Sunday night, when I arrived at West St. Charles Baptist Church in the west bank community of Boutte, a huge bus was pulling into the parking lot. Some 30 or so teens and maybe 6 or 8 adults all wearing green t-shirts got off and headed into the church. This lively bunch of vivacious folks were from Second Baptist Church, Odessa, Texas, here to assist the church in its Vacation Bible School this week.

“Where are y’all staying?” I asked, thinking they could be boarding in the Volunteer Village downtown or in one of several churches set up to host volunteer teams. “The Ramada Inn in Luling,” they said.

Since it was their first time in New Orleans since the events of August/September 2005, I adapted my sermon to give them information on the city, its ordeal, and some of the blessings of the Lord we’ve enjoyed in these many intervening months.

Monday morning, David Rhymes stepped into my office to see if I could come have prayer with representatives of several church groups he was briefing about the work they would be doing this week. A dozen people, mostly teens, were in our conference room. “Where are you from?” Benton, Louisiana. Jasper, Alabama. (Since that is right up the road from my home in north Alabama, we had lots to talk about.)

I gave the visitors a brief rundown on our situation and we prayed for them, thanking God for the encouragement of their presence. I asked David how many volunteers are in town right now just from our Baptist churches. “Anywhere from 500 to 1,000,” he said, “and it’s that way every week right on through the summer.”

We feel so blessed.

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Everyone down here is depressed over having a congressman under indictment for fraud and racketeering. We’re still trying to keep Washington’s focus on helping us rebuild this city, and now our chief advocate representing Orleans and parts of Jefferson Parish will be using all his resources to stay out of jail.

William Jefferson has been charged by the FBI with a long list of corrupt activities, all of which he is denying. Half our people are calling for him to resign from Congress and the other half are trying to put the best face on this, saying things like: “You’re innocent until proven guilty.” Which is not true, of course.

In a court of law and only there, you are considered innocent until you are proven guilty. But it’s inane to say a person is innocent until he’s proven guilty.

Up in Mississippi, they’ve arrested some old KKK member for a 1964 murder of a couple of Black teenagers and he will be going to trial soon. Now, it’s been 43 years and he hasn’t been proven guilty. Is there anyone around who would say the guy is innocent because of that? No, the point is that the courts must treat him as innocent and the burden of proof is on the state. But whether they prove it or not has nothing to do with whether he’s innocent. If he did the crime, and even if he’s the only one who knows it other than God, he’s still plenty guilty.

Big, big difference. (You’ve just stumbled onto a pet peeve of mine. Sorry.)

The other pet peeve is congresspeople (is that a word?) and other leaders who try to subdivide their lives into categories–one part for my official functions, another part for my private business affairs, and so on. And so we have Mr. Jefferson on the front of Saturday’s Times-Picayune saying, “Did I sell my office or trade official acts for money? Absolutely not.”

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Even people who live in this city like to turn to one another and pose what, before inflation, was called ‘the 64 dollar question:’ Do you think New Orleans is better prepared for a hurricane than we were 2 years ago?

I answer an emphatic ‘yes.’ For a lot of reasons. Here are some.

1. The levees are stronger in many places and no worse anywhere than before Katrina.

2. At the entrance to a number of crucial waterways, the Corps of Engineers has installed massive and expensive floodgates to regulate the amount of water inside the city. Every workday, I drive over the “Hammond Highway” bridge in Bucktown, which spans the 17th Street Canal where the levee broke after Katrina and devastated the neighborhood around our Pontchartrain Baptist Church, and gaze upon what perhaps 50 million dollars have bought in the way of intricate, huge, impressive floodgates. We had nothing there before.

3. We have fewer vulnerable properties now than pre-Katrina for the simple reason that the storm cleaned out thousands of flimsy buildings. Okay, we still have lots of FEMA house trailers throughout Orleans, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines parishes and I do not want to even imagine what a strong storm would do with those lightweight missiles. Turn them into kites?

4. Everyone knows a hurricane can actually hit the city now–previously, we had become blase’ about that ever actually happening–and everyone has a plan of some kind. When someone asked me my hurricane plan this week, I said, “Leave.”

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One of our newspaper columnists was absent for a number of weeks. I didn’t know what had happened. One day this week the column reappeared and he admitted he’d taken his family away on an extended vacation. We wanted to go someplace normal, he said, somewhere you could go a whole day through and not once hear the word “Katrina.”

We all know the feeling. Consider the following and see if we make our point.

The front page of Friday’s Times-Picayune was made up of these lengthy articles:

1) “Road Home gap hits $5 billion.” This federal program of providing up to $150,000 to each homeowner whose residence suffered extensive damage from Katrina or her floodwaters has been known to be seriously underfunded, but the amount keeps escalating. Now they’re saying we will need an additional $5 billion, a staggering amount. And while the governor and state leaders have been crying for Washington to make up the difference, leaders in our nation’s capital have pointed the finger southward, suggesting that since Louisiana is projecting a budget surplus, we ought to come up with much of the money ourselves. The front page article suggests state legislators working on the 2008 budget are feeling the pressure to do just that.

2) “State rejects 5-year storm model.” A California company called Risk Management Solutions, Inc. comes up with projected costs of damages and insurance rates in hurricane-prone states for a five year period. In this case, the rate of increase in the dollar cost of damages and insurance is so alarming that the state of Florida has rejected the RMS projections and Louisiana is following suit. These were guidelines to have been used by the state insurance commissioners’ offices in making projections about rates, etc.

3) “June 1.” Yep, that’s the big bold headline. Underneath are these: “It’s hurricane season: Six months of bracing for the worst while hoping for the best.” “Corps chief promises 100-year protection.” I’ll spare you the details.

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“We’ve been chosen,” writes Ann Corbin. She and husband Steve are MSC volunteers assigned to the Global Maritime Ministries, working out of Reserve, LA, a few miles upriver from New Orleans. However, often they’re working the ports in this city also.

The Corbins have been selected to be among the recipients of the “Christmas in August” promotion for the year 2008. This is a joint missionary effort of our National Woman’s Missionary Union and the North American Mission Board in which the stories of these missionaries are “told” to church groups all over the country, and those groups are invited to send resources their way. Hence the name “Christmas in August.”

In many publications of the WMU and NAMB, the story of Steve and Ann’s missionary work will be featured and readers will learn what supplies they can use for their ministry. They might, for instance, ask for office supplies, building supplies, or other items which they can use. Or, they might simply request gift cards for Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, etc., which they can use with the seamen and port workers who come to their port ministry centers for hospitality and witness. Some missionaries have gotten so much response to this August emphasis they’ve had to rent storage space to hold it all.

Some 35 to 40 missionaries in all will be featured in the “Christmas in August” promotion. Most churches will choose one or two or three missionaries and focus on their work. There’s no way of knowing what level of response Steve and Ann may expect.

Anyone know of a good, cheap vacation place for Steve and Ann in the Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg area of Tennessee? They’ll be headed to a conference in the Carolinas and want to have a few days vacation in mid-July. Their e-mail is steveandann@portministry.com.

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After Dale Pierce went through the devastated regions of our city recently, he penned a poem to express his feelings. I asked for a copy to share with you.

Title: Blessed is Each New Day

by Dale T. Pierce

As I walked through Saint Bernard,

I scanned the woe and loss.

I pondered Great Katrina,

And added up the cost.

The buildings all were damaged,

And some were rubble piles.

I knew it would be many days,

‘Fore home they’d come from miles.

Alone I walked through Saint Bernard,

The silence struck me dumb.

The cost and loss beyond compare,

How could such wreckage come?

Now a year has come and gone,

And help still comes and goes.

The hands of God came through His men,

And women, Heaven knows.

We praise the Lord for all He’s done,

We count now praises due.

We thank our God for blessings come,

And hearts He has renewed.

So thank you all for coming,

To help us build our homes.

We thank you for your sacrifice,

For Father’s love you’ve shown.

Our churches still are meeting,

In homes and sheds and more.

We’re praising God for healing,

His Church of ‘us’ restored.

When you go home our one request

Is pray, and pray, and pray.

For Father’s hand is great to bless,

And blessed is each new day.

(I’m certain you have Dale’s permission to reprint it.)

David Crosby of the FBC of NO sent an email this week which we in turn forwarded to all our pastors, announcing the Second Katrina Anniversary Prayer Rally. The date, of course, is Wednesday, August 29, 2007, 7 pm, at the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, 5290 Canal Boulevard.

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“My biggest problem is going from being a disaster pastor,” one of our men said, “to simply being the pastor of the church.” He was voicing the difficulty a number of ministers in this part of the world are dealing with these days: how to transition from the crisis mode their church has functioned in for the past 21 months since Katrina to the normal routine of pastoring a church.

He went on to explain, “When you are gutting out a house or rebuilding a church, you can see the progress each day. But in the typical day of pastoring a church, it’s another story. You deal with people having problems, you plan church programs, you visit the hospitals, you prepare sermons. At the end of the day, it’s hard to see what you got accomplished. The switch is hard on some of us.”

While some of our pastors are dealing with this problem, some wish they were. Jerry Darby is still driving over from Alvin, Texas, near Houston each week. He attends our Wednesday morning pastors’ gathering, then rounds up as many of the scattered members of his One Faith Church as he can locate, and they have church in someone’s home that evening. Next day, he drives back to Texas and pastors New Life Baptist Church there. He admitted, “My Texas members live in fear that we will move back to New Orleans.” But even if that happens–and Jerry’s wife, a native New Orleanian, is ready in a heartbeat–it’s not likely anytime soon. Too few members and no location. Since they are meeting in various homes, some wag suggested their church can be labeled “One Faith, Many Locations.”

Thomas Glover wants his New Covenant Mission in Harvey to transition into a more diverse congregation. “Before Katrina, we were running 20 in attendance, and now we have 40. But, other than Bethany Hales, our “Unlimited Partnership” minister, we’re all African-American.” Thomas got a laugh when he told of someone asking Bethany if New Covenant is a diverse congregation. “Well,” she said, “I’m the only diverse one right now.”

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I preached Sunday morning at the First Baptist Church of Belle Chasse. This good church is announcing that Pastor Sam Gentry of Ironton, Missouri, has received a unanimous call as their next pastor and will begin the first Sunday of July. They are so excited. The sign in front of the church said, “Welcome to new pastor Sam Gentry.” I wondered if anyone reading that would assume he was starting today. They did.

After the service I met a fine young couple who said they are church-looking and when they saw this congregation had a new pastor, decided to visit. “We’re glad we came,” the man said. “Your message was just for us.” I was happy to see a deacon’s wife greeting them and getting their contact information. The husband had said he and his wife were from different religious backgrounds and even though they’ve been married several years, they’re still trying to find common ground. I gently probed about their relationship to Christ, and got their address to send some information.

A young man stationed at the Belle Chasse Naval Air Station responded to the invitation to say he was not a Christian, but wanted to be. I enjoyed leading him in what we call the sinner’s prayer, inviting the Lord into his life and committing himself to Christ. The congregation burst into applause when he was presented at the conclusion of the service. A deacon told me later, “During Sunday School this morning, we made a special point to pray that people would be saved here today.”

“I’m not comfortable in church,” a young woman told me Saturday. “I’ve never found any church where I feel at home, like I belong there.”

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