The front page of Time for August 13, 2007, features what surely must be the simplest picture ever to adorn that celebrated magazine’s cover–a grassy levee atop which is something that looks like a concrete wall. “Special Report: Why New Orleans Still Isn’t Safe” crosses the top of the page. In the center, filling the sky, so to speak, we find this:

“Two years after Katrina, this floodwall is all that stands between New Orleans and the next hurricane. It’s pathetic. How a perfect storm of big money politics, shoddy engineering and environmental ignorance is setting up the city for another catastrophe.”

Pathetic? That’s putting it out there.

We reported here a few days ago that the August issue of the National Geographic deals with the same subject. One obvious difference is that the Geographic’s photographs were better, in color, and bigger, more striking. But they make the same point. This city faces big trouble.

The article, written by Michael Grunwald, establishes right off the bat something the people down here have been trying to get across to our friends in the nation’s Capitol:

“The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn’t a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city’s defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks.”

Grunwald says FEMA got the blame, but the culprit was the Corps of Engineers. He says American citizens were outraged by the government’s poor response to the disaster, but they have yet to deal with the government’s responsibility for the mess.

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“The former pastor is coming back to our church. He wants it back.”

I said, “Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. He wants to take over your church?”

“Right. He started the church 15 years ago. Then about 7 or 8 years ago, he left with a little group and began another church, more of a Pentecostal type, I suppose you would say.”

“And what happened?”

“The hurricane scattered his members and now he has only a small group, not enough to hold church with, so he has apparently decided he’ll just come back and take over our church.”

I said, “How long have you been the pastor?”

“Five years.” I said, “Do you know this man?”

He said, “A little. I’ve met him. A year or so ago, he showed up in our services and while I was making announcements, he walked to the front and snatched the microphone out of my hand and started speaking.”

“And you let him?”

“I didn’t think I had a choice. I didn’t want to create a disturbance.”

“He had already done that for you. How long did he speak?”

“It must have been 15 minutes.”

“And then what happened?”

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“All right, start at the beginning and tell me what happened.”

He fidgeted a little, leaned forward in the office chair, and said, “At first, we were excited about him becoming our pastor. We’re a small church, you know, and he was an outsider. He came in after the storm, seemed to have an unusual vision for what a little church like ours could do, and we bought it.”

I said, “You liked his preaching?”

“He’s a pretty good preacher. Not the greatest in the world, but we’re a small church and we’ve never been spoiled in that regard. But he was fresh and, I think the word is, driven.”

“Anyway,” he continued, “we called him as pastor.”

I said, “If I recall, you wanted him pretty badly. He kept turning you down and you kept calling him back and insisting that he consider becoming pastor of your church.”

Long silence. “We thought he would do our church so much good. The people really liked him.”

“And from where I sit, he has done the church a lot of good.”

He said, “From the outside, it would appear that way.” Another long silence. “But it’s like some families that look good to the neighbors but it’s another story inside the house.”

“So what happened?”

“He came in and started spending all that money to revamp the buildings to host outside church teams that were coming to help rebuild the city.”

I said, “Didn’t the church vote to do that? And someone in the congregation gave the money for it?”

“Yes, in a way. The congregation just didn’t realize what it was getting. He started acting like he was the construction boss or something. Giving orders. Making decisions on what wall to tear down, which rooms to install bunk beds in, choosing the stoves for the kitchen. We’re not used to that.”

“You’re not used to what?”

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Did you hear the one about New Orleans’ Mayor C. Ray Nagin?

In Chicago recently to address a convention, he was walking down Michigan Avenue and noticed in the window of a tailor shop a beautiful sport coat. He walked inside and asked the proprietor if he had it in his size. The man said, “Each one is specially made, sir. I’d be happy to make you one.”

The mayor said, “I’m just in the city overnight. Let me buy the material and I’ll have it made back in New Orleans.” He brought the material home on the plane.

A few days later, the mayor’s tailor came by City Hall. He measured the mayor, studied the material, and said, “Mister Mayor, would you like a pair of pants also?”

Nagin said, “I’d love a pair of pants. Are you sure there’s enough material?”

“I’m sure of it. In fact, I can probably get you two pairs. And how about a vest?”

“Now wait a minute,” said the mayor. “I bought just enough material in Chicago for a sports coat. Now you’re telling me there’s enough there for a sports coat, two pairs of pants, and a vest. How could that be?”

The tailor said, “Mr. Mayor, there’s something you need to understand. You are a much bigger man in Chicago than you are in New Orleans.”

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The most historic hotel in this city for generations has been the one known through the years as the Roosevelt, and most recently as the Fairmont. It has been shuttered since Katrina, with the owners making no plans to reopen. Tuesday’s Times-Picayune announced that the 114-year-old structure is about to be sold, and the new owners have plans to rebuild and reopen it as a Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

The hurricane flooded its basement with 10 feet of water which destroyed the mechanical equipment. The wind blew rain into nearly every guest room. After the storm, workers began cleaning out and drying out the building when they discovered the hotel had sustained far more damage than originally thought.

A local hotelier says the city needs this hotel back if we’re going to attract a certain class of visitor, but occupancy will be a concern for a few years.

The August 2007 issue of National Geographic features a photograph of New Orleans on its cover, and this large question: “New Orleans: Should it rebuild?” Across the picture, we read: “levees failing/storms increasing/ground sinking/seas rising.”

In a large sense, it’s a moot question because the city is rebuilding at this very moment. Almost 24 hours a day, people are at work. On one block, Mr. Boudreaux is hanging sheetrock in his house. In the next block, the LeBlancs are landscaping their yard. Vacant lots in the next block indicate where the Bourgeois and Landry families demolished their ruined homes. A new modular house is going up across the street. The heavy duty construction trucks burning up the through streets testify to the rebuilding going on here. It’s happening.

Whether it should or not is another question. And basically pointless, since people are going to do what they’re going to do.

It’s like the questions we used to field from outside religious leaders: “How many of your churches are you planning to bring back?” and “What is your strategy for which churches to restore and rebuild?”

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“It must be exciting,” my Mom said Monday morning. I had called her on the Alabama farm from Charlotte, NC, for our daily visit and in the conversation, I reported on my Sunday night adventure in my former church. Friends of Milton and JoAnne LeDoux–he’s the minister of music at the First Baptist Church of Charlotte–threw him a party to celebrate his 20th anniversary, and I had flown up for the occasion. I told Mom I would fly back home Monday afternoon. She thought that had to be an adventure.

Milton LeDoux’s coming to the Charlotte church was what we call a “God-thing,” something that no one could have anticipated, an event that could never have been planned. Back in 1987, a mutual friend, Joe Joslin, had moved to Charlotte from the FBC of Deridder, Louisiana, to become our minister of music. Before long, he told us of this young couple who had grown up in his church and were students at our seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He had some vacant slots on the church music team in Charlotte and wanted to invite them to move from Texas, and let Milton finish his masters degree at the seminary in Wake Forest, NC. That’s how we got them. Milton was 27 years old. The only church he had served as worship leader had run 100 in attendance. Ours ran from 1200 to 1500.

About the time they settled into place, Joe Joslin announced that he was resigning to move back to Deridder. My precise words to him were, “You dirty dog.” He was out of his element in that urban setting, he explained, and should never have left southwestern Louisiana. He remained at FBC Deridder for another 15 years or more, and is now part-time at New Life Baptist Church there, a congregation he and Lynn Clayton founded. Joe’s main weekday work, however, is conducting fishing tours in the Toledo Bend area. It’s a tough life.

Anyway–long story short–we turned to Milton and said, “You’re our interim minister of music. We’re counting on you. But you need to know that you will not be a candidate for this position. We need someone older and more experienced.” He agreed and went to work.

Immediately, church members came to me raving at his musicianship, his leadership, and his wonderful spirit. JoAnne was our organist and is as fine a Christian lady as there comes. At Christmastime, members exclaimed over the seasonal music, that it was the best ever. We all agreed that the Lord had sent us Milton and JoAnne LeDoux and gave him the position permanently. The years since have borne out that this was the Father’s plan.

The banquet Sunday night was a masterpiece of spiritual blessings and hilarious moments, as well done as any I’ve ever seen. Everyone laughed and some cried. Old friends and family members showed up. The biggest blessing was probably mine though, and the banquet was only one part of it.

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My friend said, “Our church was having a business conference last Sunday night to vote on our new interim pastor.”

The personnel committee is charged with finding and recommending a minister for this purpose, and they had done their work. In the business meeting, the congregation was discussing the choice and asking many questions. My friend wanted me to know of one little thing that had transpired.

“Suddenly, in the midst of all the discussion, this long tall man unfolded and walked up in front of the church. He said, ‘People, there’s a better way than all of this. You chose a committee and entrusted them with the duty of finding this person and interviewing him and bringing him before you. You do not have time enough to get every question answered in this meeting. Ultimately, you’re going to have to trust your leaders.”

My friend said, “I laughed to myself, ‘He sure has learned from his dad.'” He said, “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard you say that over the years you were our pastor.

I believe it strongly. In recent months, I preached that at West St. Charles Church in Boutte and the First Baptist Church of Belle Chasse. “One day soon, your search committee is going to bring their recommendation for your next pastor. The man and his family will spend the weekend visiting your church and the community. You’ll have several opportunities to meet him and ask some questions. But you need to realize up front that in three days you will not be able to know him well enough or to get all your questions answered. What it all comes down to is that you’re going to have to trust your leaders.”

Elect the very best your church has. Then trust them. In finances, in business decisions, in personnel matters. The extent to which your church does this tells volumes about the congregation.

I admit that to our shame, untold numbers of Baptists who are strong participants in every phase of church life have a hard time doing that. They trust no one except themselves, and sometimes not even that. The result is a constant murmur of bickering and debating, a low level of distrust and a high level of dissatisfaction, which tires out the leaders, slows down the work of the Lord, brings disgust to the hearts of new believers, and doubtless frustrates the Lord of the Church who loves it and gave Himself for it.

But I digress. I started to write something here about family, having had my wonderful son “outed” by his remembering something his father often said.

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A billboard across the street from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary on Gentilly Boulevard shouts, “You’re Not Crazy.” Underneath is a phone number, with the last four digits spelling “TALK.” What is this, I wondered. In small letters at the base is the name of the organization sponsoring the ad, something about Hurricane Recovery. It made sense then.

Outsiders unacquainted with the kind of regional trauma we’ve experienced over the last two years might think the worst would be over by now, that the initial response to lost friends and flooded houses, destroyed neighborhoods and disappearing shopping centers would be the crazy part. But we’ve learned as bad as that all was, for many, it keeps getting worse.

As the zany disk jockey used to call out through the radio, “And the hits just keep on coming!”

Factor in lost loved ones, departed friends, shuttered houses, streets untouched by repairs and yards that haven’t seen a lawn mower in two years, deserted strip malls and politicians who don’t have a clue–and it’s enough to make anyone a little crazy. Do not leave out the government run-arounds in the various helping programs, do not forget the heavy construction trucks speeding up and down residential streets bringing help, yes, but feeling this gives them carte blanche to ignore traffic laws and intimidate slower drivers, and be sure to include the long lines at the doctor’s office and restaurants. Don’t forget the higher utility bills.

And that’s just for starters.

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