Ray Gann mastered mass feeding but found more

WHITESBORO—After 20 years with Texans on Mission’s state mass feeding unit, Ray Gann, 71, has retired as the unit’s leader.

Gann tried again this year to deploy as the unit’s leader—or “blue cap” as on-site leaders are known, setting them apart from the “yellow cap” volunteer workers—but realized he no longer could spare the time away from home.

Gary Finley is the current Blue Cap for the unit, and he said Gann “was around when this unit was transitioning from pots and burners to tilt skillets to become the efficient unit we have today.”

Gann, a member of First Baptist Church in Whitesboro, didn’t want to do mass feeding when state disaster relief leaders first assigned him to the team in 2005.

He recently had returned from working in Mexico after Hurricane Emily and made close friends on that first deployment.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, “I thought I was going to go … with the same group of people that we went into Mexico with,” Gann said.

Leaders of Texans on Mission—then known as Texas Baptist Men—“looked at me, saw a young guy that was healthy and said, ‘No, you’re going with these guys over here, the state feeding unit.’”

Four hurricanes in one year

In Gann’s first year as a yellow cap volunteer, he served after four hurricanes—Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

Eventually, he became a “line chief,” directing the work of a specific component of the unit. Next, he advanced to “chief cook,” overseeing the entire cooking process. About 13 years ago, Gann became the unit’s blue cap.

Gann made his mark early.

“Many of the recipes that are used throughout the nation were developed and perfected by Ray Gann,” Finley said.

Mass feeding is unlike home or restaurant cooking. The Texans on Mission state unit can prepare, cook and package 10,000 meals for lunch and 10,000 more for dinner. That volume involves ordering the needed food in the correct quantity.

It’s done not only with the full quantity in mind, but with the cooking machines and transporting containers in mind, as well.

Do the math

In short, it takes math. And Gann did the math that produced the recipes for mass feeding.

The food cooked by the mass feeding unit is transported to disaster victims and volunteers in insulated containers—Cambros—that keep the food warm and sealed.

Gann used pitchers of water to determine that each Cambro held nine gallons. “And then I began to write recipes about how to fill up a Cambro,” he said.

The math work continues in determining how much food to order and how many Cambros will be needed to deliver the needed meals. The math is important, because the process involves lots of food that costs lots of money.

“Twenty thousand meals a day at $3.25 per meal is $65,000 a day,” Gann said.

But mass feeding is more than math.

It takes “35 to 40 really hardy people working to run the whole thing,” Gann said. And working with the yellow caps became the center of Gann’s role as blue cap.

“The worst kind of blue cap in the world is a blue cap who is so involved in the process he doesn’t pay any attention to his people,” Gann said. “He’s worried about production, those numbers, what reports look like.”

‘Being a servant leader’

But as a leader grows spiritually, he looks to the “bigger picture” and sees “God’s involved in people.”

“I started out doing disasters thinking I was going to save the world, you know. I’m going to go cook for all these people,” Gann said.

“But the bigger picture is that God’s working on changing us, and as a blue cap I learned what being a servant leader is because that’s what a blue cap is.

“What we do is make sure that the yellow caps are successful. One of the things that I learned was my ministry was not the meals that I was cooking and sending out. It was the people I was working with. My ministry was my volunteers.”

You can hear Gann’s commitment to yellow caps in the words of his successor as blue cap for the state feeding unit.

“Ray took me under his wing in 2013 because he knew that, as with all of us, this day [retirement] would someday come,” Finley said. “He always tried to help newcomers understand the art of mass feeding.

“He knew that ministry should never be dependent upon one person, so he took every opportunity to share his knowledge with others.

“His encouragement and innovation will be sorely missed.”

Learned to be led by the Holy Spirit

Gann said he understood early that God had called him to serve his kingdom through Texans on Mission.

“By the school of hard knocks, I learned that I had to be led by the Spirit and not by my flesh, that this lifetime is the only time we get to operate in faith. And to the degree we learn to trust God and walk by faith in him has eternal consequences,” he said.

His “life verse” is Hebrews 11:6. It says: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (NIV).

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking, “We are all going to go out and cook all this food, and God is going to be pleased with us,” Gann said.

“But you can’t do it in your own strength and energy. You have to operate in faith, and faith in this case is not my faith for salvation. This is the faith to get through the day, faith to trust that he’s going to fix the problem that’s insurmountable.”

In retiring as blue cap, Gann thinks about the future.

“The word of God teaches that one day we will come to face Jesus Christ to be judged for rewards based on what we did by faith in him,” he said. “I believe that at that moment of receiving our reward from Jesus Christ, I will realize, to my regret, that I could have done more for his glory.

“This is what has motivated me over recent years and still does. Now that circumstances of life have caused me to retire from active deployment, … the question of ‘what more’ is God calling me into is on my mind now, and I know that he has more for me.

“This is the challenge that God the Father lays down before all of us. What has he called you to be involved in, and will you answer his call to do more in Christ Jesus, for his glory, because it matters more than we realize here on this side of eternity.”