(Twice in North Carolina on Sunday, January 29, I told my tarheel friends some discoveries we are making post-Katrina. I keep tweaking that message, and today–February 5–I’m sharing it with the folks at the First Baptist Church of Luling, on the west bank from New Orleans, and this week with the directors of missions at the Texas Baptist evangelism conference at the FBC of Euless.)

“How blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee; in whose heart are the highways to Zion! Passing through the valley of Baca (weeping), they make it a spring… They go from strength to strength.” (Psalm 84:5-7)

1. Everyone down here was affected by the hurricane.

At first, we thought you had to have at least some building damage to be among the suffering. Of course, hundreds of thousands lost their homes due to the flooding that followed the hurricane, but another hundred thousand or more in the western half of the metro area had typical storm damage caused by wind and rain. What we’re finding out, nearly six months post-K, is that every single person down here was affected.

Every church lost some members, every church had members who suffered, every person has friends who were hurt. Every business suffered and many thousands remain shuttered. And in the rare case of a citizen who came through unscathed and knows no one who was hurt, whose business is prospering and whose church is normal, they still see the devastation of New Orleans every time they drive that way and they hear of it continuously. It’s all the news there is in the Times-Picayune and on the radio talk shows. Everyone is affected. It follows therefore that…

2. Everyone is sick and tired of the subject.

On the NBC Nightly News the other evening, Brian Williams told of some critical letters his network is receiving because of the on-going coverage of the rebuilding of New Orleans. “Enough with New Orleans already” and “Give it a rest” were typical. He explained that since millions were displaced by the two hurricanes, the coastline of the USA was rearranged, a major city was devastated, with hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed, and billions of government money being spent to reclaim the area, this was a major story which they intended to cover to the completion, and how people feel about it is beside the point. I wrote him an email that evening thanking him and said, “We surely understand the people who are sick and tired of the subject. We are, too. We’re ready for it to go away. We wake up every morning wishing it had all been a bad dream. But there it is.” The result is a witch’s brew of depression, sadness, the blues, fatigue, and who knows what all else, all of it poured upon this entire population. No one is unscathed, everyone has been affected, we’re all weary.

When Emeril Lagasse pleaded stress as his excuse for saying some negative things about New Orleans, columnist Chris Rose answered, “Hey, this just in: we’re all stressed out.”

A friend said, “Out where I live we have a saying: ‘Too blessed to be stressed.'” I respond, “We’re blessed also. But is it possible to be blessed and stressed at the same time?”

3. It’s a great time to be a Baptist.

Just after the storm passed and even as the floodwaters began to rise, Southern Baptists were already arriving. Massive trucks bringing food and water and supplies began to pull in, first on the Northshore and soon in Kenner and Metairie. Volunteers from Southern Baptist churches all over the country who are trained in Disaster Relief rushed in with their chain saws and cooking equipment. They took over the Kenner City Jail and provided hot meals for hundreds of military and law enforcement officers who had shut down the entire metropolitan area and were rescuing stranded citizens. As citizens were allowed to return, they were quick to notice the Baptist volunteers, many going up and down streets offering assistance and food. Some of the churches set up tents in their parking lots and fed hot meals to the community twice a day, and erected drive-throughs where people could get crates of water and supplies without leaving their cars.

Shelters all over the country welcomed our displaced citizens. No one was more active and more welcoming than Southern Baptists, whether in Houston or Memphis or Jackson. We say this not to be partisan, because we thank God for every person who helped, but to give thanks where it is due. We Southern Baptists, who had built a reputation for inner conflicts and debates, got something right this time. It is not egotistical pride to point this out, but justifiable gratitude.

In the weeks after our return, the talk shows around here were flooded with people lauding the Southern Baptists. “My church was shut up,” they would say, “and my priest was gone, but the Baptists were everywhere.” Some were angry at their denominations and others were vowing they had become Baptists in the interim. We know of at least two churches that are changing their affiliation to become SBC. Many of our churches are noticing new people in the pews every Sunday, in addition to the volunteers from all over the country.

In the “Adopt-a-Church” program, hundreds of SBC churches across America teamed up with congregations in our area to assist them. They have literally sent millions of dollars to help our people. One of our pastors told how an adopting Oklahoma church invited him and his wife out to visit in early December. “It’s a wonderful church,” he said. “They have more members than there are residents of the town. They had two Christmas trees set up in the church. On one, they all pinned money, every dollar of it for us. Under the other tree, they had presents for us.” That pastor was African-American and the church was completely Anglo, but God bonded them permanently and deeply.

Before Katrina, New Orleans Baptists had a hard time being noticed. Afterwards, the mayor put one of our pastors on his commission to advise on the rebuilding of the city, and others of our leaders have been prominent in leadership roles. At one point, a group of Baptist pastors–not Southern Baptist, and that’s as specific as I’ll get–was in the news after Fred Luter was appointed to the mayor’s commission. They protested that their group was not represented, that only pastors of big churches had been put on the panel, that they wanted leadership roles, too. I wanted to say to those ministers, “Don’t ask the mayor to appoint you as a leader. Go lead, do something, and the mayor will have no other choice. God said, ‘I will make you the head and not the tail.’ (Deut 28:13) So, if the Lord makes you the head, lead out and we will follow.”

4. God is doing some wonderful things in all of this business.

Romans 8:28 is still in effect. God is at work, turning these tragic conditions into blessings. There are the stories of evacuees returning home to tell of their hosts in distant towns introducing them to the Savior. There is Horeb Baptist Church of Gretna where Pastor David Rodriguez evacuated with all 150 members of his church, staying for 3 weeks in a Baptist encampment across the state, then returning with every person. During their absence, three members of their group were saved, and since that time, another 32 have come to Christ. Some of our Spanish churches are reaching out to the thousands of Mexican construction workers flowing into the city. And one of them has opened their doors to Brazilian workers. Pastor David Lema of Emmanuel Spanish Baptist Church in Kenner tells me their Portuguese mission–which they started a few weeks ago–is already running 50 or more, and the new pastor is one of the construction workers.

Pastor Dennis Watson of Celebration Church in Metairie told the Louisiana evangelism conference a few days ago of a church member who came to New Orleans sometime back to open a new business. He checked into a downtown hotel and walked around. That night, after seeing the wickedness in this city, he knelt by his bed to pray, wondering if he should stay. God told him to stay here and said that He was going to do a mighty work in this city, something not seen since the days of Nineveh. When Pastor Watson heard that, he said to the man, “Why, in Nineveh, every man, woman, and child turned to the Lord. If God were to do that here, New Orleans would have to be broken.”

God is up to some things here, friends. Let us believe and trust HIm. Let us pray for His mighty hand to do His great work. Let us be faithful, on our knees praying, responsive to His will. When He does it, I want to be here and to be part of it.

5. We have discovered how much we need each other.

Before the storm, we would have been hard pressed to get 15 pastors together for a monthly ministers’ conference. These days, we meet every Wednesday morning, from 9 to noon at the First Baptist Church of LaPlace, and we have 50 there. When we break for lunch at 11:30, a few of the ministers move down the hall to eat, but most of them gather in clusters to talk and encourage and pray together. We never know who’s going to be there each Wednesday, but always there are Baptist leaders from our state convention office or Lifeway or the SBC or NAMB or another state convention, and from other churches around the country, other directors of mission–all of them come with encouragement, teams of helpers, words of hope, gifts of assistance. They come early and stay late. This gathering may be the best thing we could have done, and we stumbled on it. During the exile, David Crosby of the FBC of N.O. said, “Joe, we ought to get our guys together.” We set up a meeting at the FBC of Jackson, MS, and tried to contact as many as we could. Twenty showed up. We called Pastor Bobby Burt of FBC LaPlace and he said they would be glad to host the pastors the next Wednesday for as long as we wanted to meet, and they would provide lunch. We’ve met there every week since.

One of my great burdens about our churches and pastors before the storm was our isolation. Our pastors did not know each other, our church members were strangers to one other. Katrina broke down a lot of walls, spiritual as well as physical. Our Black and White and Hispanic pastors have learned each other’s names and many have become great friends. God is doing a new thing in our midst.

We had a leader from the North American Mission Board with us one day who said, “In 1992 when hurricane Andrew went through Southern Florida, destroying entire cities, I was a pastor there. No one got our pastors together. We were all on our own. And within a year, everyone was gone. We were depressed and hurt and isolated.” Then he said, “It blesses me to see you all meeting and encouraging each other.”

6. How much we need prayer. We need the power of God with us every day.

People frequently tell me they’re praying for us. I say to them, “May I tell you how to pray? Pray BIG. Don’t come in here with a miserly little ‘God bless New Orleans.’ Pray BIG. Tell the Lord, ‘God, you love this city. Jesus died for this city. You have a lot of people here. Satan has had it long enough. We’re asking you to take it back, Lord. This is your place!'”

Pray BIG. Ask God to do a NEW thing here. In Scripture, the Lord says, “I am making all things new.” He loves to make things new. New creation. New heart. A new man. We sing a new song to the Lord. Old things are passed away. New wineskins. Tell Him, “Lord, we don’t want the Old New Orleans back. It didn’t work. It failed people and insulted Thee. We want a new city.”

Someone called in to a talk show recently and told host Garland Robinette, “I want the old New Orleans back. I liked it the way it was.” Garland said, “We had the highest crime rate in the nation and the sorriest schools. People were dying of HIV and AIDS and drugs. And you want that back?” The man sheepishly said, “Well, I don’t want THAT. But I want the old New Orleans back.” Give me a break. No one who is thinking clearly wants it back the way it was. God, do a new thing!

And Lord, make it a GOD thing. In your image, not in the mayor’s or the governor’s, and definitely not in Washington’s. Regardless what plans the various commissions bring to the table, we’re asking YOU to make the decisions, set the new course for this city. You said, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.” Lord, you re-build it. You take the lead. You decide. You are in charge. You said, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes.” (Proverbs 21:1) Turn this thing, Lord. You do it!

A Big thing. A New thing. A God thing. That’s how we’re praying.

There are places in the Old Testament where the Lord says, “I’m going to do a thing that is so big the ears of all who hear it will tingle.” O Lord, do an ear-tingling thing in New Orleans. And let it begin in me and in us.

My son Neil told his children, “Pray for good weather tomorrow and we’ll go to the park.” Next day, it was a lovely sunny morning. As they drove toward LaFreniere Park, he said, “Who prayed for this beautiful day? Grant, did you?” The 11-year-old said, “No, I forgot.” Neil said, “Abby, did you?” The nine-year-old said, “I forgot, too.” At that, her twin Erin said, “Oh good. Then it was my miracle.”

When God sends that revival to New Orleans, when men and women and children are converted, when the city is no longer known as ‘the city that care forgot’ but ‘the city that cares for God’, when God works His mighty new thing here, will it be your miracle? It will if you will pray. Pray big. For a big thing, a new thing, a God thing.