This is my first summer in West Virginia.
It is not, however, my first summer in Appalachia.
For many years I have come to love these mountains and the people who call them home. Appalachian summers have their own rhythm. They invite us onto front porches and into lawn chairs after the heat of the day has passed. Church homecomings, vacation Bible schools, county fairs, and family reunions fill our calendars. Children chase lightning bugs across freshly cut yards. Neighbors linger a little longer in conversation after worship. There is a gentleness to summer that reminds us life is meant to be lived together.
As I begin discovering West Virginia more deeply, I’m finding that the Mountain State shares that same rhythm—along with something else.
If you’ve lived here very long, you know that summer is also a season of contrasts.
One afternoon can bring brilliant sunshine, while the next delivers thunderstorms powerful enough to wash away roads, flood homes, and forever change a family’s story. We have seen that again in recent weeks. As floodwaters rose in communities across our state, they reminded us how quickly life can change.
Yet they also reminded us of something else.
Long before the television cameras arrive, long before national attention turns toward our hills, the people of West Virginia are already showing up.
Church fellowship halls become distribution centers. Sanctuaries become places of prayer and refuge. Pickup trucks haul bottled water instead of camping gear. Volunteers trade summer weekends for muck boots and work gloves. Pastors become counselors. Neighbors become family.
This is the Church at its best.
The West Virginia Council of Churches is blessed to work alongside extraordinary partners through West Virginia Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (WVVOAD). These organizations, congregations, and countless volunteers rarely seek recognition. They simply ask, “Who needs help?” and then they go.
That quiet faithfulness is one of the greatest gifts of the Church.
It’s easy to think of ministry as something that happens inside a church building on Sunday morning. Scripture tells a different story. Jesus consistently met people where life was happening—along roadsides, around dinner tables, beside fishing boats, and in the midst of storms. The Church has always been strongest when it leaves the sanctuary and walks toward those who are hurting.
If this first West Virginia summer has taught me anything, it is this: these mountains are beautiful, but it is the people who make them holy places. Time and again, I have watched neighbors become the hands and feet of Christ for one another.
Summer reminds us that faith grows outdoors. It grows on front porches and around picnic tables. It grows in conversations between neighbors. It grows while rebuilding a stranger’s home or sharing a meal with someone who has lost nearly everything.
In every season, the Church is called to make visible the love of Christ. But somehow, during the long days of summer, we catch glimpses of that calling a little more clearly.
As we enjoy vacations, reunions, county fairs, and evenings beneath fireflies, let us also remember those whose summer has taken an unexpected turn. Pray for families recovering from floods. Support the organizations serving on the ground. Check on a neighbor. Offer a helping hand. Sometimes the most ordinary acts of kindness become the clearest witness to God’s extraordinary grace.
Summer reminds us that storms will come.
It also reminds us that, by God’s grace, none of us has to weather them alone.
That may be the truest picture of the Church there is.