At the end of our Tuesday night Christmas dinner for all our ministers and their spouses, I drove home through the heavy fog giving thanks to God.

Thanks for the 200 or more who attended. In the old days (pre-Katrina), we might have a hundred show up, and we had to create gimmicks to get them to mix and meet. Tuesday night, the decibel level was off the scale as they visited and laughed and hugged. The dinner had ended and it was time to begin the program, but I hated to call a halt to the fellowship. The joy in that place was palpable.

Thanks for the gifts of God’s people that paid the tab. Get 200 people into a plantation house for a Christmas dinner and the tab easily runs into the thousands of dollars. One of our churches provided child care, but we paid for the workers. Jim Chester–evangelist, funnyman, storyteller, and magician–provided a fascinating program and kept us laughing. God’s people gave us the money to pay him a nice honorarium.

Thanks for our special guests. Gibbie McMillan represented the Louisiana Baptist Convention so well, reminding everyone of the special feature of our denomination called the Cooperative Program by which a person gives his offering into his church and touches the entire world. Pastor Keith Manuel promoted the Louisiana Baptist Evangelism Conference coming up January 22-23 at the First Baptist Church of New Orleans. Our wonderful servant leaders from Operation NOAH Rebuild and Global Maritime Ministries were present and blessed us, as always.

Thankful for the joy. I don’t know how else to say it. Recently, on this page, I left the Sam Shoemaker story of the man who knocked at his door late one night and said, “I just feel I need to thank Someone.” I know the feeling. I’m grateful for the pastors of the big churches who came to the Christmas dinner because their presence sets a good example and encourages everyone else. I’m grateful for the Spanish pastors who attended, because they actually did their own dinner a week ago in downtown New Orleans and could have chosen to skip this one. And I’m particularly grateful for the pastors of the bivocational churches who came at great inconvenience, because they have to rise early and be at work while some of us are just stirring.

Thank you, Father. What an honor to be Yours and to be used by Thee.

Sometime around 1970 while pastoring Emmanuel Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, I met an impressive young family who had started coming to our church. The father and mother were gracious and receptive to my witness and prayed to receive Christ. They had 3 or 4 sons, and in time they too were saved, and we baptized them. The middle one–I think–was Rob, age 7.

At the end of 1970, I moved to another church and lost contact with this family. Some years later, God called Rob into the ministry. In the early 1990s I think, Rob completed his doctorate at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and went to pastor the First Baptist Church of Shelby, NC.

I noticed Tuesday in the Biblical Recorder, the Baptist weekly for North Carolina, that Dr. Rob Canoy has just been made dean of the Divinity School at Gardner Webb University in that state.

Makes me wish I’d knocked on more doors over the years.

Tuesday, Charles Kelley, Senior, a native of Beaumont, Texas, and the father of Dr. Chuck Kelley, president of our New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, was memorialized at a funeral service in the seminary chapel. I cannot really claim to have known this dear brother, although we met on more than one occasion. But I know his family, and I surely know the golden reputation he left behind.

Mr. Kelley’s oldest daughter Dorothy is married to Dr. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. We were all classmates at New Orleans Seminary back in the 1960s.

I told my pastor Tuesday night that Dr. Chuck Kelley’s tribute to his father was the ultimate accolade. Any compliment ever given to a dad after that will pale in comparison.

Dr. Bart and Edith Neal grew up in Beaumont, in the First Baptist Church there where the Kelleys were prominent in the leadership, and Bart served as vice-president both of our seminary here and Southeastern Seminary in North Carolina where Paige was previously president. I had the privilege of being their pastor at the FBC of Kenner in the early 1990s. They sang at the funeral Tuesday. Precious friends.

So much overlapping, touching this one who in turn touches the world.

My secretary Lynn Gehrmann said, “Brother Joe, you know everyone.” My answer to that is, “I have not done a lot in my lifetime, but I surely know a lot of people who have.”

Speaking of the New Orleans Saints…

(Well, I was talking about “people who have done a lot,” and any New Orleanian will tell you this team is accomplishing far more than anyone ever anticipated!)

I thought you would appreciate this. Up in Philadelphia, PA, Jay Coogan was rooting for the Saints Sunday night. Now, Jay is a Tulane alumnus and a longtime season-ticket holder (that’s what it says right here in the Times-Picayune). Sunday was a big day for him, since his 3-month-old daughter Helen was baptized in the afternoon. Then came the blowout Sunday night against Dallas, the game Saints fans will talk about for years, which we may assume Jay watched on television.

On Monday when everyone was so wrung out from the emotion of the night before, Jay Coogan said, “The only productive thing I’ve been able to do all day is that I called the parish and scheduled to have her christened again next Sunday before we play the Redskins.”

They ran my letter to the editor in Tuesday’s paper. (I read it to you in the previous blog.) Several pastors Tuesday night commented on it, remarking that it is sure to generate some heated responses. We’ll see.

One of the three questions I raised–wondering why Jefferson Parish could not take in the flooded New Orleanians for a few days of crisis when cities all over America have taken them in for more than a year–was partially answered in the next column. Barbara Bryant of Westwego–whom I do not know–wrote that there was nowhere for the embattled New Orleanians to go when they tried to flee across the Mississippi River bridge. “There was not any food, water or shelter for them over here,” she said, and continued to elaborate on that point through several paragraphs.

I’d like to say to Ms. Bryant and others who hold that view that it may indeed be true that you did not have food and water for those folks, but you had plenty of one commodity desperately in short supply in New Orleans. You had dry ground. That is what they needed most, and our (Jefferson Parish) leaders blocked them from receiving it.

So, I’m waiting for answers to my three questions. Everyone thinks the newspaper will be beseiged with responses. If so, I’ll reprint them here.