PHILADELPHIA – Members of Proclamation Community Church and Calvary Christian Church are feeling the weight and impact of a devastating plane crash that claimed the lives of seven individuals, including an 11-year-old pediatric patient and her mother, when it crashed Jan. 31 shortly after taking off from the Northeast Philadelphia Airport.
Both churches are located near the airport, and their pastors – Robert Fontell, senior pastor of Calvary Christian Church, and Gerald Waters, mission pastor of Proclamation Community Church and case manager at George Washington High School – have been praying and ministering in the wake of the accident.
“On Sunday, I led our church in prayer for those impacted by this horrific tragedy,” Fontell said. “My plan is to have our church go out to the area and prayer-walk.”
The crash site is one of the locations that Calvary Christian Church regularly meets for prayer and outreach in the spring.
Fontell said he is working closely with State Representative Jared Solomon, who lives 2 miles from the crash site, to meet with those impacted and find out their needs.
“My goal is to gather as many church and community service organizations to help provide resources for those impacted, such as insurance claims assistance, mental health support, street cleaning and more,” he said.
No one from Calvary was directly affected by the crash, which has allowed Fontell and his church to begin community-wide efforts.
Proclamation Community Church had multiple members impacted by the crash. Within minutes of the accident, Waters was on the phone, trying to reach an elderly woman in his congregation.
“When the crash happened, I got an alert on the Citizens app [and] I immediately knew that one of my members lived in that area, so I reached out to her,” Waters said.
He learned that the blast from the crash had blown out her windows, but she was unharmed. By the time he arrived at her home, police had already closed off the street. Her home is about 500 feet from the crash site, an area that was scattered with debris, including human remains.
After learning that the member’s daughter had come and picked her up, Waters left the scene of the crash and went to the daughter’s home to pray with the family.
While there, he learned that another member of his congregation had been very close to the scene of the crash.
This member was a young woman who was visiting a friend when suddenly the vehicle parked in front of her car exploded.
Noticing that her car was unscathed by the incident, she quickly gathered her belongings and her young son and drove home. Only when she arrived home did she notice that her car was marked with remains from the crash.
“The news didn’t capture this, but people who are involved in this saw a significant amount of carnage,” Waters said.
“These images in people’s minds of what they saw, I’m just praying that the Lord would help them to process such a traumatic scene and help them to have their mind renewed.”
Waters added that he also has been praying for those who were with the crash victims moments before the flight. One of his members’ husband works at the airport.
“[He] was part of the crew that fueled the plane,” Waters said. “He had just saw the patient [and] the mom … so he’s traumatized because, you know, he just saw them and then the plane crashed.”
Waters asked for prayers and he and others minister in the aftermath.
“You know, a lot of people don’t really understand the intimacy of a relationship between a pastor and a member, and so when they are experiencing hardship the pastor does as well,” Waters said.
“Pray for them to be able to process their feelings but also be to be a source of strength and guidance to the best of their ability.”
This article was originally published at brnunited.org.
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