The power of showing up
August 24, 2021 by Alex Yocum-Beeman
Find your people
Spiritual growth. Support through life’s ups and downs. Meaningful community. Small Groups provide this and so much more. They help us to experience the purpose and power of Christ in our lives, dig deeper in our faith, and grow closer to God and others.
The morning of January 21, 2021, when HPUMC Executive Minister Rev. Matt Tuggle’s door opened, he expected to see the normal non-knock culprit, Rev. Paul Rasmussen, but was surprised instead to see Dana Howard, his Executive Assistant. At that moment he just knew something wasn’t right.
Turns out, someone had just called the church to let them know that the Tuggle home was on fire.
“You always wonder how you would respond to those moments,” Rev. Tuggle said. “I didn’t really process it but immediately believed her. I believed she believed the house was on fire and jumped up and ran out the door.”
He drove backward out of the HPUMC parking lot, calling his neighbor to rescue his dogs, deciding if he should call his wife Amy before assessing the damage, when Amy called him after being notified by another neighbor. When he finally arrived in his neighborhood, the scene was something he could not have imagined—fire trucks and cars lined down the street and so many people in the front yard, including their insurance agent and their builder, who was going to start renovations on the house the following day.
“All I knew to do when I got there was to hug Amy,” Rev. Tuggle said. “We talked for a second and looked over and saw our neighbor holding Lucy, our puppy, and Gracie, our 15-year-old dog, on oxygen, lying on the ground. But driving home, I remember thinking, ‘I know that no one is in the house and everything is fine. If we could just get the dogs out everything would be fine.’ I just remember thinking that people keep saying it’s just stuff and, in that moment, it really did feel that way.”
Luckily for the Tuggles, the fire was isolated in the kitchen, but the smoke, water damage, and smell ran throughout the house, leaving them with little that was not damaged. They then got in their car together and just drove to catch their breath and talk through how to simply start the next steps in the process. Once they got back to their home, they were surprised to see some familiar faces pull up—the Landrys and the Droffs—who were members of their small group.
“I thought they were just there to check on us, which is awesome…and finally it hits me,” he said. “They are not here to just wish us well and let us know they were thinking about us. They’re here for the long haul, they’re here to help.”
Without Matt and Amy’s knowledge these two couples, along with several other neighbors and church members, outfitted the rental home that was already lined up for the Tuggle’s home renovation—mattresses in all the rooms with sheets on them, dishes, a bottle of wine on a table with chairs, stocked pantry, and toys for the kids, including a firefighter Barbie for the Tuggle’s daughter, Mary Frances. The group also helped move what was left in the home's garage, kept bringing items over to make their temporary home feel like a home, and even had a meal train going. There was also a note left for the family to find that was just signed, “Love, your friends.” Tuggle said that while he thinks he knows who wrote it, he loves that it was from his community, his friends.
“It was our small group, other people from our church that didn’t live in our neighborhood, and neighbors,” he said. “The way that they rallied around us, it was unbelievable. Amy and I went to bed that night, sleeping on this mattress on the floor, and the overwhelming feeling we had was one of gratitude. And that was not because Amy and I are super grateful people. It is not because we are super Christians that always look on the bright side. It’s because, at the end of that day, it was so obvious that we were unbelievably fortunate and blessed. That we weren’t in the house, that we have insurance, that we have friends.
“One of the main bottom lines is realizing how rich we are in our relationships,” Tuggle said. “Realizing the times in our lives we probably should have shown up for people and didn’t, and the humility of recognizing that for some people, that day their lives came to a full stop. Not because their house caught on fire, but because ours did. We were their focus exclusively and for a lot of people that next Saturday.”
This was not the most traumatic thing this small group has endured over their last eight years together: loss of parents and siblings, a marriage that almost ended in divorce, job changes, kids being sick, and a house being destroyed by a tornado. But for Tuggle, it brought about a realization of the significance of not only being there for people, but actually showing up.
“These people have been there for our darkest hours,” Jenny Landry, a small group member said. “They were an integral part with our recovery and our redemption. There was more of a feeling in my heart and soul, I just hurt for them. I felt the urgent need. I didn’t know what we could even do, but I just wanted to be there for them.”
The bond that was formed by the couples began with the women in a first-time mom’s group, and the natural progression into a small group was due to the vulnerability and connection they already had started forming.
“I feel like our small group worked because we had a connection already,” Landry said. “I think it’s so much better if you have a relationship going in. We knew each other a medium amount and bonded over our kids. Vulnerability is really the key in a small group. We were already there in the new mom’s group because we didn’t know what we were doing. Then Matt [Tuggle] really helped push us to the next level in the small group and open up more within our faith. That’s what drew us together the most.”
This helped the group stay connected through all the trials a small group can run into. For Rev. Tuggle, it showed the risks and imperfections small groups face but also the deeper bond this type of community can build, especially in a crisis. And for Landry, she was able to see how God was doing work within her small group to better rally around each other.
“You can look back and see how all of it, all of us, came together,” she said. “You could see that God was weaving a safety net together through our small group, putting these people in place even before we knew what it meant for our lives. God was using friends and people in that way and it’s humbling that we are all a part of the bigger plan somehow.”
