Several weeks ago an enterprising graduate student in finances e-mailed me from some university in this hemisphere–that’s as definite as my memory can get–to ask if she could bring down a busload of her classmates to assist residents of New Orleans in handling/investing/managing all the money they’ve gotten from the government. I said, “What money?”

She said, “We hear everyone is getting 150 thousand dollars for their flooded homes.” I said, “No one has received a dime of it. It’s still clogged up in a government pipeline somewhere.”

That money is beginning to flow, at least in a trickle. The Louisiana Recovery Authority has hired people to receive applications from homeowners, and by all reports, the process is lengthy and laborious. People have been complaining that they’re being asked to reproduce all the applications for any kind of assistance they’ve received earlier, to document everything about their homes, and to produce papers most of which were ruined in the Katrina floodwaters that swallowed 200,000 homes. A few days ago, a fed up Governor Kathleen Blanco announced that the LRA’s slow pace would not get it. At that point, only a hundred or so people had received their money.

The governor said, “I want 10 thousand people to get their checks before December 1.” Well, they heard her and hired another hundred workers and decided it was all right for applicants to handle everything by telephone (not everyone has the internet, to their surprise), and they now announce they’re on track to reach the 10 thousand number by the end of this month.

Footnote: this does not mean everyone is getting up 150 thousand dollars. It’s “up to” that amount. But you have to deduct your insurance checks and a few other things. Even so, we’re thankful.

Twice this week, I received e-mails asking when the cartoons on the Winter Bible Study would be ready. I’ve been turning out a series of cartoons on whichever book of the Bible Southern Baptists focus on each January, for many years. Some of those are available at www.joemckeever. Click on “cartoons” on the right side of the page and have fun.

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Today was our second Wednesday pastors’ meeting at the New Orleans Chinese Baptist Church in Kenner. Pastor Hong Fu Liu welcomed us and told how they’re getting ready to baptize 7 new members on the first Sunday of December. During the Billy/Franklin Graham Crusade in March, they had 21 people to receive Christ. Fourteen have already been baptized.

Before Katrina, this wonderful church–which is celebrating its 25th anniversary; it was a mission from Memorial Baptist in Metairie–had two morning worship services. Now they have only one, having lost some 40 percent of their members since the hurricane. Their facilities were built ten years ago and are still lovely, although Hong Fu says that’s because the insurance paid off well and they’ve repainted and reroofed. He paid tribute to the Southern Baptist Convention which helped them purchase the lovely lot on which their church stands.

The Arkansas working out of Gentilly Baptist Church sponsored a block party on the church grounds last Saturday. They had anticipated 150, but 400 people showed up. They had one profession of faith. Sunday, 174 people attended the worship service, half of them being volunteers from out of state.

Debra and Rachel from Victory Church came to share with the pastors about the Convoy of Hope scheduled for Saturday, November 18, on both the East Bank and the West Bank of New Orleans. They will be giving away free school supplies, 5,000 Bibles, food (including 250 turkeys), gift cards to Lowe’s for $10 to the first one thousand people, discounts for prescriptions, and such. The East Bank (downtown New Orleans) location is 1501 St. Louis Street (corner of Basin Street and St. Louis, next to Louis Armstrong Park).

More than 35,000 pound of free groceries will be given to local residents. They’re also planning health screenings, job fairs, free haircuts–if they can find some barbers willing to work on Saturdays for nothing–and plenty of games and children’s activities.

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Harry Truman was often asked if he regretted dropping the A-bomb on Japan. “I refuse to waste time second-guessing myself,” he would reply. “Under the circumstances, I did the best I knew, and if I had it to do over, I’d do the same thing again.”

That’s one of the many differences between Harry and me. I mean, in addition to the fact that I’m alive and he’s not.

I sometimes beat myself up over something I did and wish I hadn’t. Or did not do and wish I had.

Case in point. I spent this past week at a lovely church in another state. They called the emphasis a “Global Focus Celebration.” The people were wonderful and the hosts where I stayed were the best. The dozen or twenty missionaries who gathered for the event were as fine as they come. But what I was doing there hounded me from the beginning to the end.

The invitation to this annual event came from a longtime friend who served that church as interim pastor recently. “Invite Joe,” he suggested, and they did. I accepted it thinking it was a World Mission Conference, which we now call “On Mission Celebration.” The idea of that is to bring a large group of missionaries to your area and have them speak in churches all over the county, a different speaker in each church each night. But the Global Focus was one church, many missionaries, several days of meetings.

I set up a display in the fellowship hall so people could see my photos of Katrina-impacted churches of the New Orleans area, and stood there Wednesday afternoon while members came by to talk. I streamed photos on my laptop in case they wanted to see where these churches stood now. We had missionary fellowships, breakfasts together, breakfasts with the staff, a cookout in the home of our hosts, a senior adult luncheon at which one of the missionaries spoke, a church-wide missions banquet where I spoke, and we joined with the church members in fanning out over the city Saturday morning and afternoon to do ministry. Saturday night, we each attended a dinner with our sponsoring Sunday School class and each of us spoke to the members. Sunday morning we attended the two worship services and spoke in the Sunday School classes.

It may be just because I’m still new to being a missionary. After pastoring for 42 years, I came to the director of missions position only in May of 2004. Evidently, DOMs and others attend these Global Focus events and On Mission Celebrations a lot. But this was my first. I had a lot of stuff to take with me, so I drove up and back. Over 1600 miles round trip. The drive was wonderful, the scenery spectacular (I caught the Ozarks in the peak of its fall colors), and all that. Nothing negative at all. Absolutely nothing.

Except, I was just wondering what I was doing there.

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I billed it that way because it was! Held Friday and Saturday, November 3 and 4, at First Baptist-Marrero, across the river from New Orleans, this conference pulled together 30 volunteers from Louisiana and five other states. Leader Hope Ferguson e-mailed us her report on Wednesday. Following are the highlights.

Thirty-two churches from this area participated. Most were Anglo churches, 1 was Haitian, and 3 were Spanish. Twenty-seven of the churches are either starting or restarting their church libraries. Three schools participated.

Ninety-five individuals registered for the classes, including eleven pastors.

Get this: churches and businesses and individuals which contributed money or books or library supplies or some of all came from 17 states.

58 attended the class: Administration for beginning libraries.

21 attended: Classification and Cataloging for beginners.

29 went through the class on processing, circulation, and selection.

12 for Children and the Church Library.

14 Planning Promotion.

17 Reading Club Extravaganza

6 Space and Furnishings for Church Libraries

15 Collecting and promoting church history

5 Preserving Church History

6 Writing Church History

Baskets of blessings (information, gifts, promotional items, library supplies) were given to all 32 churches. Nearly 4,000 books were given to these new church libraries, with an average of 150 given to each one.

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“I see lots of evidence that New Orleans is coming back,” said Terry Raines. This Virginia Baptist leader was addressing our annual associational meeting on Monday, October 30, along with other leaders from across the country. Terry has been here several times and says he can see signs of significant progress.

I thought of that today–Wednesday, October 8–while driving through various sections of town. On West Esplanade in Kenner, a huge low-income apartment complex is now an open plowed field, the result of demolition which was made necessary by the hurricane damage. The boarded up complex–occupying at least six full blocks–had been an eyesore for the last year.

Down other streets, new homes are going up, some of them costing huge amounts of money. On Elysian Fields Avenue, our connector between Lake Pontchartrain and Interstate 610, dead trees are spray-painted and marked for the chain saws. In all, there must be 500 such trees, at least a dozen per block, trees that were poisoned and choked to death by Katrina’s floodwaters. At Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Canal Boulevard, the strip mall is up and running. Signs of progress abound.

Plenty of the other kinds of signs, too–untouched homes, potholes, dead trees, weeds up to the rooftops, FEMA trailers, vacant lots, boarded up stores. But we’re learning to look past all that and enjoy the positive signs.

Youth on Mission is a 16-year-old organization, the brainchild of Harry Fowler, which involves teenagers in mission projects from one end of this country to the other. Harry has been to New Orleans on several occasions and, with assistant Bob Adams, has put hundreds of youngsters to work in rebuilding our city. The new brochure from YOM announces projects for 2007 in Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and New Orleans. In fact, the front of the lovely brochure shows the youth working at our Baptist Crossroads in the Ninth Ward. You can’t miss all those colorful houses. Thank you, Harry, and YOM. Check out their website at www.yom.org.

Meanwhile, the young people of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Jasper, Alabama–just up the road from my home–are not plugging into someone else’s program; they’re creating their own. “Impact New Orleans,” they call their June 9-16, 2007, project. Their full-color leaflet which arrived in our office today shows the same colorful Habitat houses as the Youth on Mission brochure. (I’d give a dollar to know how many groups worked on these 40 houses. The other day I met some Junior League ladies from Toronto hammering and sweating!) Minister of Students Shawn Doss left New Orleans this summer with a burning desire to create a low cost/high impact mission experience for his Jasper kids. They’re partnering with Operation NOAH Rebuild and our association. The brochure says the group will be staying at Oak Park Baptist Church, and they’re doing the entire week for $150 per student. Shawn invites his people to check out Oak Park’s website: www.oakparkvision.com.

Readers who want to pursue such a trip for their group are invited to go to www.joemckeever.com and click on the house on the right side of the page, with the title, “If you are coming to help us.” You should find everything you need to know there, but if you still have questions, email us at joe@joemckeever.com.

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Dr. Joe is travelling this week, so Lynn Gehrmann has provided the minutes from today’s weekly pastor’s meeting, held at the New Orleans Chinese Baptist Church.

BAGNO held the weekly meeting with association pastors at New Orleans Chinese Baptist Church at 10:00 am. Freddie opened the meeting with some pastors sharing a blessing that happened during the past week.

Thomas Glover (New Covenant) — They closed on the Woodmere property yesterday. The fall festival on October 31st was a big success. One hundred people attended. Thirty plus prospects and seven professions of faith.

Ann Corbin (Global) — They have received a financial blessing.

Oscar Williams (Good News) — At a eulogy on October 27th, there were eleven people who gave their life to Christ.

James ‘Boogie’ Melerine (Delacroix Hope) — Last Wednesday night, October 25th, there were seven people at their prayer worship. Three of them, Catholic, had been attending worship services at Delacroix Hope. Boogie shared that some people do not like to pray out loud. He asked each person to just say one sentence and at the end of the prayer, some of them had tears in their eyes. He then asked who would be willing to give their testimony on Sunday. One of the ladies, gave her testimony on Sunday and so did her husband.

Tom Pewitt (Memorial) shared that last Thursday, October 26th, their Chairman of Deacons, Ray Gomillon, passed away. He was a Gideon and used to go the parish prison and hand out Bibles. Please keep his family in your prayers.

Mark Joslin (New Vision) — The framework of their building is up. Within the next week, they should be able to start on the walls.

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The paper says residents of the Lakeview section of New Orleans fear “mansionization.” As flooded, ruined homes are demolished, some people are buying up two or three adjacent lots and building large estates on the property. In most cases, homeowners would welcome that in their neighborhoods. All it does is skyrocket the values of existing homes. Problem is, say the Lakeviewers, the character of our beloved neighborhood would be changed. We want the casual middle-class neighborliness we had before.

And down in St. Bernard Parish, authorities are still trying to keep homeowners from renting to anyone except family members. We don’t want to lose the identity of our neighborhoods, they say. They fear outsiders buying up large sections of the city, then renting out to whoever.

Change is difficult, particularly change that involves our homes and the surrounding community. And our churches.

Every church in metro New Orleans is in the midst of monumental change. Some are embracing the change, some are fighting it, some denying it and some sleeping through it. To paraphrase II Corinthians 5:17 slightly and use it out of context completely, “Old things have passed away and everything is becoming new.” Churches are losing pastors, staffs, key leadership, Sunday School teachers, and financial supporters as they decide to move closer to family or relocate for their jobs or simply get out of Dodge.

Meanwhile, their communities are being transformed as longtime residents move away and outsiders flow in, many of them speaking Spanish or Asian tongues. New pastors are arriving, bringing new ideas and new perspectives on our situation.

There has never been a time or place when the Lord’s teachings on new wine/new wineskins were more applicable than here and now.

“No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out and the skins be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins.” (Luke 5:37-38)

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Bill Day will love this story, I thought Saturday morning. The front-page article in the Times-Picayune was headlined “Local Revival,” and gave a run-down on the churches of each denomination that have been restored or are meeting in some fashion. In addition to pastoring Metairie’s Parkview Baptist Church, Bill is a professor at our Baptist seminary and in charge of the Leavell Center for Evangelism and Missions. He and a cadre of students have been compiling statistics on the churches of New Orleans. Then I saw it.

Underneath a large map with every church–every one of them–positioned in the metro area, and with various codes identifying which are open and which are not, in the finest print was this line: “Source: The Rev. Bill Day and the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary–Leavell Center; Archdiocese of New Orleans; staff research.”

I was right; Bill will love this story. It’s his story.

Here is the beginning of religion editor Bruce Nolan’s article.

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Early after Katrina, I decided (and publicly announced) that a new facet of my job was connecting people. Churches would call asking us to match them with a local congregation or pastor whom they could assist. People with gifts of material or money would call asking for information on where to send it. That lovely tradition, I’m happy to say, is continuing.

This week, twenty of our churches are receiving $10,000 checks from one congregation not far from here. The amazing part of that story is that this generous church was itself severely hurt by Hurricane Katrina. As their people have returned and restored their church and their community, they’ve reached out to some of our damaged churches. Such wonderful friends.

Sunday, during lunch at Old Union Baptist Church near Nauvoo, Alabama, a schoolmate whom I had not seen in nearly 50 years slipped a church offering envelope to me. On the outside, she had written that I should put this where I thought best. Inside were five one-hundred dollar bills. Today, Wednesday, I handed a bill to each of five men of God and said, “It’s from the Lord.”

It’s the part of my job I love best. Serving as the arms and hands of some pretty terrific people.

Wednesday was our final meeting at El Buen Pastor Iglesia Bautista in Metairie, and the ladies in the kitchen did themselves proud with the terrific lunch. Pastor Gonzalo Rodriguez, his lovely wife, and their wonderful members have set new standards of hospitality for churches. In the dining hall, our people spontaneously rose to give a standing ovation to the kitchen staff. We are so blessed by their love and faithfulness. Gonzalo said, “It was an honor for us to serve the men of God in this way.”

Our attendance at the pastors meeting was in the low 30s since another assembly was going on across town. Tom Elliff, vice-president of the International Mission Board, spoke at seminary chapel this morning, then hosted a ministers luncheon at 11:30 to which all our guys were invited. We assured them last week that all who could should attend. Several indicated that they did not plan to go, and with this being our final session at Good Shepherd, Freddie Arnold and I decided to stay with the flock.

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This preacher made me mad Monday. While driving back from Alabama, I found a certain preacher on the radio and for some inexplicable reason, listened to his entire broadcast. Perhaps it was because he billed himself as “a true prophet of God for these last days.” Perhaps I lingered to see what kind of egomaniac would be so filled with his own sense of self-importance as to call himself that. Maybe I wanted to see what kind of prophecy he would utter. (I had never heard of him and, I think fortunately, I don’t recall his name.)

Alas, the man lived down to my worst expectations.

He was all negative. “The church is backslidden,” he said repeatedly, adding that “we are in the Laodicaean period of church history.” This reference is strictly a conjecture from preachers with time on their hands that the seven churches of Asia Minor (Revelation 2 and 3) actually represent seven stages of Christian history. There is not a single strand of evidence for that, but for those who enjoy negative preaching–delivering it and hearing it–the thought has a certain appeal.

Over and over the preacher slammed the Christian church. At the end of the broadcast, when they identified the church he pastors in Jacksonville, Florida, I found myself wondering if the smearing he did of the whole church also applies to the congregation he leads. What do you want to bet it doesn’t.

The preacher was dead certain of other false doctrines, too, such as the probability of backsliders losing their salvation. He quoted and misquoted scripture to prove his point. I kept wondering, “What about the Lord’s statement in John 10:28-29 that ‘no man’ or ‘no one’ can snatch them out of His hand.”

Sure enough, he mentioned those verses. Well, actually, he made a less than respectful reference to them. He admitted that the devil cannot get you out of the Lord’s hand and that no one else can, but you can do it yourself. Interesting bit of theology. The devil isn’t, and other people aren’t, but I am stronger than God, according to him. I can do what no one else can: I can make me lose my salvation.

I wish I could have a few minutes with that preacher to ask a couple of questions. If one loses his salvation, can he get it back? Show me one person in all the Bible who lost his salvation and then was saved a second time? Hebrews 6:6 says it is impossible for someone to be saved twice if he were to lose his salvation.

I’d like to ask him: why don’t you read the whole Bible before you start preaching your pet doctrines? And after you have read it, why not believe it? Jesus said, “He who believes on the Son of God has everlasting life.” (John 3:36) How simpler could He put it? But if I can have it and lose it and get it back and lose it again, friend, it ain’t eternal!

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