Emergencies, missions have parallels, director says
John H. Adams, Posted Wednesday, May 30, 2001
Early into his job, Raymond “Ray” Jones of Kansas City said he thought like a fireman: jump into his suit, slide down a pole, board a truck and race to the scene.
But responding to major emergencies – hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, the explosion that leveled a huge grain elevator, etc. – requires careful planning, sometimes massive mobilization and strategic administration, Jones says.
A director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Jones sees many parallels between his work in responding to emergencies and the mission of the church, one of his passions.
Jones is a former Air Force officer, former commander of the Kansas Air National Guard Command Support Squadron and now a federal administrator for a regional office of the nation’s emergency response program.
The title is long: area emergency manager, Emergency Management Strategic Healthcare Group, Veterans Health Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, in the Veterans Affairs Heartland Network in Kansas City, Mo.
There’s more. Jones also serves as area manager, National Disaster Medical System for the metropolitan areas of Kansas City and Wichita.
In short, he helps prepare states, communities and individuals for emergencies, mobilizes medical personnel and makes sure they’re properly equipped and paid.
And while his office is regional – covering Kansas, Missouri and southern Illinois – Jones is part of a federal team that responds to weather-related and other emergencies wherever the United States has jurisdiction.
When Hurricane Marilyn hit St. Croix in the Virgin Islands in 1995, “while the storm clouds were still swirling,” Jones supervised a medical team that completely took over medical care on the island. The local doctors had to attend to their own families and homes that had been damaged or destroyed.
“There was no power at the start,” he said. “It was hot and humid, hard to use radios and telephones.” Jones’s medical workers – “several hundred,” he recalls – remained on St. Croix for two months.
Jones also was a medical administrator in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Georges ripped across the island, causing nearly 600 deaths and $5.9 billion in damage. Jones’ medical teams were part of a deployment of about 5,000 people to Puerto Rico.
His medical teams even are on standby at national events where, some might say, the threat is no more than hot air: Republican and Democratic national conventions.
An elder at the 2,100-member Colonial Presbyterian Church in Kansas City, Jones sees parallels between his work in emergency response and his passion for mission.
Jones, who serves as missions administrator for Colonial Presbyterian, says the purpose of Christian mission is to help people through the presentation of the Gospel and other means.
Through his work at Colonial, Jones encourages young people to take church-sponsored short-term missions. Several have done so and gone on to become career missionaries. He also helps missionaries on furlough receive additional training so their mission work can be more effective.
Once a year, Jones becomes a missionary himself. Last year, he was in Paris, handing out Bibles and Christian audio cassettes to Muslims who were boarding ferry boats to vacation in North Africa. He is unapologetic about the Gospel and the truth of Scripture.
“Our culture has influenced people’s hearts,” Jones said. “I can tell they feel deeply about the issues. They start feeling that they must have so much compassion for the problems we have in our society. Their obedience to God wanes and they become more active in the culture. Following the culture becomes more important than sticking to the truth of Scripture. Then we see them start the process of thinking that Scripture really isn’t at all what it means to be.
“That really grieves me.”
Jones is a native Kansan. He was reared in a Christian family with a commitment to missions.
He finished his degree work and ROTC training at Wichita State University at the age of 19, then decided to spend two years teaching high school and attending graduate school so that he would be 21 before taking his commission in the U.S. Air Force.
He served six years of active duty as aide-de-camp to the commanding general, U.S. Air Forces Southern Command in Latin America, and as protocol and liaison officer, Inter-American Defense Board in Washington, D.C.
His assignments reflected his fluency in Spanish, a language he learned while he was growing up in Wichita. Jones also speaks French, Italian, Portuguese and some Dutch.
After his active duty, Jones spent 15 years in the Kansas Air National Guard, from which he retired in 1989.
Jones and his wife Kay both enjoy international travel and working with foreign exchange students through Colonial Presbyterian, where both are ordained elders. They currently host a student from Bulgaria who attends the University of Kansas.
Jones said Robert L. Howard of Wichita, chairman of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, is responsible for getting him involved in the ministry of the Presbyterian Lay Committee.
Before he moved to Kansas City, Jones was a member of Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Wichita, where Howard was one of the leaders in his congregation’s mission outreach. He said Howard urged him to become a director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee to provide leadership at a national level of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Jones accepted the Lay Committee’s invitation to become a director in 1998.
Outside activities include family time with his wife, children and grandchildren.