Our St. Paul Newsmakers

The Rev. Sheila Cumbest has been named one of 16 clergy and lay delegates to represent Mississippi at the UMC General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, May 23-June 2, 2008. Ministerial Services director for the Mississippi Conference, Rev. Cumbest served as a delegate to the 2000 and 2004 General Conferences. She is an ordained deacon and has served Jackson Galloway, Lucedale First and Jackson Alta Woods.

Elizabeth Cumbest in backstage Interview at Youth 2007 in Greensboro, NC.

From "The Methodist Advocate:"

Miss Elizabeth Cumbest, the 16-year-old daughter of the Revs. Chris and Sheila Cumbest, is one of 16 delegates appointed to attend the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference to be held at Lake Junaluska Assembly in North Carolina in July, 2008. A first-time delegate, Elizabeth is a junior at East Central High School in Hurley.

Denman Award Winner Mark Gehres

Photo Courtesy of Mike DuBose

United Methodist News Service

Mark Gehres, finding the reins of recovery in his own hands in the days following Katrina, helped put together a "tent city" to house volunteers at St. Paul United Methodist Church’s east campus in Ocean Springs in the weeks and months following Hurricane Katrina.

UMC Conference gives Denman award to St. Paul’s post-Katrina ‘go-to’ guy

            Our own Mark Gehres has been named the 2007 lay recipient of the Harry Denman Award by the Mississippi United Methodist Conference in recognition of his work following Hurricane Katrina.

            “Mark heard God’s call and did it just because it needed to be done,” said the Rev. Mitchell Hedgepeth, senior minister at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Ocean Springs, in announcing the award to his congregation.

            His own home spared by Hurricane Katrina, Gehres, an Internet router and engineer, drove to the east campus of his church to see if he could help others. Four weeks later, he was coordinating one of the largest massive relief efforts on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

            “God put me there to do it,” he said. “This isn’t what I do; it was way out of the realm of my normal routine.”
            In fact, Gehres told Kathy Gilbert of the United Methodist News Service that he was “the last person on earth” to lead, as St. Paul, at its new campus addition, became ground zero for disaster recovery for countless area residents. Gehres became the “go-to” man.

            Gehres believes the opening of the new St. Paul expansion prior to the hurricane was fortuitous. “We had this large area beside our church for the tents and all this room inside for operating,” he said

            Hedgepeth reported in early June that more than 14,000 volunteers had come to St. Paul from all over the United States and Canada to help people rebuild since Katrina. They were housed and fed at the church’s new campus and its industrial-size kitchen.

            Passersby, post-Katrina, watched a tent city take shape to house workers. Gehres filled his days procuring supplies, anything from garbage bags to blankets to fully-equipped, air-conditioned tents. Pointing to the stacks of cleaning supplies, blankets and baby diapers, someone told Gehres the site looked like a Wal-Mart. Gehres said, “I told them this was “God-Mart.’”

            Today, St. Paul continues to host about 100 volunteers a week. The tents have been replaced by temporary modular-constructed, air-conditioned dormitories. Volunteers continue to be fed in the church’s cafeteria.

            Gehres is co-chairman of the Communications Ministry at St. Paul. He received the Denman Award at a special presentation at the UMC’s Annual Conference in Jackson on June 12.