Lionel Roberts pastors the mission across the street from the locked-down and ruined St. Bernard Housing Development. With the assistance of several adoptive churches, his church has been restored and Lionel began holding worship services there on Easter Sunday. Problem is, he never knows who’s going to be in church. Attendance ranges from 20 to 50. Last Sunday, when church time came, eight people sat in the sanctuary and most of them were the pastor’s family. They waited a few minutes, then got underway anyway. That’s when something happened outside.
I’ve told here about the unhappy, ousted residents of St. Bernard who threatened to break through the fence last Saturday in order to return to their homes, and decided instead to set up tents across the street and remain there until the city relents and opens the gates. Sunday morning, as Lionel’s worship service began, the loudspeakers which he erected some time ago on the corner of his building in order to reach the project began to sound out the praises of the Lord. The next time Lionel looked around, his little sanctuary was filling up. The tent-dwellers were coming down the street and filing into his church. All told, he ended up with 60 or 70 present. “Our little building is crowded with a hundred,” the pastor says, “so we know how to estimate pretty closely.”
Bob Adams of Youth on Mission attended our Wednesday pastors meeting at Oak Park Baptist Church with Chris and Katie, a young married couple who are students at our seminary, who will be working with YOM this summer, overseeing the hundreds of youth coming to work and witness in New Orleans. “Where are they staying?” I asked. Bob said, “We’ve taken over the Landmark Hotel in Metairie.”
Craig Ratliff, former student minister at FBC Arabi, soon to be the pastor of a start-up church on the site of the Arabi church which has been demolished, told of an unusual blessing this week. A terrific group of adults and youth from Philippi Baptist Church in Union, SC, arrived on the northshore Monday, ready to go to work. Their host, a minister in that area, had had to be hospitalized for some reason, so he called Craig to see if he could direct the group. Craig brought them to the site of his former church and they set up their cooking equipment to prepare a meal for the neighborhood. While the adults were setting up, the youth blanketed the neighborhood to invite residents to come for supper and enjoy the choir program. Within two hours, they had led three residents to Christ. Craig said, “This is the strongest group of evangelistic teens I’ve ever seen.” He said, “These young people are really something. They are smart, they are confident, they are fun. They engage older people in conversation, and get them laughing, and having a great time, and so naturally they begin witnessing to them.
That evening, they had 25 neighbors to come to the church site for the cookout and stay for the singers’ program. Craig interjected, “And most were Catholic. Before Katrina, we’d have to pay a Catholic to get them to come to our church and even then, they wouldn’t get past the parking lot!”
Next day, Tuesday, they were looking for FEMA trailers to hold a similar program. They found a site near the Chalmette Middle School, so Craig went in to ask for permission. The board deliberated for 10 minutes, then voted unanimously to grant them the use of the space. They even said if you want to use it longer, return and sign an insurance release. That night, they had 40 or 50 present, and one saved. Several attending wanted more information. One of them asked, “Is this (the gospel message) in writing somewhere?” They gave him a Bible.