More than 200 residents of Kerr County — victims of the devastating July 4, 2025, floods in Central Texas that killed at least 138 people — will be honored on the anniversary of that tragedy by a local church that spent the past year serving, feeding, comforting and rebuilding the lives of their neighbors.
A 36-minute documentary, “When the Waters Receded: Answering God’s Call to Serve,” produced by Jennifer Allen of the Riverside Church of Christ in Kerrville, Texas, will begin the evening.
In the wake of waters that rose as the Guadalupe River crested at 37.5 feet, members and staff of the congregation organized a relief effort that engulfed the facility and people of the church for an entire year. They were still answering requests for mattresses 363 days after the flood.
A year ago, Riverside minister Chris Carrillo called the congregation to begin a marathon. Over the next 12 months, church members partnered with several disaster relief organizations associated with Churches of Christ to salvage, serve and restore homes and lives.
Together they built or rebuilt 46 homes and assisted more than 1,000 survivors with clothing, furniture and housing. They provided area first responders with chainsaws, buckets, rakes, cleaning supplies, water, food and more. The church fed volunteers and housed them in its facilities.
“All of the pain that we go through in life can either build us up or break us down,” Riverside minister Chris Carrillo said in the documentary. “And if we don’t use the pain and the hurt in our lives in order to help others, if we don’t take the comfort which God has given us in order to comfort others, what an unbelievably wasted opportunity.”
Elder Ron Watson said the church hopes this week’s event will provide “some closure to the devastation that happened here.”
“It’s a joyful event because we’re completing God’s work,” Watson said.
Christians at the Riverside Church of Christ in Kerville, Texas, work to unload a tractor-trailer rig full of food and supplies after flooding in 2025.
Allen, a former television journalist in San Antonio, had collected video and interviews over the course of the year, not knowing how they might be used.
“The team that lived up here, the ones that dedicated their life for a full year here, were the ones that decided to do this,” she said. “It’s a final embrace.”
CHERYL MANN BACON is a contributing editor for The Christian Chronicle. She served for 20 years as chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University in Texas.
