“I’m thinking of closing down our men’s ministry.”

“And you’re telling me because—what? you want me to talk you out of it?”

“Or tell me how to salvage it without shutting it down.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The usual. It’s a meet-and-eat affair, and very little else.”

“Start at the beginning,” I said. “What do they do?”

“We have this group of men who meet at the church for breakfast the first Sunday of each month. They’ll have about 30 present. They eat breakfast and sit around drinking their coffee and visiting with each other. And that’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“They might have someone bring a devotional once in a while. Or a visiting missionary to speak. But usually, it’s just them.”

He was quiet a moment, then said, “I’m not saying they’re doing anything wrong. They’re just not doing anything.”

“Do you attend?”

“Not in several months. But I’ve gone often enough to know what they do.”

“Let me ask you a question, pastor.”

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Several have asked for an update on Rudy French, pastor of Norco’s First Baptist Church, who returned to Canada for heart surgery earlier this month. Thanks to the Lord, he’s doing just fine.

Rudy and Rose are following doctor’s orders and he’s taking a month to rest up, something he did not do earlier this year when the same surgical procedure was done. This time, he’s learned his lesson.

With so much going on down here, in the community and in his church, it’s next to impossible for Rudy to tune everything out and let his mind be at rest. I counseled him that, if things went bad in the surgery and God called you to Heaven, what would we do here; so, pretend you’re in Heaven for the next six weeks and then come back to earth. They actually took that bizarre bit of semi-wisdom and are working at doing just that. (It’s fairly obvious why I never was much of a counselor.)

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1. We’re told that 40,000 Louisianians still live in FEMA trailers, down 50 percent from a year ago. Most of our people still in these boxes are having their homes rebuilt and will not be needing them much longer. And what of the others? That would be people who had been living in subsidized public housing for the most part and who have no place to go other than the FEMA trailer. We’re told the federal government has workers doing nothing but seeking out rental property and matching it up with the trailer dweller. Trying to get them out and on their own.

The FEMA trailer has been a lifesaver for a lot of people and a royal headache for the government. We have not reported it here, but formaldehyde has been found at high levels in many of the trailers, creating a health concern for the residents. Watch for the lawsuits.

Somewhere I read about a city employee–not one of ours thankfully; this must have been in the Reader’s Digest–who was backing his city truck up and crunched an automobile. The driver got out and discovered he had backed into his own car. So, naturally, he sued the city. After all, the city must have been at fault since a city-owned truck driven by a city employee was responsible. No word as to the outcome.

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(Note: I wrote this report on the status of our N.O. churches at the request of the Baptist Message, our weekly newspaper for Louisiana Baptists. It will appear in the August 30 edition, one day after the second anniversary of Katrina.)

Before Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29, 2005, the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans (BAGNO) could count some 140 churches and missions. One month later, when we re-entered the area, we were able to identify 35 still operating. Today, two years after this life-changing event, we

Each Monday afternoon, I meet with three or four of our young pastors at a fast food cafe near my house. We sit there for an hour or more, drinking coffee or soft drinks, and sharing about our lives and ministries. Invariably, one of them will groan when I ask, “So, what are you preaching next Sunday?” He will say, “It’s only Monday, man–how would I know that?” and everyone laughs.

Today, I threw out as a conversation starter: “Give us your life-verse, the Scripture that explains you.” I started with mine, Job 4:4, “Your words have stood men on their feet.”

Carl’s verse was Acts 18:9-10, “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you…I have many people in this city.”

“I was struggling with moving to New Orleans,” Carl said. “I had requested an assignment to one of several cities, none of which were offered to me. Finally, the company said, ‘How about New Orleans?’ Well, I had been here several times when I was a partying college student. I knew nothing but the French Quarter, and that was not a happy memory. Now that I was living for the Lord, I did not want to even be exposed to that lifestyle anymore. But as I was praying, the Lord spoke those words to me. I moved to New Orleans–to Kenner, actually–you came to visit me, I joined First Baptist Church, and God called me into the ministry there.”

“Yes, and you met your wife at our church,” I said. Evidence aplenty God was in it. He agreed.

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The pastor who reads only the New Testament to get his assignment, see his field, and understand the nature of his work will miss a great deal of vital information. The Old Testament is a book of illustrations of New Testament teachings.

Case in point.

Two passages from the 6th Century prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel take pains to show us the failures of the shepherds–i.e., the spiritual leaders–of their day. It’s impossible to read Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34 without seeing a reflection of ourselves and our situation in that mirror.

(Warren Wiersbe says when we first start reading Scripture, it’s a window to us. We gaze through it to see the characters of the Bible, how they lived, what they did. Eventually, however, if we stay with it, the Word becomes a mirror. As we gaze into it, we begin to see ourselves, our world, our situations.)

The passage from Ezekiel 34 rails against the failures of the spiritual leaders of that day. Bible students recall what days of crisis those were, with the nation of Judah being pulled on one side to trust in Egypt and being called by God to surrender to Babylon, with false prophets calling one way and true prophets another. The poor people had no idea where to turn. Eventually, the Israelis were defeated by the Babylonians, the population was carted off to foreign lands, and the city of Jerusalem was demolished. Thousands of God’s people died from war or starvation or other cruelties.

In the middle of this national crisis, a time when the preachers should have been at their best, they failed miserably. Ezekiel 34:1-10 lists five great failures of these so-called shepherds.

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A generation ago, Houston’s John Bisagno and E. V. Hill of Los Angeles were featured speakers at a conference I was attending. Hill, an eloquent fiery preacher in the best tradition of African-American stemwinders, had blown the windows out of the church with his message and left the congregation of a thousand on their feet cheering and shouting. As order settled in on the auditorium, our host introduced Bisagno. Brother John walked to the pulpit and softly related the most appropriate little story I’ve ever heard.

“Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Linus were lying in the grass gazing at the puffy white clouds. Lucy says, ‘If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formation…What do you think you see, Linus?’

“Linus said, ‘Well, those clouds up there look to me like the map of the British Honduras in the Caribbean….That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor…and that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen…I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side….'”

“Lucy says, ‘Uh huh…That’s very good… What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?’ And Charlie Brown answers, ‘Well, I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but I changed my mind.'”

Bisagno looked out at his audience and said, “I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but after that sermon from Dr. Hill, I don’t think I’ll say anything now!'”

But he did. He was equally wonderful and just as enthusiastically received–ask anyone who heard Dr. Bisagno in his prime–but I’ve never forgotten his description of that comic strip from Peanuts.

In the comics for today, Sunday, August 19, 2007, that was the Peanuts strip that was reprinted. I’ve clipped it out, It’s a real keeper.

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The paper this Saturday morning tells of a lawsuit filed in Iowa over a 1939 experimental program conducted at the state university in which researchers worked to induce stuttering in the speech patterns of children by abusing them. Setting out to prove that this speech defect is a learned behavior that can be created, these so-called scientists focused on 22 children from a state-controlled orphans home for their research.

For a period of six months, Dr. Wendell Johnson and his staff of pioneers in speech pathology brutalized these children verbally. “Some were subjected to steady harassment, badgering and other negative acts in an attempt to get them to stutter….” One of the children, 84-year-old Hazel Dornbush, said, “It was awful…We had nobody to lean on to help us out.”

The state of Iowa is shelling out nearly a million dollars to these victims. Those that are still alive. Those who can be found.

The program was kept secret for many years and only revealed in a 2001 investigative story published in the San Jose Mercury News. The university apologized, and two years later the lawsuit was filed.

Much too little, way too late, far too awful.

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