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.

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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.

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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.

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Thirty new cartoons for the book of Nehemiah are available in the image gallery.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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