On the night of Monday, May 27, 2019, a cluster of tornadoes swept through the greater Dayton area, including an EF4 that cut directly through Trotwood and the West Side of Dayton. It was Memorial Day. Most people had been home with their families. By the time the storm passed, entire neighborhoods were gone. Power was out for weeks in some areas. Thousands of people were displaced.
The next morning, the pastors of the DBPMU were in the streets.
Not because anyone issued a command or sent out a press release. Because the churches of this union are embedded in these neighborhoods. Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church sits on 40 acres in Trotwood — the same Trotwood the tornado tore through. Mt. Moriah's Community Development Corporation had been operating in West Dayton for nearly a decade. Freedom Faith Missionary Baptist on North Main Street was close enough to the storm path that the church itself was checking on families the next day.
This is what a union is for.
What a Network Looks Like in a Crisis
There's a version of disaster response that happens on television — press conferences, national organizations with matching logos, donation drives with 800 numbers. And then there's the version that actually reaches people: pastors calling each other at 6 in the morning, deacons driving trucks of water and diapers to neighbors they know by name, church kitchens that were already feeding people every week pivoting to feeding them every day.
The DBPMU doesn't have a disaster response protocol written into its bylaws. What it has is 75 years (at the time) of pastors knowing each other, trusting each other, and showing up for each other. When a crisis hits a neighborhood where a union church is planted, the network activates because the relationships are already there.
"When one of us hurts, we all show up. When one of us celebrates, the whole union gives thanks." — DBPMU founding principle
Pleasant Green's Matthew 25 Ministries partnership — which began that same year — was designed to provide exactly the kind of sustained, practical community support that disaster relief requires but rarely continues. Partnerships like that don't emerge after a crisis. They're built before one, by people who are planning to be present in a community for the long term.
Trotwood and the Long Recovery
The tornado's impact on Trotwood was severe and the recovery was slow. A suburb of Dayton with a population of about 23,000, Trotwood lost hundreds of homes and businesses. The scale of need was significant and sustained — not a single event but a years-long rebuilding process that required exactly the kind of persistent, relationship-based community presence that Black Baptist churches have always provided.
Five years later, Trotwood is still recovering. And the churches are still there.
Why the Union Matters in Moments Like This
Individual congregations can only do so much. A church with 200 members can feed 200 families for a week. A union with 13 churches, coordinating without bureaucracy, can do significantly more — because the trust has already been built, the communication channels are already open, and the presence is already established.
Rev. Dr. Herman Walker of Mt. Moriah — a retired Department of Defense engineer who built a Community Development Corporation as part of his ministry — understands this better than most. His work in West Dayton is a model of what it looks like when a pastor decides that the church's responsibility to the neighborhood extends beyond Sunday morning and into economic development, disaster recovery, and sustained community building.
That's the vision the DBPMU has held since 1945. It's why the union was built. And it's why, when a tornado comes, the churches are already there.
The 2026 Holy Week Revival at Pleasant Green
This March, the DBPMU's Holy Week Citywide Revival will be held at Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church in Trotwood — the same community that the 2019 tornado reshaped. The revival runs March 31 through April 2, nightly at 6:30 PM. The guest evangelist is Rev. Dr. Selwyn Q. Bachus of Middle Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. The theme is The Seven Last Sayings of Christ.
It is not a coincidence that the revival is in Trotwood. The union plants itself where the need is. It has since 1945. It will long after 2026.