This week, the mayor will receive the report and recommendations of his Bring New Orleans Back Commission (also known as the “Bring Back N.O. Commission”, which works a little better), the blue ribbon panel of community leaders who have been active since late September envisioning how the “new” city should look. The ULI (Urban Land Institute) has recommended that certain low-lying sections of the city be abandoned and turned into parks, with many political leaders crying foul, saying it’s a racist plan since minorities lived in those least desirable sections. The BNOB Commission is expected to come down somewhere in the middle.

Meanwhile, a community group known as ACORN is hard at work helping people in the Lower 9th Ward, worst hit portion of the city, clean out their houses and get ready to rebuild. They’re thinking that if residents can restore their homes quickly, the city won’t dare tell them to move out.

We’re eagerly awaiting other reports. The governor’s Recovery Commission (which pertains both to New Orleans and the entire Louisiana coastline) is due to report in soon. It’ll be interesting to see how their recommendations match up or conflict with the local report. FEMA is set to release a map of metro New Orleans showing the new flood zones with their recommendations where elevations of homes will have to be raised. Insurance companies will set their rates based on this piece of paper.

Speaking of insurance, Allstate said Tuesday that automobile insurance rates for our area are going out of sight. Even this far removed from the hurricane and flood, you can still find flooded-and-ruined cars abandoned all over New Orleans. I’ve heard the figure, something like 100,000 or more cars destroyed by Katrina. The insurance companies have taken a hard lick.

Many wonder what will happen if the governor and the mayor cannot agree rebuilding our city. It was reported tonight that the governor controls the purse strings on several billion dollars (that’s “billion”!) to be spent in this area. (It was also announced today that someone has started a petition to recall Governor Blanco. They’ll have to garner 900,000 signatures in 180 days.)

The front page of USA Today showed students returning to Dillard University, one of our historically Black colleges. It took a great deal of flood damage, so the school has leased large sections of the downtown Hilton Hotel for dorms. “Private baths and double beds! Valet service!” the students exclaimed. The article said several local colleges are amazed at the high percentage of students who are returning for this Spring semester. One president said these “kids” will forever be known as the Katrina class.

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I’ve been struck by the correlation of the Old Testament events surrounding the life of Nehemiah and our situation in New Orleans. The fact that Southern Baptists chose this volume as the Winter Bible Study Book for this season–and made that decision three or four years ago–makes it even more meaningful. Why, it’s almost like–dare we say it?–that…God knew? Oh, yeah. He knows. Does He ever.

Both stories have so much in common.

A dispersed people. A deserted, devastated city. Opponents who did not want to see the city rebuilt. The city’s devastation seen as the judgment of God. Earnest prayer going up for the city. First, the walls to be restored. (Our levees. Make the city secure first, then rebuild.) Government provision for all supplies. Continual prayer from beginning to end. Tough decisions, requiring courage.

I’m typing this on Friday night and leaving first thing Saturday morning for north Alabama. I’ve been invited to teach “Nehemiah” at four sessions on Sunday and one Monday night at the New Prospect Baptist Church in Jasper, Alabama. This is one of our family’s numerous “family churches,” as my relatives have been vital members of this church for several generations. Pastor Fred Karthaus, all around nice guy and possessor of a doctorate from our local N.O. seminary, was so gracious to invite me. I find myself looking forward to it more than anything similar in a long time.

The story of Nehemiah is a great story. It’s only 13 chapters long, and several can be skipped without doing damage to the narrative since they are lists of workers or citizens. So, what makes it a great story? What makes any story effective?

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The news each day–radio, television, newspaper–concerns the upcoming report of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission and what they will recommend. At this point, it’s still impossible to know which neighborhoods are going to be resettled and which, if any, turned into public parks. That prevents us from knowing which churches to “bring back.” So, we clean out the churches to the studs and lock them up. And wait.

Our Wednesday pastors’ meeting at First Baptist-LaPlace was a blessing as usual. We had made no phone calls to alert everyone to the resumption of these meetings after the holiday break, but an excellent number turned out. How many? Perhaps 35. The best part is that three pastors came for the first time, only recently returned from evacuation and having learned of the weekly gathering.

Our agenda Wednesday followed the usual pattern. We stood around greeting, visiting with each other, and fixing our coffee until 9:15, then began with a concert of prayer. I talked a little as usual, called on Freddie Arnold to bring us up to speed on all the recovery work taking place throughout the city, and heard from Cornelius Tilton (Irish Channel Church) and Anthony Pierce (Evangelistic) who told of their experiences during their absence from New Orleans. Cornelius said, “Our church took some damage but we are up and running. Two other congregations have come in with us, so we now have three churches and two pastors, all meeting together.” They’re running perhaps 35 or 40, a fraction of their former attendance. Anthony’s church is still out of business and his members scattered across America.

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1. USA Today for Tuesday lists 5 things to expect in 2006, and number two is: “New Orleans Returns.” We sure like the sound of that. Basically, it refers to the conventions set to meet in our city sometime later in the year. The first big one comes in June when the American Library Association brings 20,000 librarians. My kind of people. Article says most of the city’s 19,000 hotel rooms are now operational, although five major hotels downtown remain closed.

2. Personally, I was glad to see 2005 close up shop and go home. One year ago I was recovering from cancer surgery, which was followed by nearly 3 months of radiation, followed by a similar period of recovering from the radiation. In June, my wife’s sister, two years younger than Margaret, died. And you know what happened in late August. I’m sure a lot of great things happened in 2005; I just can’t recall any of them at the moment.

3. As though underscoring the darkness of the year, on the final day, my mentor left us. James Richardson had successfully battled cancer a few years back, but something–I think they called it dementia–managed to do what cancer could not. He was 82, 17 years my senior. The reason I note that is that when I would tell him he was my father in the ministry (actually, one of three), he would laugh, “I’m not old enough.” We first met in the late 1960s when I was newly called to Emmanuel Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, and James was the long-time leader of the nearby First Baptist Church of Leland. We quickly became friends, especially when he counseled Margaret and me on our marriage. A few years later, he recommended me to the staff of the great First Baptist Church of Jackson, MS, where we stayed for three life-changing years.

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One of the most bizarre aspects of life after the hurricane was announced Friday. They’ve found watermelons growing wild all over St. Charles Parish, which is just west of the New Orleans airport. Apparently the Katrina winds carried the seeds aloft from somewhere and broadcast them all over our area. They are now producing fruit. The agriculture expert said on radio, “I wouldn’t dare eat them, but I’ve never heard of this happening anywhere.”

The winds of Katrina have blown many fascinating tidbits of life our way. We have new friends whom we will know and treasure from here on home. We have been repeatedly blessed in tangible and intangible ways that make us teary-eyed just to reflect on them. Through this invention called “the worldwide web” we have contacts with people all over the globe, all of them interested in our situation, many praying, several giving, and a few coming. I have even met another Joe McKeever. He lives in New Hampshire not far from my daughter’s home. We’re close in age and have the same color hair (is white a color?), the same stocky build, and a houseful of beloved grandchildren. Two extremely blessed Joes.

Last year on Christmas Day, Margaret and I drove to Cheaha State Park in east central Alabama, near Anniston. We rented rooms in the lodge and took our meals in the restaurant and enjoyed hiking the woods and sitting on the bluff where we could look out over 25 miles. Then we had an idea. We made immediate reservations for a chalet for this year. So, Sunday, Christmas Day, we will again drive to that wonderful mountaintop and get things set up. On Monday our sons–Marty from Charlotte NC and Neil from New Orleans–will arrive with their families. We’ve reserved two rooms in the lodge in case the parents want some peace and quiet at night, but the daytimes belong to the villa. We go for walks in the frigid air, then return to the blazing fire and hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows. Grandpa will spin a few yarns for the five grandchildren and we’ll build a lot of memories. We plan to laugh and play games and act silly and hug a lot. Meanwhile, no one will mention the words ‘hurricane’ or ‘Katrina’ and for a few days we will forget that that monster ever existed.

Thanks to our friends who love us and pray for us. Thanks to you who drop in on the website regularly, and particularly for forwarding some of these messages to others you think will appreciate them or benefit from them. Thank you so much to you who have given money to assist us in ministering to the pastors and churches of the New Orleans area. You’re the best.

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I took one of our local pastors to lunch the other day. He expressed the frustration others around here are feeling in telling our story to outsiders. “Pastors say they want to come help us,” he said. “Then I say, ‘What do you want to do?’ And they all want the same thing. They want to come in and fix up a damaged church, then stick around and help that church get on its feet and get a great ministry going in their neighborhood. That sounds great, of course. I say to them, ‘What if my church doesn’t have a neighborhood?’ They say, ‘What’s that? How could a church not have a neighborhood?’ Well, it doesn’t have one if no one lives there. I’m telling you it’s frustrating.”

Tell me about it.

We basically have two cities: one alive and strong and another dead and vacated. The first one–the living one–is the portion of metro New Orleans that suffered in the storm but has recovered and is now open for business. That includes the “river sliver” from the French Quarter to the CBD and uptown, it includes all of Metairie and Kenner and everything across the river. The second city–the dead one–refers to vast sections of New Orleans lying empty and gaunt and dark, with people gutting out homes and streets deserted and businesses shuttered. Here and there, lights glow where power company workers punch holes in the darkness. Once in a while you’ll find a FEMA trailer in someone’s yard to indicate life on the premises. Even more rarely, you’ll find someone living inside their home. This twilight zone refers to 75% of New Orleans, all of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes.

Tuesday, two men working in one of our ruined churches sat across the table drinking coffee in another church office. “We’re just about through gutting out the church,” one said. Their buildings had taken ten feet of water, ruining the bottom floor forever. Volunteer groups have toiled ceaselessly for weeks.

“What are you going to do next?” I asked. “Well, that’s our problem,” he said. Without power in the neighborhood and with no one living there, should they restore their church building? What if the government rules that all buildings must be so many feet above the flood plain? What if they rebuild and then find out their area is to be left vacant and turned into a park? What if the neighbors do not move back? In any of these scenarios, their labor and investment would be poorly spent.

“I suppose we’ll close it up tight and wait to see,” he said. Wait to see what the neighborhood is going to do, what the government regulations will be, what their situation will call for. Waiting is tough.

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We still laugh in our family about something Erin said. Last summer, my son Neil told his three children that he planned to take them to the park the next day. “Pray it won’t rain,” he said. The next morning, they piled in the truck and were driving across town when he said, “It’s such a beautiful day. Who asked God for this? Grant, did you?” “No,” the eleven year old said. “I forgot.” “Abby, did you?” “No, I forgot, too.” “Oh, good,” said Erin, her 8 year old twin, “then it was my miracle.”

At church, I see Graham Waller, so bravely dealing with the blindness which resulted from surgery for a brain tumor over 4 years ago. We still pray for his healing. I’ve told his parents, Ed and Sherri, that one reason I pray is that when the healing comes, “I want it to be my miracle.”

My college roommate and best man in our wedding, Joel Davis, and his wife Wilma have a daughter-in-law who is fighting a severe kind of cancer. She spends many weeks in Anderson Hospital in Houston, undergoing all kinds of harsh treatments and bizarre tests. I’ve never met Tina, but every time I read an update on her situation, I pray for her again. And I think, “Lord, when she gets well, I want it to be my miracle, too.”

Now, imagine with me here. Imagine a day in the future, perhaps a decade from now. The city of New Orleans is a different place. Perhaps the population is 75 percent of what it was before the storm, but now there are no slums, no hotbeds-for-crime housing projects, fewer drugs, less violence, safer streets, better schools, and Christian churches that are the marvel of the nation, where all the pastors love each other and work together, where God’s people are loving and ministering and blessing. Imagine a new kind of city, one unlike any this country has seen in our lifetimes.

Whose miracle will that be?

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After I complimented Mayor Nagin for his warm, pastoral approach in dealing with complaining and demanding citizens, the next day someone called for him to “please start acting like a leader; stop acting like you’re running for office!” In electioneering, you listen and nod and agree, I suppose. True leadership, however, sometimes requires you to tell people when they are out of line and announce this is what we are going to do and that’s how it is, deal with it. For instance, Nagin agreed with the Urban Land Institute’s study that urges allowing certain sections of the city to lie fallow for a time, perhaps turning them into parks with bike trails, then build adjoining planned neighborhoods alongside. He agreed, that is, until citizens started hollering, “Not my neighborhood.” At that point, he decided, “Well, maybe we need to give this some more thought.” So far, according to the paper, Nagin has promised everyone their neighborhood would be coming back, and that is not about to happen.

As of Monday, the Bring New Orleans Back Commission seems to be proposing that rebuilding be allowed in all neighborhoods for the first year, after which we take a look and see where people are not rebuilding. Then, a federally funded buyout program would take over all “moribund” areas. (“Moribund,” an adjective, literally meaning “bound in death,” but basically “dead or inactive.” Use that word in a sentence today and I guarantee someone will be impressed.) This land would be turned into parks with bike and walking paths and devoted to other public uses. “A park in every neighborhood” has become their mantra. They’re promoting a longterm plan for a light rail line extending from Baton Rouge to New Orleans across the Gulf Coast all the way to Biloxi. Originally, there was talk of extensions of the line in other directions, but the commission wisely decided they’d better stay within reason.

“Big aid package nearing House passage,” announces a headline in Monday’s paper. How much money? $29 billion. I would predict this is just for starters, however. Stay tuned, as we say.

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The vertigo that hit me Tuesday morning has slowed down my week. I’ve stayed fairly close to home, keeping only the appointments I needed to. I hated to cancel the flight to Dallas on Wednesday to meet with some of our Baptist leaders, but the doctor advised it. A friend wrote that he spent two days in the cardiac unit of a hospital enduring all kinds of tests, until they discovered he was suffering from vertigo. When my 9 year old granddaughters heard of it, they said, “What–you’re afraid of heights?” I said, “No. I’m just dizzy.”

I “visited” the Bring New Orleans Back Commission meeting Saturday. One of the public access channels replayed their meeting from last Tuesday and I sat through the full two hours of it. This blue ribbon panel, made up of perhaps 15 or 20 of our community’s true leaders, is divided into subcommittees that work in between meetings of the full body. Therefore, the meeting consisted of each commissioner reporting on the special assignment given to the subcommittee to which they are responsible. The meeting was informative and fascinating, and it was long and boring. Just like every other committee I’ve ever served on or tried to lead. Some of the subcommittees seem to have such a broad interpretation of their responsibility, you wonder what they can hope to accomplish. The committee dealing with the culture of the city announced they will be requesting over $400 million dollars. Four hundred million. Stay tuned.

The most interesting was the report on housing from Joe Canizaro, a real estate developer and as articulate a commissioner as sits on the panel. Certain areas of the city, he said, need to be left alone, not brought back for a long time, and those home sites bought up by an independent commission funded with government money. Then, as neighborhoods on higher ground are restored and these less safe areas are found to be secure, large parcels of the land–perhaps hundreds of acres at a time–can be sold to developers who would plan for entire communities, complete with stores and offices within walking distance. The Times-Picayune reported earlier this week that the commission would end up recommending a version of this.

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I sit down at the computer and feel like I’m trying to tell the outside world what’s going on around here. There is so much to be told; I just hit the high points. And occasionally the low.

The bill which would have consolidated all the area levee boards into one, the bill which never made it out of the last legislative system, continues to draw the attention of the citizens. After our legislators saw how incensed the public was that this bill was allowed to die, they started rushing in to change their votes. It turns out that Louisiana has rules allowing state lawmakers to change their votes after a bill is voted up or down, so long as the change does not alter the outcome. That way, they vote a bill down, then change their vote and go home and tell the dumb voters (this is bothering me, as you can tell) that they actually supported it. I predict this is one legislative rule that is going to be changed, now that it has seen the light of day. Representative A. G. Crowe of Slidell wants to change it so that a House member can change his vote only on the day of the original vote. Our editor writes, “That would be an improvement. But the best practice would be to simply forbid vote switching. Lawmakers ought to vote properly the first time around.” Amen.

State Senator Walter Boasso says forget his original bill, the one that would have merged the levee boards. He’s now hard at work with some other leaders forging a stronger, better bill, one that should pass in the next session. “Whatever it takes” is the only rule he’s going by now, he says.

Governor Kathleen Blanco has heeded the suggestion of our secretary of state that the New Orleans elections scheduled for February 4 be postponed indefinitely. They reason that many of our citizens are displaced and cannot vote, plus the registrars and voting places are disfunctional. Mayor Nagin and the N.O. City Council members and other elected officials may now stay in office longer than their original four year terms. A lot of citizens are bothered by this. “You tell the world that New Orleans is open for business,” one resident wrote in the paper the other morning, “You write that we’re able to host a Mardi Gras early next year. You want the tourists to come and people to return home. But now you say we’re not able to even have an election. What’s wrong with this picture?”

Anderson College is in town. Actually, it’s Dr. Bob Cline, who is vice-president of church relations for this wonderful South Carolina Baptist college, his wife Angela, and seminary student son Nathan, as well as 16 college students. They are hard at work helping people clean out their homes in east New Orleans, and staying at night in our Brantley Center, formerly a shelter for the homeless. Bob said it’s nicer than he had expected. Nathan is cooking for the group. Angela raised that boy right. (I told them my wife taught both our sons to cook when they were teens, and one has run restaurants and both love to cook; their wives bless my wife regularly for this small favor.)

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