I have no idea what he thought he was doing, but a local weather forecaster has already charted the path of Hurricane Ernesto as coming toward our city. I mean, it’s still in the Caribbean and not even a hurricane yet. Let’s not rush things. There will be time enough to panic.

Phone call from Seattle. Freddie and Elaine Arnold were about to step on board their ship for the cruise to Alaska. A dream vacation. He was thinking hurricane and what we would need to do in case of evacuation. I assured him we would do everything necessary, and that he should put all this out of his mind and enjoy the trip. Which is the whole idea, to get away from it all.

Some of our family members are flying out to New York City early Wednesday, taking a long Labor Day weekend, seeing some sights, Broadway shows, and such. This may turn out to be a perfectly timed evacuation.

I spoke Saturday night at Enon Baptist Church in the Washington Parish community of the same name. They showed videos of their community under seige from Katrina last year, then paid tribute to their people who worked chain saws and distributed food and water from the church and prepared meals for workers. They did not have the flooding much of our area experienced, but they came through a life-changing event with flying colors. Tonight, they too had Ernesto on their minds.

I told them about the fellow who was deathly afraid of getting on a plane, fearing it might have a bomb on board. Finally, he hired a statistician to calculate the odds of that happening. “One chance in a million,” the expert reported. “That’s great,” the fellow said, “but what are the chances of getting on a plane with two bombs?” The guy worked his calculator a few minutes and said, “The chances of that happening are something like one in a hundred million.” “That’s more like it,” the fellow said. Thereafter, any time he got on a plane, he took a bomb with him.

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I caught the first 2 hours of the “Just Give Me Jesus” revival at the New Orleans Arena Saturday morning. Perhaps 5,000 women and a few men made up the audience. Babbie Mason brought the crowd to its feet as she opened with “God Bless America.” Then, to my surprise, Anne Graham Lotz stepped out and began this one-day revival.

The reason that surprised me is that I was expecting the singers to be something of a warmup act for her. They would “entertain” for an hour or so while the crowd was assembling, after which Anne would appear. I found myself wondering if she was even in the building. I was so wrong.

“Lord, you are our Rock,” she prayed. “In our storms, our floods, our devastation. You are our Comfort in our pain. Our Wisdom when we don’t know what to do. You are our Lord.”

“How many are here from Texas?” she asked. Women across the arena waved and clapped. “How many from Alabama?” Some in front of us and a large contingent seated together near the front clapped and stood. “From Mississippi?” Ditto. “Louisiana–from outside New Orleans.” Another large group. “And from right here in New Orleans?” The biggest group.

“I want you to think of that woman who met Jesus at the well. John chapter 4. She had slept late that day. She was probably depressed. She was doing her chores later than normal. When she arrived at the well, Jesus was there. The Bible says Jesus HAD to go through Samaria. He had a divine appointment with this one woman who was troubled and depressed. He asked for a drink and she was shocked. He said, ‘If you knew who was speaking to you, you’d get your focus off secondary things.’ She did. That day she embraced the living Lord, and went into town and told everyone about Jesus.” Anne added, “Some of you know what it is to be depressed and troubled. To not feel like getting up and doing your chores. But I want you to know that the Lord Jesus Christ is here for you. He came for you, as though you were the only person who would be present today.”

“Today I’m going to be challenging you to go out and tell everyone we can have joy in New Orleans because of Jesus.”

The co-chairs of this event are Vicki Watson, wife of Pastor Dennis Watson at Metairie’s Celebration Church, and Lisa Wiley, wife of Bishop J.D.Wiley of New Orleans’ New Life Cathedral. Vicki told the group, “We’ve had a spirit of corruption and violence, of murder and wickedness. We’ve been called the big easy and the place where hell reigns. But we’ve been praying for God to transform this city into the place where Heaven reigns. Since Katrina’s devastation of a year ago, God’s people have been coming to this city, bringing hope, help, and healing. We have seen thousands come to faith in Christ.”

Lisa prayed, “A year ago, Katrina was stirring things up. Ever since, Lord, you have been stirring things up for good. Katrina lasted only so long, but you are forever. In spite of the tragedy, you are faithful and just.”

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The program for next Tuesday night’s “Katrina Anniversary Prayer Rally” at the First Baptist Church of New Orleans looks like this:

American Idol’s George Huff does pre-session music.

I lead the invocation.

Pastor David Crosby welcomes.

Praise and Worship: “In the Sanctuary”

Combine Choir Anthem: “We are United”

Recognition of Relief and Recovery Ministries: Frank Bailey, Victory Fellowship

Video Presentation

George Huff brings special music

Special prayer sessions led by

Dennis Watson, Celebration Church

Michael Green, Faith Church

Kathy Radke, God’s House Westbank Cathedral

Cornelius Tilton, Irish Channel Christian Fellowship

Praise and Worship: “Thank you, Lord”

Special Music: James Tealy

Inspirational Message: Fred Luter, Franklin Avenue Baptist Church

Combined Choir and Congregation: “Days of Elijah”

Benediction: J.D.Wiley, Life Center Cathedral

Post-service music: George Huff

Everything starts at 7 pm promptly. Karen Willoughly, managing editor of our Baptist Message, will be on hand to distribute 2,000 copies of the hot-off-the-press issue dedicated to this anniversary.

All the weeklies are featuring massive coverage of our part of the world on this anniversary. New Yorker magazine for August 21, 2006, devotes an amazing 18 pages to “Letter from New Orleans: The Lost Year: Behind the failure to rebuild” by Dan Baum. Anyone needing a recap on the local political snafus and roller-coasterisms over this last year would do well to turn to this article which focuses on the fate of the Lower Ninth Ward.

Pastor David Crosby gets a mention in the New Yorker article. “If ever a city needed a voice of brotherhood, it was New Orleans after Katrina. No one could find the right words, including the city’s powerful clergymen. When I visited the First Baptist Church on Canal Boulevard, which has about a thousand congregants, mostly white, its blue-eyed and flinty pastor, the Reverend David Crosby, told me, ‘There is nothing left in the Lower NInth Ward but dirt! A woman who has a house down there, what’s she got? A piece of dirt worth two or three thousand dollars.”

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“Reminding the Lord” is how Isaiah 62:6-7 sees prayer. The Hebrew word there, “mazkir,” was the title of a recording secretary on the official staff of various Old Testament kings. He took notes on what the king did and said and promised. Later, when requested, he consulted his notes and reminded the king of past dealings, treaties, promises, that sort of thing.

It’s a great insight on how to pray: remind the Lord.

The Lord Jesus said, “Your Father knows what things you need before you ask Him.” (Matthew 6:8) Our task is to remind Him. Throughout the Bible–particularly the Old Testament–perhaps half the prayerful entreaties consisted of telling the Lord things He had done, said, seen, promised. In Acts 4, when Peter and John were threatened against preaching in Jesus’ name, they reported this to the church. Everyone dropped to their knees and began praying. “Lord, you made the heavens and the earth.” A reminder. “Lord, you said the heathen would rage and oppose your Anointed One, the Christ.” Quoting Psalm 2; reminding Him. “Now Lord, behold their threatenings.” Reminding Him of their predicament. “Stretch forth thine hand and let us speak with boldness.” Boom. The power of God fell.

Somewhere along the way I have heard people criticize church prayers for the way the minister spends half the time telling the Lord what He has done and reminding Him of what the people have experienced, before finally addressing their needs. The critic needs to read his Bible. This is the biblical way to pray.

Try it sometime. Congregations will appreciate hearing the pastor build a historical context for the requests he is making in his Sunday prayers. After all–and this might come as a surprise to some–that Sunday prayer is not just a prayer. It is a teaching moment. You are showing your people how to pray.

That’s how we learn, you know, by hearing others. If you question that, notice all the poor prayers uttered every Lord’s Day in churches across this land. Listen to the sameness, the trite cliches, the vain repetitions. They learned those lines from someone.

How many times I have heard someone pray before the offering: “Help us to give for the betterment of Thy Kingdom.” I want to scream, “How in the sam hill are you going to BETTER the Kingdom of God?” And don’t you love the way we pray before the offering telling the Lord to use these gifts wisely!

So why do we pray that way? The pray-er heard it somewhere and thought it sounded spiritual and added it to his prayers.

God, deliver us from dumb prayers.

No wonder the Apostle Paul said, “We do not know how to pray as we should.” (Romans 8:26) Thankfully, the gracious Father ignores our mindlessness and accepts our sincerity. Perhaps like cutting the rotten off an apple and eating the good part.

Wednesday, some 40 or 45 gathered at Good Shepherd Spanish Baptist Church at 10 a.m. We emphasized the Anne Graham Lotz “Just Give Me Jesus” event Saturday in the N.O. Arena. 10 am to 6 pm. No charge; an offering taken; men and boys are just as welcome as women and girls.

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Patti Geltman of Wayne, Pennsylvania, wrote this to our editor Tuesday: “Two weeks ago, I visited New Orleans. I could not imagine the condition until my sister gave me the tour of the city from levee breach to levee breach to levee breach. My heart broke as I saw the massive devastation of all the neighborhoods and thought of the displaced families who call New Orleans home. Yesterday, I felt guilty after visiting the new public middle school that my child will attend this year…. Why not rebuild New Orleans as the model city for the 21st century? I hope that the nation and our government will stand behind New Orleans as it struggles to rebuild the lives of those who lost so much.”

Ms. Geltman, I’m assuming no one will answer your good letter, so I will. There will be no “model city for the 21st century” built here for the simple reason that it takes strong, courageous leadership to make that kind of thing happen. We have non-leaders in our city government who want to occupy the office and to be treated as celebrities. We do not have leaders. A non-leader takes a poll to see what will make people happy, then rushes to the front of their parade and declares himself their champion. A leader sees what must be done for the good of everyone in the long run and stands courageously, alone if necessary, to get that done.

To turn even one neighborhood into a modern, well-planned, orderly site would require tough decisions by the mayor’s office and the city council as well as the leaders of that neighborhood. After all, not everyone is going to like the plans. People would holler to high heaven. “You’re violating my rights. That was my home you are demolishing.” Or taking by eminent domain. Whatever.

But not to worry. It’s not going to happen.

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Tuesday we (the association) sold some unused church property to a bank that is wanting to expand. Freddie Arnold and I signed the papers and made BAGNO a little money which will be re-invested in more churches.

At 11:30 a couple of hundred pastors of all denominations met for lunch at Celebration on Transcontinental to meet and hear Josh McDowell. We also heard from Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum, and enjoyed some terrific around-the-table fellowship. But the star of the morning was the crawfish etoufee the ladies of the church served. Definitely not your typical cold ham and peas.

Gene Mills gave us two memorable quotes. “Governor Earl Long used to say that when he died he wanted to be buried in St. Bernard Parish so he could continue to be active in politics.”

“People are more interested in studying the powerful to learn how to dominate the world than studying the meek to learn how to inherit the earth.”

Gene heads up a coalition of pastors known as PRC Compassion which has poured hundreds of manhours and untold thousands of dollars of resources into this area. His Family Forum monitors and advises the state legislature on issues pertaining to the family. Their website is www.lafamilyforum.org.

Host pastor Dennis Watson said, “I have two things to put before you. This Saturday at the New Orleans Arena, Anne Graham Lotz brings her ‘Just Give Me Jesus’ crusade to town. It’s for men and boys too, not just the ladies.”

“Second, next Tuesday night, August 29, a city-wide prayer rally will be held at the First Baptist Church of New Orleans at 7 pm. We’ve got Fred Luter speaking and George Huff singing, and a lot of you leading in prayer times. Frankly, we’re trying to get President Bush and Governor Blanco, too.”

Dennis spied FBC pastor David Crosby and said, “David, want to add anything?” “Yes! Come early to get a good seat. We’re looking for a houseful!”

Dennis looked around the room and said, “The greatest miracle I’ve seen since Katrina is the coming together of our pastors. Someone said unity is not a result of revival but a precursor to revival.”

Josh McDowell has been speaking to youth groups for 46 years and may well have addressed more than any person on the planet. He had something to say to us today about the children in our homes and churches.

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Spike Lee premiered his new HBO movie at the New Orleans Arena Wednesday night. They gave away thousands of tickets for locals to see “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” which is scheduled to be shown on the cable movie channel Monday and Tuesday. It’s four hours long, so they’re airing two hours nightly. I haven’t heard anyone who’s planning to watch.

Most of us around here are like the young teenage girl in Manhattan who said she almost never watches television anymore, just the food channel, because it’s the only place where she can be sure of not seeing a replay of the collapse of the Twin Towers in which her father died. The pain is still palpable.

According to the paper, reactions to the premiere were mixed. Some say movie-maker Lee focused only on his race and neglected whites who also lost homes, businesses, and neighborhoods. Some say he villified the whites in authority and gave the blacks in high places a free pass. Others say this was not the case at all. In one sense, so long as he is putting the New Orleans story out there, keeping our situation before the public, anything is better than nothing.

They arrested two National Guardsmen this week. Brought in last June to help patrol the streets of the city after a recent upsurge in lawlessness, the Guard has succeeded in putting a huge dent in the crime wave. Sergeant Caleb Wells and Specialist Junious Buchanan were charged with taking money from the wallets of people they stopped for traffic violations. A Sunday columnist writes that the only military group not charged with malfeasance in any way over the past year has been the Coast Guard.

Something I don’t understand (okay, one of many such things). The mayor and governor are working with federal officials to line up shelters for as many as 250,000 citizens in the case of another major hurricane. That number would probably have been appropriate a year ago, but since the population down here has dwindled so severely, why do they think we need that many spaces now? As far as I can tell, the poorest and the neediest of our citizens did not return. In case of another hurricane taking aim at this city, my own feeling is very few would need the emergency transportation and shelters being arranged. In fact, one of the main hurricane-preparedness-tip being broadcast is: For the first seven days of an evacuation, you should be able to take care of yourself.

A controversy rages among small businesses here regarding FEMA contracts for the trailers. This emergency agency has signed contracts for some $6 billion to place trailers in our part of the world, with a certain percentage of those contracts required to go to local businesses. For reasons not clear, FEMA decided that a huge company with offices in California and Texas qualified as a local business and assigned it a large slice of the pie. The company, called PRI/DJI, is licensed in this area and has done business in the state, said the FEMA people, and that qualifies it as a local company.

A government watchdog outfit called “CorpWatch” has complained about “disaster profiteering on the American Gulf Coast.” One key finding is that local companies are being overlooked when it comes to handing out these fat contracts.

Remember the old saw that goes: “Where there’s a will, there’s a relative”? In our case, where there is a government contract, look for a profiteer.

The Kenner City Council has ruled that all new homes or all old ones with more than 50 percent damage that are being rebuilt will have to be 3 feet above the middle of the street in front. Kenner is the highest ground in metro New Orleans and took only isolated flooding after Katrina, but one can’t be too careful, I suppose.

I was going to report here what Mayor C. Ray Nagin said about the role race played in the government’s slow response to the Katrina event, but I’m preaching today and need to keep my religion. You’ll have to read about it somewhere else. I find myself with less and less patience with this man.

Lakeview Baptist Church, in the neighborhood of the same name and just a few blocks north of Interstate 610 on Canal Boulevard, is meeting in their renovated fellowship hall. We had 25 in attendance this morning at 10:30, all of them home folks according to longtime staffer Harry Cowan. I preached on “Regardless.” (Scroll to the bottom of this article for my notes.)

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Periodically, Pastor David Crosby of New Orleans’ First Baptist Church e-mails his take on the local situation to his church members and friends across the country. His update for Friday was so poignant, the metaphor so creative and right, and his analysis so on-target, I want to share it with a wider audience.

“A View from Sea Level”

“My home is near the mammoth Lake Pontchartrain. I walked over the levee this morning and enjoyed a stroll along the shore. Schools of fish often announce their presence by rushing to the surface when predatory redfish circle below.”

“This morning what got my attention was a lone pelican diving again and again into the same water. I climbed the small pile of rock near the shore and stood up for a good look. The water was boiling with schools of small fish. Apparently, the speckled trout and redfish were feasting on the slow ones. Sometimes the small fries would launch out of the water completely in their efforts to avoid being eaten.”

“Unfortunately for the prey, this pelican had discovered their distress and managed to gorge himself before moving on.”

“I thought about the plight of those small fish. They were being attacked from below and above. They found no safe haven.”

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Someone e-mailed me Wednesday that they had seen my letter to the editor in the July 24 edition of Newsweek. I had missed it and had to comb through piles of papers and books around here before locating that issue. It’s probably worth sharing with you in order to make a point.

The magazine had named recipients of their “giving back awards,” the people who make America great. It was a fascinating selection of the great and the unknown who have gone to unusual lengths to do good. Elsewhere in the issue they had published a list of organizations that gave the most money to disaster relief in our part of the world following Katrina. To my surprise, Southern Baptists–to our way of thinking, the biggest of all givers from the religious world–did not even make the list. I studied it and figured out why.

“Thanks for a great issue: wonderful concept, terrific selections, excellent variety in the choices. We especially appreciate the New Orleans flavor in the choices, including nurse Ruby Jones (who stayed with her patients at a New Orleans hospital), anchor Soledad O’Brien (who came to New Orleans when everyone else was headed out), and preacher Rick Warren (who replaced the libraries of hundreds of our pastors who lost theirs). The simple fact is, I could give you a hundred other New Orleans heroes in a half hour, people who are champions in every sense of the word. Even as you left Southern Baptists out of the list of ‘Big Names in Katrina Relief’ (mainly because the Southern Baptist Convention’s gifts came from so many scattered sources and not through one umbrella agency), it doesn’t really matter; we just rejoice that so much good is being done by so many.”

Well, two points actually.

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“It’s one thing to announce something. We’re meeting each Wednesday at 10 am at Good Shepherd Church. That’s an announcement. But to promote an event is to sell it. Do a little arm-twisting, maybe. Motivate people to want to come. August 29 is our “Katrina One-Year Anniversary Prayer Rally” at FBC-NO. Here are the reasons you need to be there. That is promotion.”

We urged the pastors to PROMOTE this prayer and praise rally. The latest e-mail from Pastor David Crosby shows in the order of service that Anne Graham Lotz and Fred Luter will be the two featured speakers, that a number of our ministers from various denominations will lead prayer times, that the combined choir from several churches will sing, and that American Idol runner-up George Huff will be singing.

Events of all kinds–from concerts to parties to worship services–will be held all over the metropolitan area that Tuesday. We invite everyone who reads this blog to join us that evening at First Baptist New Orleans for the 7 pm service.

Fifty pastors, leaders, and guests attended the weekly pastors’ meeting at Good Shepherd Wednesday morning. I always leave amazed, reflecting on how different every meeting is, as unique as your children, and what a blessing each one has been. We begin with group prayer times, lifting one another to the Father. Honestly, that may be the best thing that happens all day. And we end with extended fellowship around the lunch tables. Good Shepherd’s fellowship hall is taxed to the limit as we crowd in and gorge ourselves on this authentic Hispanic food.

“Last week’s menu was Honduran,” said Dona Rodriguez, the pastor’s wife. “Today, this is Mexican.” I smiled and said, “You know how we are around here–if it’s Hispanic, it’s all Mexican to us!” She laughed, “I know.” Large tacos, three to a plate, unlike anything Taco Bell ever dreamed of, adorned each plate today. And for dessert, a bowl of fresh fruit with ice cream and chocolate syrup on top. I’m caught up eating for the next 48 hours.

“A man came in to our church on crutches,” Travis Scruggs said. “He was with the New Orleans Police Department and a retired Marine. During the rescue operation following the storm, he had fallen off a roof and broken his leg. Now, he needed help in gutting out his house. At the time, he was living on board the ship docked down at Chalmette. We took care of his house. Now, we’re ready to start rebuilding houses. We can’t help everyone–this is a big job–so we’re trying to be selective. And I thought of him.

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