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When I was growing up on the Alabama farm, we would come in from the fields at noon and eat like we had never seen food before. When the last of the bowls were clean, invariably someone could be heard to sigh, "I feel like everyone in the world has eaten now."
That's a real syndrome. When you're satisfied, it's easy to forget those still in need. The opposite seems to apply also: when you're in severe need, you tend not to notice others in worse shape than you. Case in point: Pass Christian, Mississippi.
Monday morning's Times-Picayune highlighted this little town not far inside the Mississippi line from Louisiana and the site of Gulf Shore Baptist Assembly, a wonderful retreat on the beach which we use as much as the Mississippians do. According to the paper, Pass Christian was wiped out by Katrina and still lies there pretty much untouched. "Mississippi coast remains a wreck," said the headline. No lots are cleared, the stench is everywhere, and displaced citizens shiver inside their tent cities. Mayor Billy McDonald, working out of a trailer, does not expect the word 'recovery' to roll off his lips for many months. Few people had insurance, fewer have jobs, there is no money, there's precious little hope.
So, where is FEMA? In the weeks following Katrina, while New Orleanians were griping about the lapses of this government emergency response organization, all we heard was how pleased our neighbors in Mississippi were with Mike Brown and his team. No more. According to U.S. Representative Gene Taylor, "FEMA could mess up a one-car funeral." "The federal response, from highways to housing to trailers, is completely unacceptable," he said.
A reminder to us in New Orleans that our misery is wide-spread, the needs are all around us, and there is plenty of work left for all.
In the days and weeks after the full effect of Katrina was being realized, my mailbox was swamped with people responding to my articles. "How can we help?" "Where can we send money?" "We're praying for you."
Tuesday, November 29, will make three full months since the hurricane slammed into our part of the Gulf Coast, and two realities have now set in. One, nothing has changed, and two, everything has changed. Nothing has changed: the city is still devastated, still sitting there in darkness for the most part, Congress still debating what to do about the levee system, the mayor and governor still running around looking for a handle to start the rebuilding. Everything has changed: people in the rest of the country are moving on. A friend from Missouri said the other day, "They think it's all over down here."
It ain't over. Not by a long shot, not for a long, long time.
I need to get word to my friends: the situation with New Orleans and our area is really really bad, and it's not going to get fixed for a long time. If you tire easily, you will soon start clicking us off. As I expect many have. Responses from readers to my weekly articles are drying up. It's totally understandable; it's a bad sign of what's to come.
There's so much happening every day, it's hard to monitor it all. I find myself amazed and impressed at the newspaper and other media outlets covering it all. Of course, they have large teams to pull it off. People send emails telling me they keep up with what's happening in New Orleans through my website. I hate to tell them (and don't) that what I cover is just a smidgen of the reality.
The state legislature just finished their special session up in Baton Rouge. They did a lot of great things, and in typically partisan fashion, pulled some boners.
Starting in January 2007, any building in the state that suffered 51 percent or more damage as a result of these two hurricanes must be rebuilt according to a new stricter state-wide code.
The state has just taken over 102 of the 117 public schools in Orleans Parish, with the state board determining which ones reopen and how they will be run. Critics pointed out that since the hurricane, not one public school in the entire parish has been re-started. This is a special-interest-riddled school system that had degenerated into the worst in the state. The infighting on the parish school board was comic-book-ludicrous over the past few years. This system has nowhere to go but up. Thanks to our governor, Kathleen Blanco, for sticking by her guns on this, even when some New Orleans legislators accused her of racism.
Anyone who buys in Louisiana on the dates of December 16-17-18 will not have to pay the four percent sales tax. The idea is to give the citizens a break, while encouraging businesses.
Six pastors from our now-out-of-business churches in St. Bernard Parish met for the first time since Katrina Tuesday morning, and they had lots of company. In addition to James "Boogie" Melerine of Delcroix-Hope, John Jeffries of FBC-Chalmette, John Galey of Poydras, David Howard of FBC-Arabi, Jeffrey Friend of Hopeview-Violet, and Paul Gregoire of St. Bernard-Chalmette, we had Dr. Danny Decker of the Missouri Baptist Convention, and Mike Canady and Larry Badon of the Louisiana Baptist Convention. Michael Raymond from Taylor Memorial church in the 9th ward was there, along with Freddie Arnold and me from the association, and our host pastor, Keith Manuel.
Keith has been interviewing people and writing for the Baptist Press, in these nearly-three months since Katrina. He bought a great camera and taught himself to take his own pictures. Anytime you go to www.bpnews.net and see a news item about the New Orleans area, check to see if it's from Keith. He is a multi-talented pastor. You ought to hear him play the guitar.
Going to www.bpnews.net is a great idea. Do it once a day to keep up with what's going on everywhere, not only down here in the swamps.
A brief synopsis of what the pastors shared....
Boogie Melerine is living in Florida. "We can't find any of the pieces of our church or my home down on the island. I'm staying up here in a little trailer and right now, we're having church in a deacon's home. We've met for four Sundays and had attendance of 10, 10, 17, and 19. Before the storm, we were running 25. I don't know if we had flood insurance. We had merged with the little church at Alluvial City and were planning to merge with Reggio, then we were going to sell out and buy some land inside the levee protection area."
Everyone laughed. The levees didn't hold; there was no protection.
Today, Sunday, we welcomed the bravest man in America to New Orleans. Pastor Le Ngoc Thuong has moved here from California to become pastor of the Viet Nam Baptist Church. Others are moving out, but this courageous brother is moving in. He is inheriting a fine, active congregation. When I arrived for their morning service, I found I was in the order of worship to bring a "short message." Like I'm capable of that. And, with a translator, the length is automatically doubled. But I managed to keep it to 10 minutes, and directed them to Acts 20:28 where the pastor is told to guard himself first of all, even before ministering to the congregation. After all, I told Pastor Le, if you lose your health, you've lost your ministry. If you lose your spiritual life, you have no ministry. If you lose your marriage, you have no ministry. So, take care of yourself first of all, then you'll be able to take care of the church of God.
The odd thing is how many church members think they come before the pastor's family, his spiritual life, or his own health. Not all, thank the Lord. God has blessed me with wise church leaders through the years who knew to support me in taking care of first things first so I would be able to take care of them and the church to the fullest.
James Carson is director of missions up in Winnsboro, LA. Saturday, he said something I thought you would find fascinating...
"While training mudout teams, I came across this Scripture that jumped out at me as a background for what we do with our mudout disaster relief unit. In Leviticus 14:33-48, God gave Moses and Aaron the laws for cleaning leprous houses, meaning homes and buildings where mildew and mold had set in. The priest was instructed to do the same thing we do with our mudout units."
Brother James then, being a good Baptist preacher, comes up with a three-point sermon on this text. (1) The Plague. v. 33-35 He compares this with the plague of sin which affects us all. (2) The Prescription. v. 35-45 He tells how the units disinfect and decontaminate the houses after stripping them, comparing it to God's remedy for our sin problem, the cross of Calvary. (3) The Provision. v. 48 Just as only the priest can declare the leprous houses clean, we can be declared cleansed of our sin only by the blood of Jesus.
Well, friend, as we say, "That will preach." Thank you.
First, I need to tell you about Wayne Jenkins. Wayne leads the Department of Evangelism for the Louisiana Baptist Convention and he practices when he preaches. Last night he walked through the French Quarter witnessing and handing out leaflets telling people how to know Christ as Savior. He met so many Spanish people, he pulled a stack of tracts in their language out of his car and handed out a couple of hundred before the evening ended.
Wayne is making our New Orleans area pastors a deal we shouldn't refuse. The annual "Louisiana Evangelism Conference" is scheduled for the First Baptist Church of LaFayette January 23 and 24, and Wayne wants to pay our way. He says, "We are providing pastors and staff and spouses in the hurricane affected areas with a $275 scholarship. This should provide two nights lodging, your meals and gas." To get in on this, our ministers need to sign up now since registration is limited and on a first come, first served basis. You will want to FAX Wayne's office (318) 445 0055 or call his administrative assistant (her name is Syd) at 1-800-622-6549. He needs to know your name, your spouse's name, your church, address, phone, and e-mail address. You will receive a voucher in January, so you may make your own reservation and get yourself there. An incredible slate of inspiring speakers has been lined up.
Wayne conceived the idea for the PRAYER WALK for New Orleans which we held today, and he did all the work on it. All we had to do was show up...and take a walk. Nearly 200 of us gathered at Williams Boulevard Baptist Church this Saturday morning, including Dr. David and Patti Hankins from our LBC office in Alexandria, and Rick Shepherd and his wife from the Florida Baptist Convention office in Jacksonville, and a number of church prayer teams from throughout Louisiana. About a dozen of our local churches sent leaders to invite prayer walkers into their neighborhoods. By the time we got underway at 10:05 am, everyone present was wearing a black t-shirt with gold lettering, "Pray New Orleans," with a fleur de lis on the front. Wayne provided tracts for us to hand out and miniature notebooks to record impressions, prayer requests we picked up from people we met, as well as experiences to remember.
We'll be having another prayer walk before long, and this time we'll get into the needier sections of New Orleans. The mold count is so high and the debris so widespread, we felt it would be unsafe to send people walking those streets.
After returning to the city, one of my tasks is going through the newspapers to see what I've missed. I mean, other than a men's magazine naming Jennifer Aniston (is that her name? I'm so culturally hip) its "man of the year."
ABOUT OUR SCHOOL SYSTEMS
To my amazement, the St. Bernard Parish public schools has reopened. The people who live in this parish are now virtually all residing in FEMA trailers, I understand, but to re-establish some kind of normalcy and to send a signal for others to come on back and get to work rebuilding the neighborhoods, the school board opened the St. Bernard Unified School. It meets in trailers and runs on generators and had 330 students the first day.
Meanwhile, New Orleans became the only public school system in the region that has not opened any of its schools since Katrina, even though several of their campuses in Uptown and across the river in Algiers had no damage. Out west in Jefferson Parish, the attendance is about 80 percent of what it was pre-Katrina. The Christian schools are all in crisis, if I'm any judge. Our First Baptist (Kenner) Christian School is running half the 300 students they had at their peak a couple of years ago. The church met Wednesday night to discuss what to do, and yes, considered the nuclear option of closing it down after 20 years, but decided to stay the course for a while longer. A church in South Carolina has sent some money to help, plus they have some insurance money coming that should buy temporary relief.
REBUILDING THE CITY AND WHAT WE ARE DISCOVERING
The contractor assigned to bring the Superdome back to speed says he's finding materials and labor pricier than he had thought and the cost is going to be in the neighborhood of $200 million. That's some neighborhood. The dome cost about $75 million to erect, as I recall. This being Louisiana, the original estimate was about half that. Those were 1970 dollars which were larger and stronger than the ones in our billfolds today, although we did not know it at the time.
I drove back to New Orleans Wednesday from Monroe and reflected on what we had done and not done this week.
All of us from the storm-damaged section of the state were grateful for the attention given our situation on the program. Sometimes it was videos on the large screens in which our pastors talked. At other times, convention leaders gave their reports. Pastor David Crosby of New Orleans' First Baptist Church made an eloquent appeal for the convention to stay with us for a long time to come.
There was politics (there WERE politics? I'm not sure) at the convention, as there always are. But I've been so out of the loop. Someone asked who I was voting for as president of the state convention and I didn't even know who was running. We've not received any third class mail down here since August, and that rules out our state Baptist paper. It is available on-line and I keep trying to remember to look it up. Our Baptist Message is a terrific paper, and surely worthy of our attention.
Lynn Clayton was honored as he retires from editing the Baptist Message after about a hundred years. Well, almost. He's truly one of a kind, and I have treasured our relationship which began in 1979 when Lynn's pastor, John Alley of Calvary, Alexandria, and I were serving on a committee for the Foreign Mission Board (now called the International Mission Board). The Internal Revenue Service was calling for all U.S. missionaries serving overseas to pay income tax here in the states as well as in the countries where they were serving. This would impose a financial burden on the FMB of at least another million dollars a year. So, John and Lynn and I descended on Washington, D.C., and started calling on senators. We literally pounded the pavement. Louisiana Senator Russell Long gave us the support we needed and introduced the bill which we then lobbied for, calling Southern Baptists around the country and asking them to contact their senators. When it passed, the IRS was made to go stand in the corner (so to speak), and ever since a million dollars a year of the Lord's money has gone to something other than taxes. Lynn Clayton was a great help. I've loved the man ever since.
Last weekend when our son Marty was down, we rode around the area and took a few more snapshots of damaged churches and I gave him the CD which Ed Jelks had made from some of our church-assessment trips several weeks ago. He carried this all back to Charlotte and has posted several of the church photos on our website.
All of these churches are in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, the worst hit area of Louisiana. There were plenty more pictures, but in the honorable tradition of editors through the ages, Marty chose only the most dramatic scenes.
And he included the shot of the horse in the tree. It's not a great shot and was made from the inside of the pickup truck, I believe, but you get the idea. Ed Jelks thinks it was a mule. I say it was a horse. We both agree that it's dead.
While you're on that page, if you haven't already, check out the Nehemiah cartoons. Even better, call them to your pastor's attention. Many of our churches will be studying this wonderful Old Testament book this winter, and these cartoons are meant to complement that. Some will print out the 'toons and transfer them to power point or to overhead cels and display them for the congregation in the lessons. Others print them out as posters to advertise the study. Permission is automatically granted for you to use them any way you choose.
In a couple of weeks, some of our churches plan to have block parties to welcome their communities home, to celebrate God's goodness, and to strengthen their relationship with their neighbors. One of them, the Vieux Carre' Baptist Church on Dauphine Street, one block over from Bourbon, will hold theirs in Woldenberg Park, on the river's edge, next to the French Quarter. One of their workers said, "Help us find a couple of people to give testimonies. Dynamic stories of God's grace."
Saturday, I spent a couple of hours seeking out pastors to deliver checks from the Louisiana Baptist Convention and the adopt-a-church program. Significant checks. Ten thousand dollar checks. Eye-popping figures for the pastors who opened the envelopes in my presence.
"May I make a suggestion?" I said to the pastors. "When you tell your congregation about this gift, read the letter to your people." The accompanying letter from Missions and Ministry Director Mike Canady is such a blessing, assuring the people of the support of the entire denomination. This is welcoming news to people who have lost their homes and church buildings and whose friends are scattered across the countryside. Just knowing that several churches have adopted them and are committed to help them re-establish a presence in their community makes all the difference.
I said to one pastor, "Every church has people in it who wonder what difference the denomination makes. And maybe one or two who are even hostile to the denomination. These are the people who especially need to know the commitment God's people called Southern Baptists are making."
"What church are you going to this morning?" Margaret asked me early Sunday. I said, "To as many as I can find, but just long enough to deliver these envelopes." From 9 to noon, I got to only four of the churches, but traveled 75 miles doing it. I started with Mark Mitchell's Urban Family Church in Kenner, then Tony Bellow's Hahnville Mission, then the West Marrero Church where Anthony Barrett pastors, and finally to Oak Park Church under the leadership of Paul Brady. Paul was in the middle of his sermon at that very moment, but I left the envelope with someone to give to him.
"God is really blessing," said Tony Bellows of the Hahnville church. "Our congregation is multi-racial now. We have a white lady teaching a Sunday School class." He said, "You know, God rescued me out of two prison terms. I'd been selling drugs big-time. Thomas Ayo, pastor of the Krotz Springs Baptist Church, started coming to the Hunt Correctional Center, visiting prisoners. He witnessed to me and led me to Jesus. Later, he paid my way through the seminary."
Thomas Ayo. One of my classmates from seminary in the 1960s. Good work, old friend.
I knew I had my testimony for the block party in Woldenberg Park.
Thirty new cartoons for the book of Nehemiah are available in the image gallery.
"BAGNO" is the acronym for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans. Our pastors are scattered from one end of this country to the other, thanks to Katrina. Those who read this may know some whom we have not located (yes, we're still trying to find several), and we would surely appreciate your passing this along to them.
1) About our Wednesday ministers meeting. We gather ALMOST every Wednesday from 9 to noon at the First Baptist Church of LaPlace, ending with lunch at 11:30 which the church provides. These informational/inspirational/fellowship meetings have been the best thing we have done.
However, a couple of changes are about to occur as we move into the holiday season. One, this Wednesday, November 16, the meeting will be abbreviated, beginning at 10 am. Some of us will miss it, as we will be driving back from the state convention in Monroe on Wednesday. Then, the following Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the LaPlace church will be closed, so we will not be meeting at all. We will resume on Wednesday morning, November 30, at 9 am.
2) About the money that is available to help you, your church, and your members. Thanks to the generosity of the Lord's people, we have several hundred thousand dollars available to assist you. Our committee of three (Gonzalo Rodriguez, Tony Merida, and Lionel Roberts) meets weekly to receive written requests for these funds and to make decisions about who gets what.
"Well, I see life is returning to normal," said one of my sons Friday. We were driving down Rampart Street at the edge of downtown New Orleans and he had spotted a lady-of-the-street sashaying down a sidewalk. A few residents have moved back into that neighborhood, but the city is being repopulated by construction workers from all fifty states, and I suppose she's trying to befriend this group.
The Sav-A-Center grocery store, the successor of the old A & P, has reopened at Franklin Avenue and Leon Simon, not far from the University of New Orleans campus. Since very few people in that area have power (our associational office still doesn't), I wondered why. My sons and I checked it out Friday. Construction trucks were literally everywhere--filling the parking lots, medians, etc.--and the store's clients were almost exclusively these out-of-town workers. With nothing else open in that part of the world, we ended up having lunch alongside them in the store's deli.
Outside, someone handed a flyer to my son Neil, advertising "Rooms Available--$28." "Bunk beds-showers-fresh linens-cable-internet" it said, adding, "Must prepay for one week stay. Location: Downtown New Orleans on Canal."
"Preacher, I have some good news for you." "Good. I could stand some good news. What do you have?"
"I have a truckload of clothing, men and women's clothing, boys and girls, babies. Really good stuff, almost new. Where do I send it?"
"Friend, I sincerely thank you. I know you went to a lot of trouble to assemble these gifts from wonderful people. That means so much to us. However...."
"We don't need clothing. The people who need clothing are those who have lost their homes and all their contents. We have lots of homes like that, but the people are not here. There's no place for them to live here, so they're still wherever they evacuated."
Long silence. "You can't take them?" "No, sir. I'm sorry, because I know you need to get them out of your truck and get back home. I'm sure there are people needing the clothes, but they just aren't here."
I have that conversation by phone at least twice a week. Thursday morning, it was face to face. The nice man met me coming out of one of our churches. "Where do I unload all this clothing?" He was bright-eyed and friendly, and I hated like anything to tell him we can't use it.
My wife says if there is money on the street anywhere, I will find it. Once I found a ten dollar bill and twice five dollar bills in my early morning walking. Last Sunday morning, walking on the paved track atop our levee that parallels the river, I spotted two quarters lying together. Then, today, Wednesday morning, a quarter of a mile away, I found two more quarters lying there just waiting for me. Too, too strange.
It pays to walk early in the mornings.
I told our pastors, "It pays to attend these Wednesday meetings." We handed out lots of money today.
Tuesday morning I dropped in on a church staff meeting already in progress. When the pastor asked for my prayer requests, I said, "Pray that churches wanting to help us will be willing to do whatever the situation requires. Many have their own agenda. They want to do what they want to do, and usually that means the kind of dramatic, save-the-city efforts that gives them a good feeling when they leave. But it's not always what we need." The others in the room shook their heads; they're seeing it, too.
Now, I understand the problem. You go to a great deal of trouble in north Alabama or Tennessee or Kentucky to assemble a team of volunteers, the congregation raises money to send them, and you travel 500 miles. When you arrive, the host pastor says, "I need you to grind those stumps." "Cut that grass." "Clean this building." "Fill in for the cooks from 3 to 7 am." "Put on a block party for our neighborhood." And you're frustrated.
"I thought the city was in trouble," you think to yourself. "I thought they needed us to clean out sheetrock and insulation, to rewire churches, and replace roofs. We went to a lot of trouble to help them, and they've got us pushing brooms and going down the street to asking the neighbors if they need our help."
Make no mistake, this city is in desperate trouble. It has endless needs. More and more, we will be able to use outside volunteers to bring the city back. But it's not so simple. To work in the worst affected areas, workers need training and equipment. To rewire a church or home, one needs permits and approvals from city offices, a time-consuming process that is causing many people to tear their hair out.
Monday night, I attended a church council for one of our congregations hurt by the storm. "We've lost one-third of our members," said the leader. They're pastorless at present, so he had asked me to sit in on their meeting. "If we get off base, call us back," he invited.
After welcoming a dozen members into the home and calling for the opening prayer, the lay leader turned to his legal pad and began a lengthy liturgy of the needs of the congregation now that so many members were scattered elsewhere. Half the committees were in disarray, most of the Sunday School teachers might not be returning, and several leaders had not reappeared since Katrina. The worship leader's school position was terminated for the balance of this school year, so she accepted a friend's invitation to visit Paris, and is there now. (Now, that's my idea of a great evacuation!) The meeting was called to decide what action to take.
They did the only thing they could do. They decided to wait until after the first of the year to see how everything shakes out. "Some will be back," someone ventured. "Marie and Elsie say they'll be home after the first of the year," said another. "Let's wait."
Sometime in January, this little congregation's leadership will assemble to reinvent their church. Now that our church is smaller, what committees, what programs, and what leadership do we need? No one is going to enjoy what they will be forced to do.
This same process is going on in 90% of the churches in this area, regardless of the denominational labels.
Sunday morning at Metairie Baptist Church, some members of Lakeview Church--inundated by high levels of polluted floodwater following Katrina--told me they are at work cleaning out the bottom floor of their sanctuary and expect to bring the church building back to normal. "That is a well-built church structure," one said.
Paul Gregoire, longtime pastor of St. Bernard Baptist Church in Chalmette says the same thing about his church. "We'll be back," he told me, even though as Director of Admissions, Paul has had to relocate temporarily to Atlanta with the seminary administration. Meanwhile, Pastor John Galey of Poydras Church and Pastor John Jeffries of First Baptist Chalmette have teams working on rescuing their buildings. The Missouri Baptist Convention has adopted St. Bernard Parish's Baptist churches, for which we are more grateful than I can ever find words to express.
Pastor John Faull gave me time in the morning worship service of Williams Boulevard Baptist Church in Kenner to thank the congregation for their great service. To my knowledge, this was the first church of any denomination in the immediate area to be up and running, ministering and serving. Hundreds of state troopers from all over America converged on New Orleans to restore law and order. They worked out of the Troop B headquarters, next door to Williams Boulevard, and hundreds slept and ate in the church's gymnasium. Even now, WBBC continues to serve hundreds of meals a day to law enforcement officers still on the job.
Brother John read several letters he has received recently, some from family members of troopers thanking the church for "taking care of my daddy." One letter came from some children in Taiwan who held a bake sale in their yard and raised twenty dollars for hurricane relief, then sent the money along with drawings they had done.
Several texts keep coming up in our post-hurricane conversations around the New Orleans area. I made a list the other day and was pleasantly surprised to find seven texts, that being the biblical number for completion.
JUDGES 5:2 After her great victory, Deborah sang, "That the leaders led in Israel and that the people volunteered, O bless the Lord." Pretty good arrangement, when the leaders are doing their job and the people are doing theirs. Let either group quit and nothing gets done.
DEUTERONOMY 28:13 "And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail." God promises that His children who are obedient will be leaders wherever they go, not the reactors and definitely not just followers. Leaders do not ask anyone to elect them, they step up and lead. Leaders do not take polls to see what the people want; Godly leaders are more interested in what God wants, and they go forth to do it. A pastor friend told me this week he knew Rick Warren as a seminary student. He said, "I have copies of his notes from those years, notes which became the 'Purpose-Driven Life' best-selling book. Rick has worked on that all these years." He was saying this leader was not compiling other people's thoughts into a book which he would market, but spent all these years perfecting the insights God had given him. God makes us the head. Not the mayor, not an election. To the best of my knowledge, no one ever elected Billy Graham as the nation's pastor.
I was nearly--but not quite--offended when a friend from another state, a place that has received a lot of our residents, said, "Of course, our people do not have the tolerance for corruption Louisiana residents have." I started to argue that we don't tolerate it; in fact we put the crooks in jail--a half dozen judges from the New Orleans area in the past couple of years. And we must have some honest leaders, otherwise they would never have been exposed. But I kept quiet. And with good reason, it turns out.
We truly have some weird, weird politicians down here. Take this instance....
Friday's Times-Picayune, front page, the chief of the New Orleans Harbor Police, Robert Hecker, is in trouble because he did his job. As the storm was raging, waters rising, Chief Hecker and his people were saving stranded citizens from rooftops, bringing them to shelter, doing the kind of heroic work every law enforcement officer trains for and lives for. Suddenly, Hecker gets an order from his boss, Director of Port Safety and Security Cynthia Swain, telling his to close up shop and get his people out of town for their own safety. Hecker was horrified. His spokesman said, "It's mind-boggling. You don't send away police officers in a time of crisis." So, Hecker did a truly courageous thing.
He defied orders. He told his men what the boss had ordered and gave each permission to make their own decisions. But he stayed on the job, as did most of the others. And for that little bit of insubordination, Chief Hecker is in trouble. Swain has brought in the state attorney general's office which is investigating him for malfeasance.
Makes you want to pull your hair out. Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard ordered the pump operators out of the parish at the critical hour, for their safety, he says, resulting in wide-spread flooding in some areas which cost zillions of dollars, and the citizens continue to be up in arms about his decision. The harbor police stay on the job and save lives and get in trouble.
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like this home.
Each Wednesday, our ministers/pastors meet at First Baptist Church of LaPlace for fellowship and information. Around 50 of us gather there each time, but it's never the same group.
Today, November 2, a young pastor who serves a non-Southern Baptist church in Kenner addressed the group. "I've been in this area for nine years, and I've been impressed with the work of Southern Baptists. I know what you believe and it's the same thing my church stands for. After Katrina hit, I did not see any of my denomination's people down here at all. The first people on the ground were Southern Baptists, and they're everywhere, ministering in Jesus' name. It's outstanding. And I want my church to be a part of that. So I am here, officially requesting to join the Southern Baptist Convention." Everyone applauded. We may have lost 30 or more churches from the hurricane, but we just gained one! (We'll deal with the details at another time, and explain how one goes about becoming a member church in the SBC.) He brought a laugh of understanding when he added, "I would have been here a couple of years earlier, except I was waiting for one key deacon to go to Heaven."
After prayer time, our two-hour-and-a-half meeting was jam-packed with one person after another rising to address the group. Disaster relief workers talked about cleanup, building people about permits, and financial people about insurance and loans. One pastor gave a report that Franklin Graham will be leading a two-day festival at the New Orleans Arena, next to the Superdome, on Saturday and Sunday, January 28 and 29. Another spoke of plans to invite all the "first-responders" to a banquet or barbecue to show them proper appreciation for all they did to secure the city. Others told of the counseling available for those having trouble dealing with this crisis. On and on it went. I felt sorry for Lynn Gehrman, trying to get it all down in the minutes.
The First Baptist Church of Covington, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, has invited our ministers and spouses to have our Christmas banquet in their facilities, as their guests, no charge. We gladly accept and agreed on Monday night, December 5.
Tuesday morning, some folks at Edgewater and Lakeview churches were masked up and tearing out sheetrock, pews, and other church innards. It remains to be seen whether the buildings will be salvageable, but give the folks credit--they're trying.
"The only word to describe this area is 'dead zone,'" said Tom Billings. The Director of Missions for Houston, Texas, flew in Tuesday morning and spent the day with Freddie Arnold and me before departing that evening. I'm afraid we showed him more of the devastation than he wanted to see. I took him up Canal Street and across Paris Avenue and Elysian Fields, then over to Algiers and back across the Huey P. Long into Kenner. Freddie took him to lunch while I did a funeral, and then showed him the greater devastation in St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th ward. I expect Tom was happy to get back on the plane that evening.
"This is not going to be a quick fix," he said. "We're talking about years." Indeed. In fact, Tuesday, the folks at Lifeway who were going to provide architectural workshops for our pastors notified me that they think it's premature, that this needs to be scheduled sometime after the first of the year, that the pastors aren't at the point of thinking of rebuilding yet. I believe they're right.
Freddie told Tom Billings the best thing Houstonians can do for us is pray. While this is on target, it's hard for people to voice the same prayers over and over for years when you are not present to see how the prayers are being answered, and whether they are. That's our challenge--to keep them praying. New Orleans may be the biggest prayer challenge our people have ever faced.
Wayne Jenkins has a plan.
November arrived pleasantly Tuesday morning. It brought rain. Not a lot, not enough to mess up unrepaired homes, not enough to shut down construction and cleanup work all over the city, but enough to settle the dust. We've had almost no rain since Katrina hit, over 2 months ago. October had 0.04 inches of rain, which is about as near to none as you can get.
The New York Times reported that the Bring Back New Orleans Commission which our mayor appointed, of which Pastor Fred Luter is a member, has been experiencing in-fighting. Horrors. Do you mean to say that this group of strong leaders, each with definite convictions on what should be done, actually disagreed? All I can say is, Lord, I hope so. I'd hate to think we had one or two strong leaders and a bunch of "yes-men" on that board. They say the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship. Under Saddam, Iraq had almost no dissension, certainly none that lived to tell it. And these days, over 225 separate political parties have registered to represent Iraqi voters. Sounds a little strange to us, but it sure looks like democracy. Eventually, those folks will find commonality with each other and form fewer, larger parties. But the road from here to there is plenty of discussion, some arguments, debates, and attempts to get together. That is what is happening in New Orleans on a quieter level.