Mission Presbytery Churches should use this plan as a guide when preparing their own individual disaster plans to guide emergency actions prior to, during and after any emergency. Pre-planning is the key to being ready for any disaster. The steps taken before and immediately after an event will have a positive effect on the members of your congregation. Many hazards do not lend themselves to prior notice. Therefore, this plan will address both prior-notice events and no-notice events. Realizing that each of our member churches is different, this document provides guidance to help you formalize your individual plans. Each of your plans should include the major components of this plan while adding any additional procedures that your individual church feels necessary. In addition, use of this plan as a guide will help standardize the Presbytery’s approach. There are online forms within this document that will help with your compiling of data for your church and help Mission Presbytery in the compilation of data needed to serve the 66 counties in our geographic region. Simply stated, this plan defines the roles and procedures that will enable the Presbytery to: 

1. Identify existing individual and corporate resources within the Presbytery congregations that can be applied to disaster preparedness, mitigation and response.

2. Build individual and corporate resources in the Presbytery congregations to assist in disaster preparedness, mitigation and response. 

3. Link individual and corporate resources in the Presbytery congregations to meet humanitarian needs of human-caused and natural disasters and reduce vulnerability of people to future potential disasters. 

4. Offer aid to those most vulnerable by identifying individuals needing assistance and mapping their locations before a crisis occurs.