The evangelist Franklin Graham has outlined how some 250 rapid response chaplains are ministering to victims of Hurricane Harvey which has unleashed more than 30 inches of rain throughout parts of southeast Texas since Friday.
The president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and head of Samaritan's Purse issued a statement about the deadly hurricane, which has seen more than 3,000 people rescued in and around Houston, the fourth-largest city in the US, where about 6.6m people live.
At least nine people are reported to have died in incidents related to the storm, according to Texan officials.
'My heart goes out to the people of South Texas, as the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey grows worse by the hour. As I write this, floodwaters continue to rise in many areas, and more than 50 inches of rain are possible by the end of the week,' said Graham.
'Our rapid response team chaplains are already there ministering to families near San Antonio. Approximately 250 crisis-trained chaplains are ready to provide emotional and spiritual care to people reeling from fear and loss at some of the hardest-hit locations in the coming weeks. Please pray for the millions who are enduring this terrible tragedy.'
Graham called for prayer, saying: 'Will you also pray for the Texas National Guard, the military, law enforcement, first responders, and local leaders who are working so hard to help during this crisis?'
The appeal came as the Christian Post reported how a Kentucky pastor described the 'traumatic' flooding in the area after traveling there with his wife so she could get surgery last Friday.
'It's just the saturating rain, the rain right now is just sort of relentless,' Daryl Cornett, pastor of First Baptist Church in Hazard, said on Sunday. 'Just imagine it just raining and raining and raining and the water having nowhere to go.'
Cornett described how since his wife Cindy's successful surgery to remove a tumor at MD Anderson Cancer Center on Friday, they have had to cancel their flight home a number of times due to the flooding.
'We're sort of stuck here weathering out Harvey and all the rain that's happening and all the flooding that's happening in Houston now,' he said.
The pastor said that while he was safe on the second floor of a hotel, with a small kitchen to make food, locals were terrified.
'They're talking about just some very traumatic flooding that they've not seen, well some people are saying they haven't seen this in their lifetime,' Cornett said.
Ryan Maue of WeatherBell, a weather analytics company, told CNN that the hurricane has already left 11 trillion gallons of rain over the state of Texas and predicted that by the time it moves on, perhaps this coming weekend, it will have left more than twice that amount of rain over the state.
President Donald Trump is due to visit the state today.
He said last night: 'Recovery will be a long and difficult road and the federal government stands ready, willing and able to support that effort.'
Meanwhile, Houston's Lakewood Church has issued a statement regarding its controversial response to Hurricane Harvey after being accused on social media of refusing to open its doors to the hurricane's evacuees.
'We have never closed our doors,' said senior pastor Joel Osteen in a statement quoted by ABC and the Atlanta Journal-Constitutution. 'We will continue to be a distribution center to those in need. We are prepared to house people once shelters reach capacity. Lakewood will be a value to the community in the aftermath of this storm.'
The row began on Sunday after a social media posting from the megachurch saying, 'Lakewood Church is inaccessible due to severe flooding!'
The post went on to point people to other shelter resources in the area.
The church was blasted on social media, with @RuneK_15 tweeting: 'Shame on Joel Osteen...Jesus would open the doors and care for the needy.'
'You have taken so much money away from your people to live like a king,' said the entertainment publicist Danny Deraney. 'It's the least you could do.'
And the writer and reporter Eoin Higgins wrote on Twitter: 'Nice of @JoelOsteen to open his 16,000 seat mega church in Houston to floor victims. Lol jk he's not doing that.'
However, others defended the church, posting pictures of it appearing to be flooded.
Lakewood is a nondenominational church with one of the largest congregations in the US: around 52,000 people per week, while Osteen's televised sermons are seen by more than seven million viewers weekly.
In the wake of the natural disaster dozens of Houston-area churches, mosques, schools and community centers have opened their doors to offer temporary shelter to survivors.
After the backlash, Lakewood Church then said it was becoming a collection site. 'Coordinating with the city, Lakewood is a collection site for distributing supplies to the Houston area shelters,' it said.
