Community Corner

Church Group Going to Rebuild, Clean Up Oklahoma

Greendale High School teen Alexa Unrein is among seven members of King of Glory Church heading to Moore, OK, on Sunday to help with disaster-relief efforts.

With acres and acres of homes leveled, destroyed and blown away by a massive tornado that ripped through Oklahoma, it’s hard to imagine seven people from Wisconsin making much of a dent in the cleanup and rebuilding efforts.

But members of King of Glory Lutheran Church in Greenfield are going to try.

At 4:30 a.m. Sunday, Congregation President Chuck Smalley and six others will load up into a Suburban and make the 15-hour drive into the heart of tornado alley, and for the next three days will do whatever they can to rebuild ravaged Moore, OK, where 24 people died last month.

Find out what's happening in Greendalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“Where do you start? I don’t know, but you just have to start,” Smalley said. “We’re going down with a purpose.”

Smalley is making the trip with fellow church members Tammy Unrein and Charlene Cline, as well as four teenagers: Whitnall High School’s Erika Stupek and Rian Ward, Greendale’s Alexa Unrein and Oak Creek’s Alyssa Balistreri.

Find out what's happening in Greendalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

It’s a mission trip unlike any other King of Glory has participated in.

“We do mission trips every year, or we try to, but we really didn’t have enough money to do one this year,” said Vicki Jensen, a church member who has helped organize the disaster-relief trip. “All of a sudden, the tornadoes hit and we were like, ‘We’ve got to go.’”

Jensen went online and found the name of a pastor of a church in nearby Shawnee, who invited the Kings of Glory group down. That church, St. John’s Evangelical, is organizing the Wisconsin’s contingent’s itinerary.

“We’re going to be cutting up trees, moving them around, and rebuilding buildings, porches, decks … whatever they need,” Smalley said.

Smalley is loading up a trailer with every tool imaginable, “anything I’d need to completely rehabilitate a house.”

“This is a work trip,” Kings of Glory Pastor Ingrid Huebner said.

King of Glory is at the intersection of 84th Street and Cold Spring Road. It has about 400 members, a little more than a quarter of which that attend regular services. Donations for this effort have been pouring in, which isn’t always the case when it comes to the church’s normal mission trips.

“We’re a small church; we don’t really have a lot of resources, but when we told people we were going to do this, it’s literally been a hundred dollars here, a hundred dollars there,” Jensen said. “That’s never happened, that I can recall.”

Smalley’s never been on a mission trip, let alone a one in response to a disaster. But the former firefighter knows what it’s like to help those in need, and he’s looking forward to that challenge.

And while he admits the group he’s leading might not accomplish a lot compared to what has to get done, he’s confident they’ll help in some way.

“We’re going to try to do something positive for people, even if it’s just them knowing that other people who don’t even know them are coming to help them,” Smalley said. “We’re part of a church, and once you’re in a church, you’re supposed to go out and find others that need assistance and help them whenever you can. If they’re in trouble, you help them out. It’s just the right thing to do.”


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here