four wheel drive vehicle owners sign up and now we're mobilizing the church to pick up all these people and drop them off at the you know, the warming centers, which we had churches overnight.

[00:24:48] Daniel Geraci: Rise up and say we'll become a warming center. So it was the church, church, church, church as the answer operating these kinds of things in the background. Yeah, we're picking up a key officials mom, you know, that calls said my mom stuck. Can you so that way I can focus on the city where you pick her up.

[00:25:07] Daniel Geraci: So we're doing favors like that. Also dropping off food. People had to use ice and snow to flush their toilets because there was no water. Mhm. Right. You know, and so with busted pipes, you're not going to get water. Well, the next crisis was the plumbing crisis because Texas, you have to be certified. So the government first didn't get it.

[00:25:26] Daniel Geraci: And so no one, the plumbers were months backed up to get your your plumbing fix would take months since that means no showers and because you have to turn off the water because your pipes are busted or water is going to flow out. And so it's a matter of crisis. I mean, yeah. everywhere here. No water, right?

[00:25:44] Daniel Geraci: So so we had to get bring in shower units and washer and dryer units and all these years we had eight locations of churches with shower and laundry units. Eso again, the church is the hero. The church is the answer. It wasn't about the Austin Disaster Relief Network. At the end of the day, people went, Wow, 80 year end is so amazing.

[00:26:05] Daniel Geraci: It would be a failure. But if people said wow, I never thought the church like this before I need to know this jesus That's a win and so that kind of thing multitudes of people coming into the kingdom of god The church going out and help now repairing all those homes. We were able to pull together Water mission, the ministry that they had hundreds of plumbers that they could bring to austin area And so we helped mobilize all those plumbers and to for free fix people's plumbing I mean, it's just It was a Super Bowl of a disaster response.

[00:26:39] Daniel Geraci: Of course, I'm keeping it short the story, but the church Just did so well I mean the light of god shone so bright in that community and and we were the ones that the city depended on And like when you get dependent on you have to come through or if you ever make the city look bad You're you're in trouble and most likely you're not going to respond again.

[00:27:00] Daniel Geraci: So that's just how how it goes Amen.

[00:27:04] The Missional Life - Dan: Wow. And I know your new book, United in Crisis, is full of other stories and other situations like that. Where can listeners get that book and connect with you guys?

[00:27:13] Daniel Geraci: I forgot to say, by the way, we had over 1. 2 billion potential views on social media.

[00:27:19] Daniel Geraci: There is Actors, actresses in Los Angeles to I can't name their names, but some of the largest billionaires given to that and they weren't even Christian. So when the church unites like that, it begins attracting even outside the city to see people around the world want to give into this mobilized effort that's going on in the Christ gone on the city.

[00:27:41] Daniel Geraci: So that see a millionaire won't give a million dollars to a church, but to a network that Even folks have not even born again. Singers, stars, you name it. It all came in again. I'm not gonna mention the names, but they're names that would blow your mind that funded into that relief effort to the church.

[00:28:01] Daniel Geraci: Okay, so where do you get the book? You go to Amazon. That's really the only place I've got it for sale. You can go to our website United in Crisis book. That's the book website. And I have a lot of videos on these stories that you can go there and watch. All the videos are there that go along with the book and give you a little more details or visuals of and then if you're a community out there that wants to launch a church network, it's just simply go to united in crisis.

[00:28:32] Daniel Geraci: org and you can say, Hey, I want to info session with you and we'll be happy to talk to you.

[00:28:39] The Missional Life - Dan: Awesome. One other really quick question here. Kind of a one you've probably never been asked but . If you could assemble a dream team of biblical characters to respond to a disaster, who would it be and why?

[00:28:52] Daniel Geraci: Okay, so obviously, you know, Moses is good because, you know, he had a direct link to the Lord's face to face. I want Moses on my team. You know, Elijah could call down fire. Now. We probably don't need the fire side, but maybe water if it wasn't These guys are walking supernatural favor there. Those would be two good ones And then of course, you can't go wrong with the apostle paul Hearing on the the church in preaching the gospel.

[00:29:20] Daniel Geraci: Of course what peter on the team, too Hey, you you want them all right, you know, of course jesus is already in the vault. He's the first responder You Last responder he never leaves so he's a given to always be there. So amen.

[00:29:34] The Missional Life - Dan: Awesome Well, what a blessing to have you on the show today We speak blessing over you over your ministry and we're thankful for You and the ministry being such a great representation Of the body of christ of jesus in the midst of a situation.

[00:29:46] The Missional Life - Dan: We just speak protection and blessing over you guys as you continue to minister in all these crises.

[00:29:51] Daniel Geraci: Thank you so much. So such a blessing to meet you both and thank you for having me on the show.

[00:29:56] Daniel Geraci: Amen.