(Please invite every “first responder” you know–the medical/military/law enforcement/firefighting workers who served New Orleans during it’s first few weeks after the hurricane–to our Appreciation Event at the New Orleans Arena this Saturday, April 8. The arena is open from 10 to 4 and we’ll have lots of family events going on. First Reponders get in with their I.D.s as admission, and later in the day, we’ll draw for a new car. Our main difficulty is getting word to everyone.)

Fred Luter is back. This exciting pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, so devastated by six to eight feet of floodwater, has been living in Birmingham since Katrina and spending a lot of time in and out of airports and on the interstates. He served on Mayor Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission and has been preaching in major cities and conventions all over the country. These days, he preaches at 8 am to his congregation meeting temporarily at the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, then later in the morning to another group at one of Baton Rouge’s largest churches, and twice a month to his folks in Houston at the First Baptist Church there.

Sunday night, he told me, “We had 1500 here at FBC-NO this morning. And probably 600-700 in Baton Rouge. And about the same number in Houston twice a month.” For a dispersed congregation without a meeting place, they are making the most of a difficult situation. Fred is the moderator for our Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans, and we’re eager to have him attending our weekly pastors meetings.

Those pastors meetings–tell every pastor in our area you see–will continue at the FBC of LaPlace through April, then move to Oak Park Baptist Church in Algiers on May 3, meeting from 10 to noon, with lunch at 11:30.

Sunday night, April 2, the incredible choir and orchestra of the FBC of Jackson, Mississippi, brought an evening of inspiration at the FBC of New Orleans. The local choir joined the Jackson group, making a choir of several hundred. These friends had boarded buses Sunday after morning church and ridden three hours to get here. After the program, they rode back home. Most did not get home until after midnight, and went into work Monday morning sleepwalking. But how they blessed us. Just their presence was a-plenty, but the musical program was so stirring.

Among the participants was Professor Benjamin “Benjie” Harlan, one of God’s great personalities and a well-known composer of Christian music. Dr. Graham Smith, retired (I think) from the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board, did recitations from James Weldon Johnson’s “God’s Trombones,” sure to stir anyone’s heart. I handed him a cartoon in which someone is commenting that James Weldon Johnson showed up tonight and did his best Graham Smith imitation. Listening to Graham, I found myself hoping some young people were being awakened to the power of the human voice in announcing God’s truth. I can still remember the time this really hit me. I was a student in seminary, we’re talking the 1960s here, when Professor Wilbur Swartz stood in chapel and read from the Gospel of John, chapter 1. Until then, I had no idea that passage was as deeply moving as it became that day. Bible reading for me has never been the same. Graham Smith has the kind of power in his voice to awaken young believers.

Jackson’s minister of music, Dr. Lavon Gray, is such a wonderful friend. After the concert, I thanked him for bringing his choir and orchestra, then said, “Have you told these people where you were just before Katrina hit?” He laughed, and I couldn’t hear what he said for the din around us. Where he was, was in the Superdome on Friday night, August 26, along with his friend and predecessor at FBC-J, Larry Black, and several others from that church. And me, invited to tag along as their guest. That evening, we ate at Mother’s Restaurant on Poydras, then watched most of the Saints’ last preseason game, then stopped by Morning Call in Metairie for cafe au lait and beignets before their long drive back to Jackson. Next morning, we all turned on the Weather Channel and life changed forever for us.

FBC-Jackson’s Pastor Stan Buckley has been an encourager of ours since the beginning. In early September, when we were all locked out of New Orleans, Stan and his church hosted the first Wednesday meeting of our pastors. Twenty drove in from every direction. We’ve met every Wednesday since, except for the two Christmas/New Years Wednesdays.

A little side trip. Each year, the Times-Picayune assembles a blue-ribbon committee to select the recipient for their Loving Cup Award, given to the individual in the community who has excelled indevoting themselves in service to others. This year, Louis Freeman received the award. The Sunday article announcing this printed a list of every recipient going back to 1900. A.B.Freeman received the award decades ago, then his son Richard a few years later, and now grandson Louis. A.B. Freeman pioneered in the Coca-Cola business and made piles of money, Richard Freeman ran the Louisiana Coca-Cola Bottling Company and a lot of other things, and now Louis Freeman is giving away their money (through foundations). All of which is so I can tell you something about Richard Freeman.

In early 1964, when I announced my plans to leave the employ of James B. Clow & Sons, Inc., in Birmingham, makers of cast iron pipe and headquartered in Chicago, the Vice-President of the company, a distinguished white-haired gentleman named Warren Whitney, called me in. “Will you be needing a job in New Orleans?” Yes sir. “Richard Freeman is a good friend of mine. He runs the Coca-Cola plant and is chairman of the board of Delta Airlines. I’ll write him a letter. Go see him when you get there.” Yes sir. Thank you sir.

We moved to New Orleans in June of ’64 and because we had money saved up, I didn’t look for a job for several months, trying to apply myself to becoming a good student. Eventually, that fall, I called

Mr. Freeman’s office for an appointment. To this day, I can’t recall if I even met the man. If so, it was only for a second or two. His secretary sent me to see Adolph Mumme, the office manager, surely the nicest man on the planet. “Mr. Freeman wants you to have a job,” he said, “And we’re going to give you a job. Anytime you get out of class, come on in and we’ll always have something for you to do.” O that job-hunting were always so simple.

The office was huge in an old-fashioned way, with 30 or 40 desks in four rows, and no partitions turning them into cubicles. Men and women hard at clerical work. I would get out of class by noon, grab a bite and drive downtown to the plant and Mr. Mumme would assign me to help someone. Work with Bill Scheider and Mr. Jumonville on payrolls. Work with Roger Bouche on whatever Roger worked on. Relieve the cashiers downstairs where the route salesmen were reporting in. (During lulls, I sifted through the bags of coins looking for rare coins. I still have a jarful of buffalo nickels from those days.) On Mondays, we had no classes at the seminary, so I worked all day. I noticed several things of interest about these office workers.

They drank cokes all day. A machine in the lunch room next door sold small bottles of Coke for a dime. People would buy one at the start of their workday, another at mid-morning, one at noon with their lunch, and have one or two more in the afternoon. I was horrified at the quantity of corrosive stuff they were pouring into their stomachs. These days, I buy a po-boy at a restaurant with a do-it-yourself dispenser and drink more Coke at one sitting than those good people drank all day. How times change.

Four of the men in the office played hearts during the lunch hour. They ate from 12:00 to 12:02, then filled 58 minutes with heart-stopping cut-throat games of hearts. If one missed work that day, they played with three people; a newcomer would have slowed their game down.

Everyone in the office was Catholic. Every single one. So, I began asking questions about their faith as we worked. Hey, I’m from off the farm in North Alabama and knew nothing about Catholicism. In April of 1965 when I was called to pastor the little Baptist church in the community of Paradis, some 25 miles west of New Orleans on US 90, Roger Bouche drove out with me one Sunday to see what we did. “When I was growing up,” he said, “We were taught that Baptists were wicked and you wouldn’t any more go to a Baptist church than to a satanic ritual.” In return, I visited with him at St. James Major Catholic Church to see what they did.

I had no idea the Lord was preparing me for a longterm ministry in this city, educating me about the Catholics, teaching me the necessity of friendships, informing me about the ignorance and prejudices that have created barriers to genuine relationships as well as effective witness. To this day, when I make a comment about the Catholics in this website, someone will write and thank me for not slamming them. I suppose that’s what they expected, me being a Baptist preacher and all, but I’m happy not to add any more fuel to that strange fire. For one thousand reasons, I could never be a Catholic, but the Father has taught me that salvation is by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and not by the denominational label. There are Catholics who are genuine Christians. And some Baptists, too, more than likely. (He said with tongue firmly planted in cheek.) Eyes on Jesus, loving one another, serving the Lord. That’s the plan.

One Baptist preacher’s name stood out on the Loving Cup list. In 1971, Dr. J. D. Grey of the FBC of New Orleans received the Times-Picayune award. What an individual he was. Smoked cigars, called a spade a spade, peppered his language with a little tabasco, organized the Protestants into the N.O. Federation of Churches so they could be heard locally as the Roman Catholic church is heard, and helped to organize (or maybe spearheaded) the Metropolitan Crime Commission, to ride herd on corrupt cops and encourage citizens to stand up for their community. He deserved every accolade he ever received. There will not be one like him again, I wager. For one thing, his cigars and salty language would probably disqualify him before he got to the starting gate. Not to minimize those things; only to say, it was another day and time. The Baptists in New Orleans owe him so much.