Conceived at a ­Sunday school picnic in Kansas 75 years ago, Mennonite Disaster Service is stretching to keep up as natural disasters grow more frequent and severe.

Fortunately, its capacity to serve — thanks to thousands of volunteers from Anabaptist churches of all kinds who wield hammers, paintbrushes and chainsaws — is growing, too.

More than 600 people gathered Feb. 14-15 at Ridgepoint, a Mennonite Brethren church in Wichita, Kan., to celebrate the 75th anniversary of an organization whose mission has evolved beyond quick cleanup — ­although it still does some of that — to long-term rebuilding of homes and restoring of hope.

For this task, said Kevin King, MDS executive director, “God needs all hands on deck.”

Last year, those hands were supplied by 6,486 volunteers who built 135 new homes, completed 287 repairs, finished 49 cleanups and built nine bridges.

Seeking to be the “hands and feet of Jesus” and to “build back better” after disasters, MDS volunteers become the face of Anabaptism in communities across the continent.

In a prerecorded video, Colt Hagmaier, assistant administrator for recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called MDS “one of FEMA’s most important partners” and “an incredible gift to the nation.” MDS receives no U.S. government funding.

MDS’s gift consists of more than new houses for disaster survivors — the uninsured or underinsured who lack the resources to rebuild.

“There is more to a homeowner’s life than a house,” said Becky Gochnauer, MDS interim field operations manager. “Our efforts offer hope that the rest of their lives may also be restored.”

Jay Gilmore, chair of the Selma Long-Term Recovery Group, thanked MDS for rebuilding trust in the small Alabama town devastated by a January 2023 tornado — and burdened by pov-erty and suspicion of outsiders.

“I want to thank you for not only helping to rebuild Selma but also to rebuild the social and spiritual bonds in our community,” Gilmore said.

The anniversary gathering included the annual binational meeting of the MDS units that make up the four U.S. regions, alongside MDS Canada, which operates separately.

“MDS is growing,” said Terry Zehr, MDS interim volunteer team manager, in an interview. “We have an incredibly generous donor base. MDS is bucking the trend that says volunteerism is down. The desire to serve is still alive, from young people to old.”

The desire to serve with MDS crosses religious and cultural lines. About half of MDS volunteers are Amish or members of other Plain Anabaptist churches. Eight regional Amish organizations have formed within the MDS network.

“The bishops want a safe place for their young people to experience service,” King said in an interview, comparing the Amish projects to weeklong barn-raisings. “They say MDS allows us to shine the light.”

Mannie Flaud of Lancaster, Pa., an Amish member of the MDS board of directors, said in an interview that his people’s service with MDS is “such a blessing, in both directions. We couldn’t do without each other. The Amish couldn’t do what we’re doing without MDS.”

There is plenty of work to go around. Last year in the U.S. there were 174 federally declared disasters. King said when he started with MDS in 2004, there was a major disaster every 80 days, on average. Now there is one every 18 days.

With 21 active projects in the U.S., personnel are stretched. MDS needs more leadership volunteers who can stay a month or more, King said.

MDS Canada also sees natural disasters growing more frequent and severe.

“Global warming in Canada is happening at twice the global rate, and in the arctic at over three times the global rate,” said Ross Penner, MDS Canada executive director. “This means the increase in natural disasters is happening even faster in Canada than in the U.S.”

MDS is in the early stages of planning its response to the Los Angeles fires, which destroyed over 12,000 structures and burned 40,000 acres in January. The church building where Pasadena Mennonite Church meets stands just a block and half from the area devastated by the Altadena fire.

Brian Showalter, operations coordinator for MDS Region 4, said MDS is one of four nonprofits with a California building license. The others are Habitat for Humanity, Samaritan’s Purse and Hope Christ Recovery Network.

“We are going to be part of the discussion on how to build back sooner,” he said.

Some visitors toured the cabinet shop in Goessel that has furnished MDS houses since 2022. According to the new MDS book Many Hands, the shop produces solid-wood kitchen cabinets for $600 instead of the $2,500 to $4,500 that MDS used to spend on cabinets at big-box home- improvement stores. Volunteers made 85 cabinet sets last year.

MDS is sending Many Hands and a new children’s book, Mended, to 2,500 constituent churches.

Speaking at the worship service, Cleo Koop, a retired pastor who serves on the Kansas MDS Unit Board, said the cabinet shop had provided new direction and purpose for his life amid the declining health and death last September of his wife, Faye, due to Alzheimer’s disease.

Jeff Blackburn, former pastor of Greensburg Mennonite Church, told the story of the 2007 tornado that destroyed the small Kansas town of Greensburg, including his house and church. MDS, he said, was ready to help “even before we knew what we needed.”

The worship service featured choirs from Bethel, Hesston and Tabor colleges, who sang a new hymn by Benjamin Bergey of Eastern Mennonite University, “Respond, Rebuild, Restore for All.”

The piano accompanist, Hesston College faculty member Ken Rodgers, had a special MDS connection: His parents were members of the Pennsylvania (now Whitestone) Mennonite Church Sunday school class whose idea at a picnic gave birth to MDS.

King urged supporters to continue MDS’s role as an Anabaptist unifier.

“MDS is a people’s movement and a gift to the church,” he said. “I’m going to say this with love: The church can’t afford to keep squabbling about buildings and budgets and board compositions. No, we must stop that at once. Our neighbors need us. . . .

“Take this message back to your congregations: The MDS movement is alive and well. Our volunteers are salt and light. Lives are being changed. Hope is being restored.”