A friend who is working on our church history was surprised today to learn that I kept a daily record of every day of the decade of the 1990s. Since I came to pastor the First Baptist Church of Kenner in September of 1990 and stayed for nearly 14 years, that means the 46 “wordless books” which I filled with my nightly journaling are a great repository of information on the church during those years. But under no circumstances would I let anyone see it. Not for years to come. I told him, “I called names. Some of that would be embarrassing to people.”

I told the church when I resigned two years ago about this decade-long journal and said, “Twenty-five years from now, anyone working on the church’s history may read it.” But not until.

I have kept my yearly calendars and promised my friend to go through them and make a few notes on the high points of each year. On Monday, I went through 6 years in an hour. And got an education.

It’s like fast-forwarding your life. You see what you left out of your ministry and what pops up too frequently. I noted, for example, the days I was sick. Back trouble here and flu there. Two or three times a year, several days at a time. But that was in the early years of the 1990s. No more.

Sometime in the mid-90s, I decided to go against the male pattern and find me a doctor. Men, they say, fear doctors and resist going for checkups. But in my mid-50s, I knew it was high time. My new doctor examined me thoroughly and prescribed a regimen of vitamins and minerals, as well as a baby aspirin a day, and pronounced, “I think we have saved you from a heart attack.” Then, I took it one step further.

I got serious about exercise. Instead of the occasional nighttime walk around my block, I stepped off a three mile route from home to the Mississippi River levee and down it and back. Three miles, 45 minutes. Every morning early. Then I bought some small weights and worked up a routine on the rug in front of the fireplace. I suppose we could call them home-made exercises, because I didn’t invite a professional trainer in. I didn’t buy anyone’s video. I just worked up some stretching/lifting/pushing to exercise the various parts of my body. It normally takes about 15 minutes, and often I do it both morning and night. The results were worthwhile.

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(Please invite every “first responder” you know–the medical/military/law enforcement/firefighting workers who served New Orleans during it’s first few weeks after the hurricane–to our Appreciation Event at the New Orleans Arena this Saturday, April 8. The arena is open from 10 to 4 and we’ll have lots of family events going on. First Reponders get in with their I.D.s as admission, and later in the day, we’ll draw for a new car. Our main difficulty is getting word to everyone.)

Fred Luter is back. This exciting pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, so devastated by six to eight feet of floodwater, has been living in Birmingham since Katrina and spending a lot of time in and out of airports and on the interstates. He served on Mayor Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission and has been preaching in major cities and conventions all over the country. These days, he preaches at 8 am to his congregation meeting temporarily at the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, then later in the morning to another group at one of Baton Rouge’s largest churches, and twice a month to his folks in Houston at the First Baptist Church there.

Sunday night, he told me, “We had 1500 here at FBC-NO this morning. And probably 600-700 in Baton Rouge. And about the same number in Houston twice a month.” For a dispersed congregation without a meeting place, they are making the most of a difficult situation. Fred is the moderator for our Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans, and we’re eager to have him attending our weekly pastors meetings.

Those pastors meetings–tell every pastor in our area you see–will continue at the FBC of LaPlace through April, then move to Oak Park Baptist Church in Algiers on May 3, meeting from 10 to noon, with lunch at 11:30.

Sunday night, April 2, the incredible choir and orchestra of the FBC of Jackson, Mississippi, brought an evening of inspiration at the FBC of New Orleans. The local choir joined the Jackson group, making a choir of several hundred. These friends had boarded buses Sunday after morning church and ridden three hours to get here. After the program, they rode back home. Most did not get home until after midnight, and went into work Monday morning sleepwalking. But how they blessed us. Just their presence was a-plenty, but the musical program was so stirring.

Among the participants was Professor Benjamin “Benjie” Harlan, one of God’s great personalities and a well-known composer of Christian music. Dr. Graham Smith, retired (I think) from the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board, did recitations from James Weldon Johnson’s “God’s Trombones,” sure to stir anyone’s heart. I handed him a cartoon in which someone is commenting that James Weldon Johnson showed up tonight and did his best Graham Smith imitation. Listening to Graham, I found myself hoping some young people were being awakened to the power of the human voice in announcing God’s truth. I can still remember the time this really hit me. I was a student in seminary, we’re talking the 1960s here, when Professor Wilbur Swartz stood in chapel and read from the Gospel of John, chapter 1. Until then, I had no idea that passage was as deeply moving as it became that day. Bible reading for me has never been the same. Graham Smith has the kind of power in his voice to awaken young believers.

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They’re making a big Hollywood movie in town these days, and disrupting our disrupted lives. They close lanes on the bridge over the river some days and other days, take over the ferry which runs from the foot of Canal Street to Algiers. Lots of big explosives and plenty of extras hired. The word is that this is a sci-fi movie starring Denzel Washington in which he has this “second sight,” hence the name Deja vu, which alerts him to the work of terrorists before it occurs so he can stop it. Oh, that it worked that way.

Every day we relive our Katrina story all over again, even while trying to move into the future.

A typical day’s headline stories will describe efforts to save our eroding wetlands, the deal-making over the towing of the thousands of flood-ruined cars in New Orleans, and Katrina-affected politics. Lots of politics. In Kenner, Saturday, voters put Mayor Phil Capitano in a run-off against former councilmember Ed Muniz, the mayor with 30% and Muniz with 33%. Retiring Police Chief Nick Congemi was an also-ran at 27%.

In New Orleans, each of the 23 candidates for April 22’s mayoral election is still trying to break out of the pack.

Columnist Stephanie Grace writes Sunday that originally Mayor Nagin was a shoo-in for reelection. Then Katrina gave him more challenges than he knew what to do about and scattered the electorate across America and suddenly he looked vulnerable. Campaign funders went looking for alternatives and honed in on Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Nature Institute’s CEO Ron Forman. What they did not count on was both men running. Meanwhile, she says, no one paid any attention to two lesser knowns, Rob Couhig and Virginia Boulet.

So, in the mayoral debates, while the front-runners were boring us with their platitudes, so afraid to slip up that they refrained from saying anything, Couhig and Boulet did something unusual: they told us what they thought. “They’ve done it by talking about policy, sharply questioning their opponents and, most of all, airing their personal frustrations.” Good for them. And in the long run, good for all of us. Maybe they will start a trend.

Saturday saw a big march across the Crescent City Connection, the double bridge over the river into Algiers and Gretna, led by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, a couple of Reverends always in search of a cause. They called this a reminder of the September 1 incident when Gretna police turned away New Orleanians fleeing the flooding of their city. Since they were walking, they decided to protest the April 22 election which, they say, strips evacuated citizens of their voting rights. The courts and respected leaders have pointed out that while this election may not be perfect, it’s fair and legal and the right thing to do. Those scattered throughout Louisiana will have branch election sites, and those outside have received invitations to vote absentee. Secretary of State Al Ater says Jackson and others want him to set up voting sites in Houston, Memphis, and Atlanta, but he accurately points out that the laws governing Louisiana do not necessary apply in those other states. If someone votes fraudulently, will the Tennessee cops arrest him for violating Louisiana law?

Citizen Bill Davis writes in a Sunday letter, “My constitutional rights will be violated if people who have lived elsewhere for eight months are allowed to vote in the upcoming elections.” He says, “The vast majority of the remaining evacuees will not be coming back anytime soon…. It is unfair for us to be governed by people elected by those who are no longer residents of our city.”

On another subject, Jarvis DeBerry writes in his op-ed column, “Skyrocketing cost of insurance could cripple recovery.” That’s been my thought all along, that regardless what our politicians say, if a homeowner cannot get insurance or can’t afford it, his rebuilding ends right there on the spot.

In Saturday’s paper, someone pointed out a new thought for me. With, say, 100,000 homes in New Orleans lying unoccupied and spoiled, who’s going to cut the grass in the yards? The growing season is well upon us, which in New Orleans means lawns will require mowing almost weekly. With tall grass comes all kinds of vermin. One more headache which we do not need.

I wrote here Saturday evening that the Final Four basketball playoffs were a welcome respite for our citizens. Well, hardly. We watched as Florida demolished upstart George Mason University in the late afternoon, and then had the privilege of watching UCLA hand LSU its head in the evening contest. Neither game was even close. Sunday morning in a 30 minute local news broadcast, not one word was uttered about the LSU loss. I suppose it hurts too bad. The LSU women are in their own Final Four, with their game Sunday night. Go, Lady Tigers.

Sunday morning at Oak Park Baptist Church in Algiers, a large team of volunteers from the First Baptist Church of Spartanburg, SC, was on hand. With special guest speaker (and member of Oak Park) Col. Patricia Prechter of the National Guard to speak of her experiences in the Superdome during the Katrina event, a large group of her friends and people from the community came, making it the largest crowd in that sanctuary since the hurricane scattered the congregation.

If one likes titles, Pat Prechter is to be envied. She is Colonel, Dean, Doctor, and a lot of other things. According to Lt. Col. Marie McGregor, she is the first and only “full bird colonel” in the Medical Detachment of the La. National Guard. Academic Dean Judith Miranti of Holy Cross College, where Prechter is Dean of the Nursing School, said, “I make no claims about Pat being a steel magnolia. But it is her faith that has made her service so special.”

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I’ve learned this week of three church mergers being discussed in our Baptist association. Only one am I at liberty to mention. The flooded-and-decimated First Baptist Church of Arabi has voted to “merge” with Metairie’s Celebration Church. This basically means their building site, soon to be bull-dozed and cleared off by St. Bernard Parish, will be deeded over to Celebration as will some of their financial assets. This will allow Celebration to begin an extension of their ministry there, on the other side of New Orleans.

Celebration Church is a Willow-Creek-model, I think it’s fair to say, with cell groups meeting during the week. Pastor Dennis Watson is their founding pastor, having come from the First Baptist Church of Chalmette over 15 years ago, so he’s familiar with the area of their new ministry. Celebration has grown to be one of our largest churches, second in the association only to Fred Luter’s Franklin Avenue Baptist Church. Last year, just a few days before Katrina vented her wrath on our area, Celebration merged with Crescent City Baptist Church in Metairie, a congregation that had fallen onto hard times. They began having services at both sites, and the future looked great. The hurricane did a lot of damage at both locations, but flooded the larger Airline Drive site, with millions of dollars in damage. Volunteers restored the “Crescent City” site on Transcontinental, and they have been meeting there ever since. Work continues at the Airline location. Ministry tents occupy most of the parking lot.

With one of the other two merger discussions, leaders are discussing and praying and getting excited about what this could mean. As one pastor said to me Thursday, “I know the Lord can use small churches, but if you won’t take this the wrong way, Joe…” I said, “Go ahead.” “We are cursed with too many tiny, struggling churches in this city. We need some stronger churches with more effective ministries.” I agree wholeheartedly.

I took some flack in this website months ago for saying this very thing. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not against small churches. I like to quote Francis Schaeffer: “There are no small churches and no big preachers.” He makes a great point. But it’s not entirely the case. A church is too small when it never has enough workers, never has enough money to do anything but keep its own building up, never sees beyond its front door. There are some great small churches and some that desperately need an infusion of members and vision and resources before they will become effective.

I am a product of a small, rural, wonderfully-effective church, the New Oak Grove Free Will Baptist Church of Nauvoo, Alabama. But it was the larger church in the city–Birmingham’s West End Baptist Church–with a full-time staff, exciting youth ministries, and visionary laymen that built on the earlier foundation and had the greater impact on my life.

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In Greek mythology, Elysian Fields was the final destination of good souls after death. The Fields were a land of song and sunshine where the air was sweet and cool. The good souls existed there in the flowery meadows for eternity.

In New Orleans, Elysian Fields is the name of one of the hundreds of boulevards, this one stretching from the Mississippi River, alongside the back of the French Quarter, all the way north to Lake Pontchartrain. A block from where it begins by the river sits the French Market. A couple of blocks north and one block west on Frenchman Street lies one of our favorite restaurants, the Praline Connection, where you can get a plate of crowder peas and turnip greens, fried chicken or meat loaf or breaded pork chops, then top it off with a slice of sweet potato pie with praline sauce, all for less than ten dollars. It’s as New Orleansy as they come.

A block or two further up Elysian Fields sits the Baptist Friendship House, where NAMB missionary Kay Bennett and her staff do an incredible job of ministering to troubled women and needy children of this section of the city. These days, while the neighborhood lies mostly vacant, the Friendship House is hosting volunteer church teams from Oklahoma. Gradually, the homes in the area show signs of returning to life. They have electricity, but the last I heard, no phone service.

As you get closer to Interstate 10, the signs of the floodwaters that followed Katrina are everywhere, the high water marks on the sides of houses and businesses, most still lying vacant. In the area around Interstate 610, and north to the lake, it’s a dead zone. The yard plants are dried and dead, businesses untouched, the houses still adorned by their National Guard insignia from the first days when searchers would check the homes for survivors and spray the results on the outsides or roofs.

The traffic lights are still out. It’s a gentleman’s game at the four-way stop signs with a dozen vehicles lined up behind you and that many staring at you from each direction. Elysian Fields is a wide street, with six lanes in places, and no one is choreographing the movements through these cross streets. You pull up, look around, wait, and go forward, hoping for the best.

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Tuesday, Dr. Roger Freeman came by to visit. This outstanding pastor of Clarksville, Tennessee’s First Baptist Church formerly shepherded the FBC of New Orleans, leaving in 1993. I have great memories of his kind spirit and gracious manner. While we were catching up on each other’s news, his wife Priscilla called on his cell phone. I asked to speak to her and said, “I want to tell you my Sarah story.” Sarah is their 16-year-old, but she was about 7 when this happened. I figured they might have forgotten the incident.

That day, little Sarah was feeling sad for a certain lady in the church whose husband had just died. “She’s all alone now,” she said. Then she brightened up and said, “But she’s not alone. Jesus is with her. He’s in all fifty states and foreign countries.”

Roger laughed and said, “I had forgotten that! It was worth the drive down here to hear that story about my daughter!” I made him promise to tell me other ‘Sarah stories’ as he thinks of them.

Over the years many of my preacher friends have given me stories from their children which I still tell. Like the one from William Carey College’s Larry Kennedy’s son Steve, of the time he attended his first big church wedding and watched as the groomsmen filled the front of the church and the maids entered. As the bride glided down the aisle, Steve leaned over and whispered, “Mother, does she already know which one of those men she’s going to marry or is she going to decide after she gets there?”

I tell the story of Knoxville’s Central Baptist Church-Bearden’s Larry Fields whose little son John was asked to be a ringbearer in a wedding. John was notoriously independent and unpredictable, so when he behaved beautifully and never complained once about the tuxedo he wore, mom and dad were baffled. What could the bride have done to get John’s cooperation? The riddle was solved at the reception when John stalked up to the new husband and wife and asked loudly, “Where’s my fire truck?”

I know stories from Sans Souci’s Paul Moore’s daughter Rachel, from Vallejo’s Bryan Harris’ three daughters and son, and an entire encyclopedia-ful from my own children and grandchildren.

Children are precious. Even when they’re grown, they’re still our children. If you doubt that, ask my mom. Her six children are ages 62, 64, 66, 68, 69, and 70. (I asked her once if having senior-adult children made her feel old. She said, “No. It’s not my problem.”)

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(Let me ask the help of everyone who reads this. Please invite any First Responder–those who helped New Orleans during and just after the hurricane–to our appreciation event scheduled for Saturday, April 8, at the New Orleans Arena from 10 to 4 pm. Call Cherry Blackwell at 504 451-9333 for more information. Last Saturday at Tall Timbers, I met two men who flew helicopters during those critical days in New Orleans, and neither had heard of this event. We want them all to know and to come.)

Sunday morning at Luling’s First Baptist Church, a deacon delivered a mini-sermon just before leading in prayer. He said, “We’re all excited about LSU getting into the Final Four.” A chorus of amen’s rose up. “But it bothers me that I am much more excited about my basketball team winning than I am about the Lord Jesus Christ loving me. And that makes me ashamed.”

I appreciated what he said, and later handed him the following note: “If the Lord loved us as infrequently as LSU gets into the Final Four (every 20 years or so) on those rare occasions when He did, we’d be plenty excited.”

The problem is it’s hard to stay excited about a constant. Inherit a million dollars and you are ecstatic for a few weeks. Eventually, you come down to earth. No one who has been a millionaire for years goes around in a state of euphoria. The most beautiful girl in town agrees to marry you, and you’re on cloud nine. But a year or ten years into the marriage, you’re back to normal. Let a young pastor get called to the biggest church in the state and he is overwhelmed by God’s goodness. A year later, he is overworked and overwrought with the expectations placed on him. Life has returned to normal. No one can live on a mountain of excitement.

Fortunately, the Lord has not asked euphoria or even excitement from us. Just faithfulness and steadfastness. Those who measure a worship service by its emotional highs are missing the mark. As the old preacher used to say, “It’s not how high you jump that impresses God but how straight you walk after you hit the ground.”

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Sunday afternoon on C-Span, NBC anchor Brian Williams told a crowd in Boston’s JFK Presidential Library, “There are many scars on America. Birmingham, Selma, 9-11, and the latest one–the city I’ve always considered the most interesting of all American cities–New Orleans, Louisiana.”

A sociologist at Houston’s Rice University conducted a study and found that 3 out of 4 Houstonians believe the 150,000 evacuees from Louisiana have put a great strain on the city and are responsible for a huge increase in the crime rate. I expect both of those are true. John Culberson, U.S. Congressman from Houston, was quoted in Sunday’s paper: “I think the percentage of people unhappy with the deadbeats from New Orleans would be larger but for the big hearts of Houstonians who want these folks to get back on their feet, as I do.”

I’m not sure we want to analyze Mr. Culberson’s statement too closely. We love you, we want you to do well, you’re a bunch of deadbeats.

Another Texas congressman, Jeb Hensarling, came to New Orleans recently with other House members invited by the Women of the Storm, in order to expose leaders to the real situation down here, as opposed to what they hear from other sources. Hensarling did not want to be confused with the facts, so he left a meeting of business and civic leaders before they could present their plans on the recovery of this area. In Congress he lambasted the citizens of this area as being lazy do-nothings who wait around for the federal government to solve all their problems. It was either Hensarling, or perhaps Senator Bob Bennett–want to be careful here and not target the wrong person–who slammed the local citizens for not carrying flood insurance even though they live beneath sea level.

A nationwide study has revealed that 67 percent of the citizens of New Orleans carried flood insurance, a figure higher than any other flood-prone coastal area in America, with the exception of the Coral Gables, Florida, community where the percentage is 68. The politician’s putdown was either slander or ignorance. Take your pick.

Local politics down to their usual standard? Last October, the head of a salvage company (K & L Auto Crushers of Tyler, TX) offered to the mayor of New Orleans that he would haul off all the abandoned & flooded vehicles littering the streets, and pay the city $100 per car. At the time, there were 50,000 cars on the streets, in driveways, and under the interstates. A good deal by anyone’s standards. You’re not going to believe what is happening.

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One of the most exciting aspects of post-Katrina ministry in our area will take place Saturday, April 8, at the New Orleans Arena when we honor the first-responders. (First responders: those military/law enforcement/firefighter/medical and other people who served this city during the weeks New Orleans was flooded and locked down.) The Baptists of Greater New Orleans & Louisiana will be heading up an all-day affair in the arena for every First-Responder-and-his/her-family we can locate. From 10 am to 4 pm that day, we will have food and games, giveaways, gift bags with Bibles and other goodies, counseling, massages, you name it. Churches are setting up booths manned by their members doing anything they wish, from face-painting the children to giving food, but mainly being a presence to say a hearty ‘thank you’ to these to whom we owe so much. And we’re giving away cars.

Cherry Blackwell is heading up the entire project. What a choice lady she is. Cherry and Ben are locals, Ben being a schoolteacher and part-time minister of music (FBC Norco, right now), and they are Mission Service Corps volunteers. Which is another way of saying they are missionaries responsible for raising their own support. The state convention believes in them so much that Ben and Cherry have been made state-wide directors of the MSC program. When we needed the right person to lead the First-Responders-Event, someone thought of Cherry and everyone instantly agreed. Tuesday afternoon, Cherry’s steering committee met in the conference room of Williams Boulevard Baptist Church in Kenner.

“We have a new car to give away,” she told the group. “Ronnie Lamarque is giving us one, and he has given me permission to use his name in urging other car dealers to give one, too.” The plan at the moment is to have a drawing at the April 8 event, along about 3:30 pm, and some First-Responder will drive home in a new car. If we have two or more cars, we’ll have more drawings earlier.

Anyone wishing to get in on this plan to honor our First-Responders (and all FRers who read this are invited!) may call Cherry at 504 451 9333. Your admission into the Arena that day is by showing your identification badge, whatever identifies you as law enforcement, military, firefighter, or medical emergency worker.

Another missing piece of the post-Katrina puzzle has been found.

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The state conference of the United Methodist Church has divided 38 churches in the New Orleans area into seven clusters, most with one or more disabled churches unable to hold services or open on a limited basis. The idea is for the Methodists in those areas to get together and do a self-study, have meetings and forums, then make the tough decisions on the future of their churches.

This will require new strategies, according to Bishop William Hutchinson, and that may require a fresh infusion of new pastors into the area. “We’re not declaring any church abandoned…(or) closed,” he said. What they’re trying to do, he says, is put those key decisions into the hands of the members.

This is a different approach from the Catholic churches in the area, where the Archbishop made the decisions and handed them down. Several churches with long traditions have been shuttered, the congregations merged with others, and a lot of people are unhappy about it. Someone wrote the newspaper the other day demanding that Archbishop Hughes tell people why he did what he did. I’m a Southern Baptist and not in on the doings of the Catholics, but I can answer that question. It’s economics. If you have no people living in the neighborhood, you can’t afford to keep up all those churches. And anyone who has driven this city knows there are no small Catholic churches here. All seem to be huge and elaborate. My guess is it costs a small fortune to keep them cleaned and staffed and in full operation.

This is also a different approach, some are saying, from the top-down executive type decision which usually characterizes the United Methodist Church. In this case, they’re really asking the members what they want to do.

Even with this reasonable, “bottom-up” approach by the United Methodists, a lot of members are feeling insecure right now, afraid their favorite church will be lost. Reverend Lekisha Reed of the Boynton UMC in Gretna said this week, “I’m picking up on the fear of the unknown. You don’t know what the future is going to look like.”

One resident said, “I’ve lost everything else. Don’t take my church away from me.” As palpable as his pain is, all that gentleman has to do is look around and he’ll find thousands of neighbors in the same boat with him.

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