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The paper says residents of the Lakeview section of New Orleans fear "mansionization." As flooded, ruined homes are demolished, some people are buying up two or three adjacent lots and building large estates on the property. In most cases, homeowners would welcome that in their neighborhoods. All it does is skyrocket the values of existing homes. Problem is, say the Lakeviewers, the character of our beloved neighborhood would be changed. We want the casual middle-class neighborliness we had before.
And down in St. Bernard Parish, authorities are still trying to keep homeowners from renting to anyone except family members. We don't want to lose the identity of our neighborhoods, they say. They fear outsiders buying up large sections of the city, then renting out to whoever.
Change is difficult, particularly change that involves our homes and the surrounding community. And our churches.
Every church in metro New Orleans is in the midst of monumental change. Some are embracing the change, some are fighting it, some denying it and some sleeping through it. To paraphrase II Corinthians 5:17 slightly and use it out of context completely, "Old things have passed away and everything is becoming new." Churches are losing pastors, staffs, key leadership, Sunday School teachers, and financial supporters as they decide to move closer to family or relocate for their jobs or simply get out of Dodge.
Meanwhile, their communities are being transformed as longtime residents move away and outsiders flow in, many of them speaking Spanish or Asian tongues. New pastors are arriving, bringing new ideas and new perspectives on our situation.
There has never been a time or place when the Lord's teachings on new wine/new wineskins were more applicable than here and now.
"No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out and the skins be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins." (Luke 5:37-38)
Bill Day will love this story, I thought Saturday morning. The front-page article in the Times-Picayune was headlined "Local Revival," and gave a run-down on the churches of each denomination that have been restored or are meeting in some fashion. In addition to pastoring Metairie's Parkview Baptist Church, Bill is a professor at our Baptist seminary and in charge of the Leavell Center for Evangelism and Missions. He and a cadre of students have been compiling statistics on the churches of New Orleans. Then I saw it.
Underneath a large map with every church--every one of them--positioned in the metro area, and with various codes identifying which are open and which are not, in the finest print was this line: "Source: The Rev. Bill Day and the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary--Leavell Center; Archdiocese of New Orleans; staff research."
I was right; Bill will love this story. It's his story.
Here is the beginning of religion editor Bruce Nolan's article.
Early after Katrina, I decided (and publicly announced) that a new facet of my job was connecting people. Churches would call asking us to match them with a local congregation or pastor whom they could assist. People with gifts of material or money would call asking for information on where to send it. That lovely tradition, I'm happy to say, is continuing.
This week, twenty of our churches are receiving $10,000 checks from one congregation not far from here. The amazing part of that story is that this generous church was itself severely hurt by Hurricane Katrina. As their people have returned and restored their church and their community, they've reached out to some of our damaged churches. Such wonderful friends.
Sunday, during lunch at Old Union Baptist Church near Nauvoo, Alabama, a schoolmate whom I had not seen in nearly 50 years slipped a church offering envelope to me. On the outside, she had written that I should put this where I thought best. Inside were five one-hundred dollar bills. Today, Wednesday, I handed a bill to each of five men of God and said, "It's from the Lord."
It's the part of my job I love best. Serving as the arms and hands of some pretty terrific people.
Wednesday was our final meeting at El Buen Pastor Iglesia Bautista in Metairie, and the ladies in the kitchen did themselves proud with the terrific lunch. Pastor Gonzalo Rodriguez, his lovely wife, and their wonderful members have set new standards of hospitality for churches. In the dining hall, our people spontaneously rose to give a standing ovation to the kitchen staff. We are so blessed by their love and faithfulness. Gonzalo said, "It was an honor for us to serve the men of God in this way."
Our attendance at the pastors meeting was in the low 30s since another assembly was going on across town. Tom Elliff, vice-president of the International Mission Board, spoke at seminary chapel this morning, then hosted a ministers luncheon at 11:30 to which all our guys were invited. We assured them last week that all who could should attend. Several indicated that they did not plan to go, and with this being our final session at Good Shepherd, Freddie Arnold and I decided to stay with the flock.
This preacher made me mad Monday. While driving back from Alabama, I found a certain preacher on the radio and for some inexplicable reason, listened to his entire broadcast. Perhaps it was because he billed himself as "a true prophet of God for these last days." Perhaps I lingered to see what kind of egomaniac would be so filled with his own sense of self-importance as to call himself that. Maybe I wanted to see what kind of prophecy he would utter. (I had never heard of him and, I think fortunately, I don't recall his name.)
Alas, the man lived down to my worst expectations.
He was all negative. "The church is backslidden," he said repeatedly, adding that "we are in the Laodicaean period of church history." This reference is strictly a conjecture from preachers with time on their hands that the seven churches of Asia Minor (Revelation 2 and 3) actually represent seven stages of Christian history. There is not a single strand of evidence for that, but for those who enjoy negative preaching--delivering it and hearing it--the thought has a certain appeal.
Over and over the preacher slammed the Christian church. At the end of the broadcast, when they identified the church he pastors in Jacksonville, Florida, I found myself wondering if the smearing he did of the whole church also applies to the congregation he leads. What do you want to bet it doesn't.
The preacher was dead certain of other false doctrines, too, such as the probability of backsliders losing their salvation. He quoted and misquoted scripture to prove his point. I kept wondering, "What about the Lord's statement in John 10:28-29 that 'no man' or 'no one' can snatch them out of His hand."
Sure enough, he mentioned those verses. Well, actually, he made a less than respectful reference to them. He admitted that the devil cannot get you out of the Lord's hand and that no one else can, but you can do it yourself. Interesting bit of theology. The devil isn't, and other people aren't, but I am stronger than God, according to him. I can do what no one else can: I can make me lose my salvation.
I wish I could have a few minutes with that preacher to ask a couple of questions. If one loses his salvation, can he get it back? Show me one person in all the Bible who lost his salvation and then was saved a second time? Hebrews 6:6 says it is impossible for someone to be saved twice if he were to lose his salvation.
I'd like to ask him: why don't you read the whole Bible before you start preaching your pet doctrines? And after you have read it, why not believe it? Jesus said, "He who believes on the Son of God has everlasting life." (John 3:36) How simpler could He put it? But if I can have it and lose it and get it back and lose it again, friend, it ain't eternal!
I've told you about Chris Rose, the former humor columnist for the Times-Picayune whose life was forever changed by Katrina and her aftermath. He still writes for the paper and he still possesses the quickest wit on this side of the globe, but he's forever changed. Now we know why.
Driving in from North Alabama Monday afternoon, I heard someone on New Orleans talk radio refer to Rose's Sunday column. Late that night, I was comfortably in bed and de-stressing from a long drive when my son Neil called to say I should read Rose's column. Tuesday morning, I did.
"I pulled into the Shell station on Magazine Street," Rose begins, "my car running on fumes. I turned off the motor. And then I sat there. There were other people pumping gas at the island I had pulled into and I didn't want them to see me, didn't want to see them, didn't want to nod hello, didn't want to interact in any fashion."
"Outside the window, they looked like characters in a movie. But not my movie. I tried to wait them out, but others would follow, get out of their cars and pump and pay and drive off, always followed by more cars, more people. How can they do this, like everything is normal, I wondered. Where do they go? What do they do?"
"It was early August and two minutes in my car with the windows up and the air conditioner off was insufferable. I was trapped, in my car and in my head. So I drove off with an empty tank rather than face strangers at a gas station."
Trapped. Empty tank. Good metaphors, Chris. After beginning with this classic incident of depression, Rose interrupts to confess he never believed in depression or taking pills. That was for desperate housewives and fragile poets, he writes.
No longer. "Not since I fell down the rabbit hole myself and enough hands reached down to pull me out."
"Are you going to mention the guy who killed his girlfriend and cut her up and cooked her?"
I wasn't planning to. It's been in all the news this week, and Thursday, the Times-Picayune gave it most of the front page and several full pages inside.
"You might as well. The nation is talking about it."
At Gentilly Baptist Church Thursday night, visiting with the Arkansas Baptists who have made one end of the educational building their headquarters for rebuilding this city, I noticed one of the ladies engrossed in our newspaper, reading every word of this sordid story. On my drive home, scanning the radio dial for the last game of the National League Championship Series, I came across some talk show host in some city gruesomely savoring each detail of this story. What got me was his comment at the end. "New Orleans most definitely did not need this. I mean, it's always been a spooky city to me. And now this."
I will spare you most of the details. The essence of the story is that 28 year old Zackery Bowen took his life Tuesday night by jumping off the top of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel in the quarter. In his pocket, police found a suicide note instructing them to go to his apartment at 826 No. Rampart, located over a French Quarter voodoo shop, where they would find the body of his 30 year old girl friend, Adriane "Addy" Hall, whom he had strangled. What they found was a dead body, dismembered, and worse. Some of the body pieces lay in cooking pans with spices sprinkled on top. No evidence of cannibalism, police say, as though this were good news.
In his note, Bowen wrote, "This is not accidental. I had to take my own life to pay for the one I took."
As if that would. Were she my daughter, ten deaths like his would not atone for the life of my child.
Horrible story. Shocking in every aspect. Bowen said he was a failure in everything he tried, and even listed them: school, jobs, military, marriage, parenthood, morals, love. Friends say he served in Iraq and Bosnia while in the military, although this has not been confirmed.
Would you let me make one minor point here: he came to New Orleans from Los Angeles. He left his wife and two children and moved here. So, don't blame it all on New Orleans.
Here's the plan for the future pastors meetings. We will assemble one more Wednesday, October 25, at Good Shepherd (Spanish) Baptist Church. Then, the first three Wednesdays of November (Nov. 1, 8, and 15) we are the guests of the New Orleans Chinese Baptist Church which is actually located in Kenner. (See directions below) We will skip November 22, Thanksgiving Eve, as many people will be out of town. After that, we move to the associational offices at 2222 Lakeshore Drive in New Orleans. The plan is to meet there each week at 10 am, but have lunch only the first Wednesday of the month. Got that? And at this point, we don't see beyond this arrangement.
There's too much going on of too great importance to drop back to monthly meetings.
The Chinese Baptist Church is located on Continental Drive in Kenner. Drive west on West Esplanade, past the Esplanade Mall, across Chateau Boulevard, past the Kenner Library on your right. As you pass Anastasia Alexander Elementary on your right, look for Continental on your left. The church is the second building down that street. Hong Fu Liu is the pastor and he promises great Chinese eating.
We have been spoiled. Last Fall when we began these weekly gatherings in LaPlace, the wonderful secretary Karrie would do the lunches alone, sometimes ordering po-boys, sometimes cooking lasagna and preparing a salad. It was terrific and everything we could have asked for. Then, for May through July, we met at Oak Forest Baptist Church, a congregation with a lot of senior volunteers who delighted in feeding the preachers. So the meals kicked up a notch. We've met at Good Shepherd since July, and these wonderful people are setting impossible standards. In addition to the incredible Hispanic meals, fresh flowers adorn every table. If we stay there much longer, I expect to see waiters at each table taking orders!
Tuesday, up to Nashville and back, via Southwest Airlines. Met with some of our best friends at Lifeway to discuss future support for our Baptist work here. Nothing to announce yet.
In the airport, standing in line to board for the return trip, Karen Campbell introduced herself. She and husband Kelly are NAMB missionaries to Appalachia in East Tennessee and Karen has been volunteering in the office of Operation NOAH Rebuild. She'll be here for 10 days this time. Where are you staying? In an RV there at the office. How will you get there tonight? Steve and Dianne Gahagan are picking me up. Where is Kelly? Representing us at a church meeting in Columbia, TN.
And now a few words about the new New Orleans Saints.
It's not so much that the team is 5-1 on the year so far. And it's not just that the Saints beat big-time rival Atlanta on our first time back in the Dome and last Sunday, the powerhouse Philadelphia Eagles. The fact is the team was 5-1 just four years ago, in 2002 (before losing the final three games of the season and failing to make the playoffs). And in 1991, they started the season with a straight 7 wins (and, as I recall, got knocked out of the playoffs in the first game). But there's something very special about the team this year.
Coach Sean Payton is not like any coach we've ever had. A front page article in Tuesday's Times-Picayune elaborates on just how he is different. What this tells us about Coach Payton is a something I wish every pastor in America would take note of.
Fall finally arrived in New Orleans Friday. My system for identifying the return of our favorite season is simply the first day the temperature does not get out of the 70s. It was a glorious day. And yes, Friday the 13th. Unlucky? Back in 1962, April 13 was a Friday when Margaret and I tied the knot at West End Baptist Church in Birmingham. Pretty good day, if you ask me.
Friday, Shannon called our office. She identified herself and said she was in a hotel downtown. "I'm leaving town later today and I didn't want to leave without doing something to help New Orleans. So, do you know of a church where I could volunteer for a couple of hours? I'll take a taxi." I thought for a few seconds. Fridays, most churches pretty well have their stuff done for the weekend and may not need any help. Shannon said, "I've called a long list of churches and no one needs me." Then I thought of the perfect answer.
Shannon took a taxi across the river and worked in the offices of Operation NOAH Rebuild. Office manager Dianne Gahagan said, "We can always give a volunteer work to do. It might be running the copier or collating material." Shannon assured us she would love it.
Interesting lady, I think you will agree.
Thursday, a phone call came from Lori in North Carolina. After Katrina, she had personally assisted several of our residents during the evacuation and was continuing to help them. One particular lady, she said, has moved back to New Orleans and it's not working out. With the decline in business here, the woman cannot find work in her field and can't support herself. She's lined up a place to live in Baton Rouge and Lori called to see if I can find a couple of guys with pickup trucks to move her next week.
Friday, Lori sent a note listing precisely what items the lady wants moved so we can see that two pickup trucks should get the job done. Then I received a call from a friend in the offices of the Baptist Association of Greater Baton Rouge. Lori had called Donald Davis saying that we were going to be moving the woman to B.R., and she would need their help in finding work for the lady.
If you're a television watcher, you know Harry Anderson. He starred as the judge of Night Court and then in Dave's World before retiring to New Orleans and opening a curio shop. Long before he made it big, Harry did magic in the French Quarter and later married a young lady from Baton Rouge. He is a character in every sense of the word, but let's admit it, this is a city that welcomes characters. Anyway, Harry is moving away.
For one thing, his customer base has eroded. Then, he received a bill from the power company for the electrical service for his storage building, a location that has only two drop lights. The bill was for $7,339.77. He paid someone to stand in a long line at Entergy's office. The bill was dropped to $15. Other people do not have the means to hire stand-ins such as he did, Anderson said.
Anderson was disappointed when the citizenry re-elected Ray Nagin as mayor. He says he was hoping the mayor would go on television and make the energy and insurance companies do the right thing, "but he was busy endorsing William 'Dollar Bill' Jefferson instead. Not quietly and not ignominously, but at a press conference." Anderson is not in a mood to be kind to Nagin. "Joseph Heller could not have written a more bizarre scene," he says, referring to Nagin's act of erasing any evidence that he was not going to be another run-of-the-mill politician. The re-election of what he calls "Car 54," our mayor, was the last straw. They've sold out and are moving to Asheville, North Carolina.
One more sign that things here are not good. Here's another. Orleans Parish Criminal Judge Charles Elloie (pronounced El-waa) has just been suspended by the Louisiana Supreme Court pending an investigation into his bizarre practice of reducing bail or throwing bail requirements out altogether for criminals with long histories of bad deeds. The Metropolitan Crime Commission, a local group of citizens who serve as watchdogs over our police and judiciary, had long complained about this man who set himself up as a law above all other judges. One case in point...
[Name removed by request] was arrested on March 29, 2005, and charged with the aggravated rape of his 10-year-old sister. I mean, is this a bad crime or what? Less than four hours after his arrest, Judge Elloie released him on a personal recognizance bond. This means he doesn't have to put up any money unless he fails to show up for his trial. After the public learned of this and raised a stink, the judge backtracked and set bond at $100,000.
Eva Wilson works with the Kansas-Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists. In an e-mail Thursday, she informed us that they are once again sending another team of volunteers into New Orleans to help with the rebuilding of the city. The group of 50 should arrive at Gentilly Baptist Church Saturday night, October 21. Their leader is Elijah "Touch" Touchton from Trinity Baptist Church in Pittsburg, Kansas. "Touch," known to his team-members as "the Boss," is an electrical contractor by trade and has been involved in full-time volunteer missions for more than a dozen years.
Eva sends her regrets that she'll not be along this time nor will she make the November trip due to all the associational and convention meetings Southern Baptists tend to group together this time of the year. She expects to make the December trip.
Prior to Katrina and her ugly sister Rita's visit to our part of the world in '05, the Kansas-Nebraska Baptists had a working partnership with the much larger Arkansas Baptist State Convention, but working together in Katrina-land has taken their partnership to a higher level. Eva writes, "I often hear of 'synergy,' but this is one time I have truly experienced it."
Over this year that our good friends from Kansas-Nebraska have been coming down, 116 volunteers have put in 5,000 hours here. They have rewired 10 houses, which saved the homeowners from $100,000 to $150,000. They've sheetrocked 3 homes and finished several others. They've insulated two homes, hung the sheetrock and installed the outside siding at Global Maritime's new port ministry center, and poured the wonderful sidewalk outside our BAGNO associational center. They have done electrical work and painting at Gentilly Baptist Church where they and the Arkansans have created a headquarters and where they all stay. In addition to all this, they have handed out 900 flyers to local residents, given away 500 gift bags, 200 care bears, and 18 backpacks.
Eva Wilson writes, "It is a privilege for our small convention to join God's work there."
"Like drinking from a fire hydrant" best summarizes our pastors' meeting this Wednesday morning at Good Shepherd Baptist Church of Metairie. The program was so jam-packed, some of it took place in the dining hall in the middle of our meal.
We promoted the October 30 Fall meeting of the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans--our first meeting since Katrina--which will be held at Ames Boulevard Baptist Church of Marrero at 7 pm. This one will not be business as usual but will feature several representatives of state Baptist conventions around the country that have been so present and so helpful since the Katrina event. We will have a feature about Operation NOAH Rebuild and the 27 Zone Ministry in which state conventions or associations adopt a portion of this city for ministry and evangelism. The administrative committee asked me to bring a short "Bible treasure" to close out that meeting. (Please help us get the word out. Everyone is invited. This is NOT just for ministers and professional clergy. This meeting is for the laypeople. Everybody!)
We promoted "The Best Library Conference in America" to be held November 3-4 at FBC of Marrero. Hope Ferguson, the instigator/brains/organizer/spirit behind this event, arrived from Natchitoches in time to address everyone in the middle of lunch. She passed around a signup sheet asking pastors how many people they're planning to bring. (I'm suggesting every church bring 6 people.)
Hope has 25 conference leaders coming from 6 states to lead this event, and we're going to do everything we can to get our people there. It kicks off on Friday evening, November 3, at 5 pm with registration, then supper at 5:30 pm. Then the meeting gets underway with a full schedule. Next morning, Saturday, they're serving breakfast at 8 am and going forward with a full day's events.
"You are getting two meals and two snacks and a lot of door prizes and special gifts," Hope said, "and it won't cost you a dime!" What a bargain. I'm doing everything I know how to convince our church leaders that now is the time and this is the place to either get your library jump started or to put new life and vision into your old library. Anyone coming needs only to call our associational office to let us know. 504/282-1428. (You do NOT have to be local; in fact, you do not even have to be Baptist!)
Tuesday at 6 o'clock, my son Neil called. "Sorry to wait til the last minute to tell you, but our choir and the children and I are singing at the seminary tonight. We're doing the musical 'Somebody's Praying For You.'" I told him his children had already told me and I would be there.
The choir was a blend of seminarians and choir/orchestra members from a number of local churches and someone said, even from FBC Summit, MS. The musical is a wonderful, moving reminder of the importance of prayer. Early in the program, Neil stepped to the microphone and sang with a small group of children--including his twins Abby and Erin--a song called, "Pray for Me." The picture is of children asking adults to pray for them.
When Dr. Ken Gabrielse, chairman of the seminary's music department and conductor of the program, asked me to come to the front and say a few words about the role of prayer in our rebuilding of New Orleans and our churches, all I could summon at the moment was my oft-repeated one-minute speech that goes like this: "Wherever I go, people say they're praying for us. I thank them and say, 'May I tell you how to pray? Pray big. We have a massive task before us, one that will not be completed for another ten years. We need big prayer. Perhaps you could pray like this: 'Father, you love this city. Jesus died for this city. You have many people here. Satan has held it long enough, Lord. Take it back. Do a new thing here, Lord. Do a big thing. Do a God thing.'
"John Newton, who wrote the words to 'Amazing Grace' had this to say about this kind of praying: 'Thou art coming to a King; Large petitions with thee bring; For His grace and power are such, None can ever ask too much." Pray big.
You know how it is, I'll betcha. I sat back down on the front row as the choir resumed singing about how someone is praying for you, and only then did I think of something Ken Watkins had e-mailed me this very day. Ken spent most of his career as director of Baptist Campus Ministry at Mississippi State University, and built one of the most wonderful programs anywhere. These days, he pastors a small church in upper New York State and works as a chaplain at a retirement home. Tuesday he sent an email asking how I was doing. His wife--whom I have not met; they're relatively newlywed--has a co-worker named Glenn who had been praying for me and wondered how I was doing.
Give that a little thought. A colleague of the wife of a friend was praying for me, and I didn't know it. Later Tuesday night, Dr. Chuck Kelley and I walked out of the chapel talking about this very thing, how we are the beneficiaries of unknown friends everywhere lifting us to the Father. How truly blessed we are. And who are these unnamed friends praying for us? God alone knows.
Those of you who receive this article twice a week via e-mail--and there are 1200 or more of you--would miss the following which was posted on our website today at the end of the article "Get the Bad News Over With." It's from Pat Blackman who grew up in the New Orleans area and whose wonderful mother Alice Blackman, now in Heaven, was one of those precious saints who made pastoring the First Baptist Church of Kenner so pleasurable for me for nearly 14 years. Pat's terrific sister Leanna Mohr still worships at Kenner. Pat himself now lives in Texas. Here's his note....
"I just returned from a week in New Orleans attending the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) convention. I have to say I'm proud of the SEG for staying with New Orleans when several other conventions pulled out. My SEG contacts told me they were not about to cancel for two reasons: one, there are a lot of SEG members in N.O., and two, they felt the city needed the support.
When New Orleanians ask about dealing with stress, I often recommend laughter. It's such a stress reliever that I've come close to tweaking scripture from where it reads, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine," to "A merry heart IS medicine." I've mentioned in this website before that I frequently am invited to address groups on laughter. One of the exercises we perform is to make ourselves laugh for two minutes at a time.
Right. Make yourself laugh. You can do this. It's not nearly as hard as it sounds. It feels fake at first--after all, you're forcing it--but the effect is past in a moment. You start feeling so silly that the very act of laughing makes you laugh. At the end of two minutes, you're glowing. It's like you have had a tonic.
Now comes reports of others, professionals, doing the same thing. An article in the Sunday, October 8, Times-Picayune, a reprint from The Washington Post, tells of laughter therapy classes in the George Washington University Center for Integrative Medicine.
According to reporter Anita Huslin, research from the University of Maryland shows that laughter opens your arteries. A scientist at Loma Linda University says it boosts the immune system, relieves stress, and teaches you how to breathe like a baby.
The leader of the GWU class, Siddharth Shah, a physician and psychotherapist, has worked with disaster relief workers who respond to hurricanes, earthquakes, and terrorist acts. He knows the healing power of laughter and teaches his students that they should dose themselves every day on this miracle drug. He admits to laughing in the shower every morning as he begins his day. And in the classroom, he teaches participants various techniques to infuse their daily lives with laughter.
Walk around with a cell phone to your ear, he suggests. It's not on, but you're the only one who knows that. Now, laugh out loud. Giggle, like you're talking to someone. Not one soul in a crowded room thinks you're weird, certainly not the way they would if you were not holding the phone.
Dr. Shah teaches the lion laugh, where participants lift their arms like paws and roar. The lawnmower laugh has a couple of crank-up laughs followed by deep belly-laughs.
I wish you could have heard Rudy French preach at FBC Norco Sunday morning. This Canadian brother is quiet and unassuming in person, but strong and forceful in the pulpit. I took notes from his message on Numbers 13, the "Kadesh-Barnea incident" where Moses sends 12 spies into Canaan to check out the conditions. Of the 12, only two believed God could win the victory over such an impressive enemy. Following are some of my notes.
"What do you see here?" Rudy asked two young people he brought up to the front. It appeared to be nothing but a sheet of white poster paper. The youth stared at it and noticed the small sticker on the back. "I see a bar code," the girl said. The boy read the numbers under it. Then they sat down.
Rudy French said, "This piece of poster paper contains 1232 square inches of space on the front and the back. Yet, the young people saw only a one inch bar code. They did not notice the other 1231 square inches. That's us today. We are missing the other 1231 square inches." I wondered where he was going with this.
"When Katrina devastated New Orleans, I was working in Canada with a new church start. I saw on television what was happening here, and the Lord spoke to me: 'This is a great opportunity for evangelism.' The people in New Orleans had been praying for revival, and here was the opportunity."
"I told my wife God wants us to go to New Orleans. She had many questions. What will we do there? Where will we stay? How can we support ourselves? I did not know. I only knew God was leading. Rose had just taken a new job in a pharmacy that paid well, and now we would be leaving."
"We came in October of last year, and I started telling people the good news of Christ. People were interested in hearing of the love of God. They responded. I did not need to use any of the techniques I had learned over the years to convince people. They were ready."
Rudy explained the story of Numbers 13. God had given Israel the land of Canaan. It was theirs. All they had to do was go in and take it. Yet, they put their eyes on the obstacles--the giants and walled cities and standing armies--and did not believe God.
"God gave them the land, yet they were afraid to take it. I am fearful that God may have given us New Orleans and we have not taken it. Like Israel, we're afraid to go in and claim what God has given."
At Friday's vision tour, involving a number of out-of-state pastors and local guys, someone said, "I heard a businessman in another state say you'd have to be crazy to invest in New Orleans right now." Not what we want to hear.
Saturday's newspaper announces more bad news. Microsoft was scheduled to hold three large meetings in our city, and has moved them all elsewhere due to the lack of sufficient airline service. Two of the gatherings would have brought 14,000 each to the city and the third 2,000. "We've made a very difficult decision to hold three of our annual conventions...in other places," said spokeswoman Robyn Kratzer.
And yet, next month we're scheduled to host the National Association of Realtors--bringing 25,000 conventioners--and they're not canceling. Those in the know say the lack of enough air service is only one factor in cancellations, others being the high crime rate and the cost of insurance to cover event cancellation.
The murder rate in shrunken New Orleans is now over 100 for the year, whereas Boston, with several times the population, has only 75. Not good.
A wreck on Interstate 12--the east-west link connecting Slidell with Baton Rouge--has shocked everyone on Thursday of this week. When a 20-foot aluminum ladder fell off a truck, an 18-wheeler swerved to miss it. The driver lost control and side-swiped several vehicles before his truck plummeted across the median into the path of a lovely little Lexus carrying three women. The photo is a sight to behold. Two women were crushed to death and the driver was seriously injured. A highway patrolman said five people have been killed on Northshore highways since Katrina as a result of storm debris or construction equipment falling onto the highways.
This week the owners of a St. Bernard Parish nursing home where 35 residents drowned following Katrina had their day in court. Salvador and Mabel Mangano are (were?) owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home downriver near Poydras. While family members of victims held signs and posters outside the Chalmette courthouse, the Manganos entered accompanied by their lawyer and surrounded by deputies. Inside, they pleaded innocent to 35 counts of negligent homicide charges and 64 counts of cruelty to the infirm for failing to evacuate their facility as the hurricane approached.
Another Katrina legal situation this week involved the former clerk of criminal court, Kimberly Williamson-Butler. This lady's history in this city is short-lived but a comedy of errors and misjudgments and bizarre statements. It was all good news for her this week, however: the district attorney failed to convince a grand jury to indict her for misappropriation of funds. She's free to go. Earlier this year she ran for mayor and received perhaps a hundred votes, and has been largely absent since. I would not be surprised to see her reappear now that she can claim to have been exonerated. This young lady delights in wearing the badge of a martyr.
If the traffic seems worse, there's good reason. On the Causeway that spans Lake Pontchartrain from Metairie to Mandeville, traffic is up by 10 to 28 percent over the same months a year ago. Much of it may be New Orleanians who moved to the Northshore but are back and forth working on their flooded homes. Or workers commuting into the city for construction jobs.
Visitors who take our 30 dollar tour of the devastated areas ask, "What's keeping the city from tearing those buildings down and hauling them off? They're eyesores." I explain that they have to contact the owners, file legal papers, give owners time to respond, that sort of thing. Thursday, New Orleans began reinspecting more than 3,000 of the worst properties. Owners have previously been warned that these structures are public nuisances and need to be cleared away or cleaned up. Workers will post notices on buildings where nothing has been done, and owners will receive certified letters giving the dates of administrative hearings if they wish to protest the actions. The hearings will begin in November. So many legal hurdles to clear before you can demolish someone's private property. That's good, of course. We're a nation of laws. But it's slow and cumbersome.
On a similar note, Jefferson Parish has hired a company to tag offending property and notify homeowners that unless something is done, they will be fined and/or their building demolished. A special court has been established to deal with nothing but these cases, with hearings to begin this month. Using the tell-on-your-neighbor policy, more than 700 complaints have come in, reporting blighted yards and ruined houses where nothing is being done.
Two letters in Thursday's Times-Picayune comment on the St. Bernard Parish Council's decision prohibiting homeowners from renting to anyone except relatives. The second letter is wonderful.
Frank Buffone of Lacombe is confident the ordinance will be overturned by the courts. "However, the reasoning behind it is sound." Outside speculators will want to come in and buy properties and get rich off rentals. We must not let that happen, he says. Chalmette used to be a tight-knit community with the kind of values we need today.
Then the second letter, verbatim: "SBF w/small children seeks SWM homeowner in St. Bernard Parish for lunch and movies followed by marriage and rental of your property. Willing to bear child if necessary to qualify as 'blood relative' if marriage is not sufficient for me to enter parish as a resident. Prenuptial agreement no problem. Strictly business!" Gloria Young of New Orleans.
Confidential to my mom in Nauvoo: She doesn't mean it, mom. It's tongue-in-cheek stuff to make a point.
New population figures for Orleans Parish has come up with numbers far lower than any of the guesstimates various groups have posited. Couple of months ago, Entergy, the power company, took the actual number of hookups in the parish and multiplied it times two-point-something and came up with a figure of 225,000. But the number announced this week is based on actual door-to-door surveys made by college students hired by the Louisiana Recovery Authority. Precisely 187,525 residents now live in Orleans Parish, they said. That's a decline from pre-Katrina days of 59 percent.
Mayor Nagin is not buying that for an instant. "It's at least 250,000," he says. He points out that the margin of error for this survey is 11.5 percent, much higher than in most polls. He has been predicting a population of 300,000 by year end.
The surveyors insist they followed the methodology of the U.S. Census Bureau, and that these are not estimates. They did it the old fashioned way: a door to door survey of specific neighborhoods. Interestingly, they announced that Plaquemines Parish has a population of only 20,024, down some 8,900 from pre-K levels. However, those numbers have a whopping 36.3 percent margin of error.
Which, for my money, means: you may ignore this poll altogether.
The other bit of front-page news Friday morning is that the mayor has endorsed William Jefferson for re-election to Congress. My first thought was that he did it out of fear, fear that Jefferson will be chosen once again by the electorate and he doesn't want to be on the short end of that stick. But Nagin had a worse explanation than that. "He endorsed me when I ran for mayor, so I'm returning the favor." That's it.
One supposes that if David Duke had endorsed him for mayor, Nagin would be backing his candidacy for Congress. (Not that Duke is running. He has a full-time job in some prison somewhere, I think.)
I wish you could have sat in the gym of Jefferson Baptist Church in Baton Rouge Thursday night and heard the testimonies from our new church planters in the Southeast Louisiana. A young man--I think his name is Jason--who is on the staff of FBC Baton Rouge spoke of ministering to post-modern young adults downtown. He said, "I'm the only preacher you know who used to be a hairstylist." Jose Mathews raised his hand. "I was." "Were you a barber or a hairstylist?" "Hairstylist."
The young preacher went on to speak of the homosexual community where he was focusing so much of his work. "My brother is one of them," he said, "so I have a special reason for being down there." Jason broke the group up when he said, "Help me reach the gays for our congregation and I'll keep them out of your churches!"
James Welch has pulled together 25 people in the Magazine Section of New Orleans for "Sojourn," the new church plant here. James gets teased about his wild hair which pokes in every direction. "I know what you're thinking," he began, "and yes, Jason is my hair stylist."
I've been giving our Wednesday pastors meetings a lot of thought lately--particularly since we started talking about cutting back from weekly gatherings to the first Wednesday of each month. We had 52 people present today, including one first-timer--Carl Hubbert of Harahan's FBC--and some rarely seen pastors such as David Rodriguez of Horeb (Spanish) Baptist Mission. And we had Rudy and Rose French, our Canadian MSC missionaries, back. We had three from Bear Creek Baptist Church in Houston, an IMB missionary from Cote d'Ivoire, Africa, Joe and Linda Williams (our NAMB-appointed counselors), and a large contingent of local ministers who are on the cutting edge of rebuilding this city.
I tell you the honest truth: if we cut back to monthly meetings, I will have withdrawal pains. I love these weekly sessions, and can tell they are the high points of the week for a lot of the fellows. That's why, after announcing that we would continue meeting here at Good Shepherd Spanish Baptist Church through October and at the New Orleans Chinese Baptist Church for the first three Wednesdays of November, I said, "Thereafter, we'll meet the first Wednesday of each month at the associational Baptist Center, unless. Unless ten of you come to me and say you want to continue meeting weekly." We'll see.
Linda Williams said, "If you cut out the weekly meetings, a lot of people around the country will miss reading about what's happening locally in your blog." One more reason I'll miss having them weekly.
In November, Rudy French is having a heart procedure done in Canada and we're already praying for him and Rose. Today was their first visit back with us in several months. They had an unusual announcement to make. Rudy is going to become the pastor--not the interim pastor and not a supply pastor, but THE man--of one of our churches. I'll wait until it happens to name the congregation, but you'll be interested in what brought it to this point.
Some weeks ago, Rose e-mailed me that Rudy could never pastor. "Pastoring a church bores him," she said. I laughed at that. So, when that church's pastor search committee kept telling him they believed God wants him to become their pastor, he resisted. Finally, they said the magic words. "What would it take for you to come as our pastor?" Rudy said, "I've studied your history. You've had pastors, one after another, for a couple of years each and they move on. You do business as usual and you never grow. Your budget is the same it's been for years. I would want you to go out of business as just another church and become a mission center." What would that involve, they asked. "Put in permanent shower fixtures, fix up the place to host church mission teams coming to help rebuild the city and do evangelism in the neighborhoods. Scrap everything and start fresh. Become an evangelism and mission center." A lady in that church has already donated a large sum of money to get the transformation started, and the church has put people to work on it. My understanding is that Rudy will officially begin as the new pastor on December 1.
I've abbreviated Rudy's account of how this all came to pass. My wife commented that it took an outsider to see what the church needs to do and to convince them to do it.
It's God's own way.
A funny thing: those most afflicted by the scourge of racism don't have a clue.
The governing council of St. Bernard Parish has stirred up a hornet's nest. Recently they voted 5-2 to limit a homeowner's ability to rent out his single-family dwelling. He can let it only to someone he's related to. The aim, the authorities said, is to preserve the integrity of the neighborhoods and maintain the same culture they had before. There will be no jokes here about "what culture?" in this parish which has long depicted itself as the poor relation of New Orleans.
Predictably, citizens inside and outside the parish are yelling "racism". Having lived in the Deep South since the age of 11, and after watching local and state governments go through all kinds of legal maneuvering and verbal contortions in order to keep down racial minorities, I have to say that what St. Bernard Parish is doing looks mighty suspicious.
Letters to the editor in Wednesday's paper take both sides on this issue. (I think I'll spare you, if that's all right.)
Parish councilman Craig Taffaro, who authored this regulation, said to a reporter, "What a tremendous burden it must be to believe that everything is motivated by race. Our motivation is simply to do what's best for our recovery and to restore and maintain our pre-Katrina way of life."
Hmm...let's see...what was that expression we used to hear in Alabama throughout the 1950s...the "Southern way of life." Elect this candidate because he wants to preserve it; oppose that guy because he wants to destroy it. As I recall, no one ever defined the term. It was just "understood." By whites and blacks alike, I'll wager.
As a pastor for over four decades, I suppose I've committed every social and etiquetical (is that a word?) breach there is. I've offended the handicapped, teased the hurting, and joked about the pain some walking wounded were experiencing. I've done all this and more, but never maliciously. I didn't "mean" to hurt them. But I did.
I haven't mentioned it here, but Saturday was a big election day throughout Louisiana. In fact, we turned our association's offices on Lakeshore Drive over to the electoral process. The "Baptist Center" became the voting place for nine precincts in the Gentilly area of New Orleans. Freddie Arnold hung around much of the day Saturday, to be on hand in case he was needed. He said the voting was light. I voted at my usual polling place--John Curtis Christian School's elementary school library--here in River Ridge.
All of the 13 amendments on the ballot passed big, which was unusual. Several had to do with restoring the coastal wetlands and another with merging all the area levee boards into two, one for each side of the Mississippi River. We were assured that the federal government was watching to make certain the citizens were as concerned with flood protection as they were being told. The vote for levee consolidation was 81 percent in favor. Pretty strong.
The folks in back of the levee consolidation movement didn't celebrate long. They promptly announced they're now turning their attention to consolidating another bizarre local contraption--the seven tax assessors who reign over their tiny fiefdoms throughout Orleans Parish and who need to be merged into one central office, like is the case throughout the rest of creation.
Commander's Palace restaurant opened for brunch Sunday for the first time since Katrina. The ancient building where they are located in the Garden District was severely damaged in the hurricane, then when they started making repairs, workers found major structural problems that had not been evident. It has taken this long to restore the facility. Like getting the Saints back in the Superdome, this is a symbol that the city treasures.
Macy's in Kenner's Esplanade Mall is not returning. That end of the mall is dark and empty and needs filling badly. We've talked previously here about the boarded-up historic Fairmont Hotel downtown, another sad sad thing.
But Memorial Hospital is back. The site where many patients died in the week following Katrina, this huge medical center, known for ages as Southern Baptist Hospital, was bought recently by Ochsner Foundation along with a couple of medical facilities. Ochsner is now the largest health care provider in the metro area. The headline in Monday's paper reads "It's official: 'Baptist' is back."
7:30 am. The monthly brotherhood breakfast at Kenner's First Baptist Church provided some insights on life in metro New Orleans these days.
On the first Sunday of each month, some forty men and boys gather for their monthly allotment of cholesterol (thick bacon, sausage, eggs, sausage gravy, grits, huge biscuits--you get the idea) and the kind of fellowship only a men's gathering provides: laughter, teasing, back-slapping, loving, affirming. Three men spoke in the meeting; only one was scheduled.
Johnny, the leader, said, "You've heard the old line about 'I'm from the government; I'm here to help you.' Today, one of our men is going to give his testimony along that line." He introduced Scott who had lost his business to Katrina.
Before Scott got started, Barry stood up. "If he's going to tell about getting a Small Business Administration loan, I can give you some sad stories along that line. Applying for an SBA loan was absolutely the hardest thing I have ever done. It took 9 months, and there must have been a hundred steps involved. Finally, they sent us the money, then took it back. They sent it again and then took it back. We've got it now and I expect them to ask for it back any day now." Your government in action.
Scott told of the frame-shop business he and his wife had purchased in 1999 from another church member. "This was our livelihood," he said. During their Katrina evacuation into Belleville, Illinois--"some people call it Mayberry"--he went on line and found an aerial post-hurricane shot of the West Esplanade location of their shop. "There was this giant hole in the roof where you could see all the way through. That's not good." They had lost everything.
"The question was what to do now." Some people suggested bankruptcy. "We didn't want to do that." Someone suggested he file for unemployment. "We did, and got $90 a week. That's for a family of four. You know about how much good that did." His parents in Boston called and said his room was still available; he could come back home. "I said, 'Mom, Dad, I'm married now with two children." Laughter.