Today, Friday, the city of New Orleans celebrated two openings. The Morial Convention Center, infamous as a place of suffering of stranded citizens following Katrina’s floodings, has been repaired and is open for business. Then, Harrah’s Casino, the city’s only land-based gambling hall, sitting at the foot of Canal Street a block from the river, welcomed back nearly all its 2500 employees as it threw open its doors. The front page article in today’s Times-Picayune celebrated the “miracle” of Harrah’s contacting almost all its workers and returning them to work for the same wages as before, and this without the aid of a single FEMA trailer.

Reading of those 2500 employees, I have vivid memories of the flurry of promotion and the fury of controversy in the early 1990s over allowing casinos in New Orleans. The gambling industry promised and bumper stickers everywhere proclaimed, “25,000 new jobs!” Speak out against the casino–as many of us did–and you were accused of not wanting to help poor people out of their poverty. To this day, there are not 25,000 gambling-related jobs in the entire state. Unless you add the counselors and bankruptcy lawyers helping people deal with the consequences of their gambling.

The mayor of Kenner is in trouble. In the days following Katrina, Phil Capitano signed several large contracts for millions of dollars, mostly for debris cleanup. When city council members tried to find out the details, they were not allowed to see them. Now the U.S. attorney and a federal grand jury are involved, with both the mayor and the council members receiving subpoenas. This comes just a few weeks before the election, and yes, the mayor is up for re-election. His arch-rival, retiring police chief Nick Congemi, is running for his honor’s seat.

The special called session of the state legislature ended its meetings today. We’ve not heard of today’s doings, but yesterday they voted to consolidate our numerous fragmented and disjointed levee boards into two, one for the west bank of the Mississippi and one for the east. Governor Blanco had pushed for one board composed only of professionals, most of whom she would appoint, but settled for the two boards.

What the governor apparently did not get is the down-sizing of New Orleans city government. For decades, we have had too many judges, too many courts, seven tax assessors, and two sheriffs. With one-third the population as before, it’s high time to take an axe to this cancerous growth. Politics were on display in Baton Rouge in all their selfish ugliness, and when the legislature splintered into factions, the issue died. Some say it will be back in the next regular term. We can hope.

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Nearly 60 of us met at the First Baptist Church of LaPlace Wednesday morning, getting underway at 9:15 and ending at 11:30 for a lunch of po-boys, soft drinks, and dessert, furnished by the church. As usual, at 10:30, the 8 or 10 women in attendance excused themselves to meet with Linda Williams, wife of Joe, our FBI chaplain and NAMB counselor-in-residence. It was a full morning.

David Lema reported that the Portuguese-speaking mission meeting at Emmanuel Spanish Church had 65 in attendance Sunday. “They had six saved last week,” he beamed.

Jose Mathews came in on a crutch, followed by his wife Othello. This pastor of Discipleship Church in defunct East New Orleans is living in a trailer near Baton Rouge. He told the group of the warm hospitality of the sponsoring Oklahoma church, of returning from that visit only to experience a stroke, followed by the death of his mother. He’s in therapy three times a week, but when today’s session was canceled, they decided to drive down to see everyone. He received a royal welcome.

Warren Jones reported on the recovery of New Salem Church in the 9th Ward and the new ministry they are committed to having in that neighborhood.

Rick Lopez reported that Lake Forest Church on Morrison Avenue in East N.O. has officially gone out of business and has deeded their assets to the association. “We’ve had teams of workers in fixing up the building,” he said, “and it looks great. The Franklin Graham organization is going to use it when we’re finished.” I’m always eager that everyone know the association is not Freddie Arnold and me, so when Rick finished, I asked everyone, “Who exactly is this association he’s speaking of?” They called out in chorus, “Us!” Exactly right. A Baptist association is composed of all the Southern Baptist churches in that area, with the executive committee being the pastor and one elected layman from each church.

Charlie Dale reported to the group on the progress of Grace Church, saying how excited he is to be back.

Kevin Lee reported on the rebuilding of Edgewater Church, of the tent that was donated to them, and of their services Sunday in the frigid temperatures. “We were all so glad to be there,” he said, “no one noticed the cold. I told Charlie Ray you could set fire to the tent and no one would move.”

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Since the hurricane, several people have offered to help our pastors and churches rebuild their libraries. The folks at Saddleback Church in California even went so far as to say if we would give them the names and contact information of pastors who lost their libraries, they would make arrangements for a shipment of books to each one. That was easily done on my part, and greatly appreciated by our ministers. The last offer we received, however, stood out from the others. This lady was determined.

“Some men from our church went down to New Orleans and came back telling us about your situation. When I told them I want to help rebuild the church libraries, they said that is low priority right now.” She was clearly offended, believing as all good librarians do, that reading is not only next to cleanliness and godliness, but probably a means to both. We e-mailed back and forth a few times, with me explaining that rebuilding the churches and gathering the dispersed congregations actually do take a higher priority. Finally I said, “Bring your husband down and see for yourself.” Today they did.

She and her husband are spending tonight in our Rachel Sims Mission Center in Uptown New Orleans, then attending our Wednesday pastors’ meeting at the First Baptist Church of LaPlace. I suggested she might want to talk to the pastors about their needs.

I picked the two of them up at their hotel Tuesday morning and gave them the grand tour. Lakeview, Gentilly, out to the associational office on the lakefront, Franklin Avenue, East New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish, and the Ninth Ward. All morning long, the sights seemed to get worse and worse. Soon, they got so caught up in gawking at the devastation–and this nearly 6 months after the hurricane–that the husband would forget to take pictures. They got out of the car and walked around inside Edgewater, Gentilly, and Arabi churches. “What’s so amazing,” he said, “is that it is mile after mile of this same misery.”

Clearly, the tour was sapping their spirits and overwhelming their comprehension. That’s why I was delighted to find Warren Jones standing in front of New Salem Baptist Church in the Upper 9th Ward. He smiled that grin that lights up entire neighborhoods and waved me down. We circled the block and parked and walked over to where he was conversing on the street corner with two men and a woman.

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Sunday morning, I drove 75 miles and attended the first post-Katrina worship services of Edgewater Baptist Church in New Orleans, the combined church services in Chalmette at the high school, and Poydras Baptist Church further downriver. The weatherman called this the coldest day of our winter, but the sun was bright and it was a wonderful day for the Lord’s people.

“Kevin preached from Revelation 21,” said Cheryl Ray. “About the hope God’s people have. That’s in line with the sign we’ve put in front of Edgewater, that this is a place of hope for people right now.” I had run by the church site on Paris Avenue at least a half hour before they began services. Already a dozen people were working around the tent in the front yard, testing the sound system, straightening chairs, getting ready for worship. “We ended up with nearly 60 present,” Cheryl said in the afternoon. Did they freeze? “It was cold. We closed two sides of the tent, but left part of it open so we’d get some sun.”

“One of our members drove in from Mobile. We had some seminary students who had stayed over from Saturday classes to go to church with us. And several people in the neighborhood, working on their homes, came over and worshiped with us. Other than that, we had about 50 Edgewater people. Everyone was so glad to be there. People want to be together.”

This must have been my tenth “first service since Katrina” and she is so right.

New pastor Kevin Lee has arrived from Denver, where he was on the staff of Riverside Baptist Church. “I’ve found a place to live in Metairie,” he said. Brave, courageous man. In November, I met Pastor Le Ngoc Thuong who had just moved from California to serve the Vietnamese Baptist Church in Gretna, and called him the bravest man in town. However, Pastor Le has a healthy church building and an intact congregation. Kevin Lee has a gutted church, a devastated neighborhood, and a dispersed congregation. Brave indeed. I prayed with him the promise God gave me two years ago after I left the pastorate to become director of missions for the Baptist churches of the New Orleans area: “Faithful is he who called you, and he will bring it to pass.” (I Thessalonians 5:24) We’re going to need a lot of courageous leaders to get through the days before us.

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Searching for the Laughter. I spoke Friday evening to the First Baptist Church of Moss Point, Mississippi. Many of their people suffered extensive damage from Katrina, the entire area is still digging out and rebuilding, and Pastor Michael Perry felt his people needed some laughter. He invited me to bring my easel and markers and do some caricatures and tell some of my funny stories. I was glad for a break from our usual routine over here.

The traffic out of New Orleans on a late Friday afternoon used to be a nightmare, particularly heading east toward Slidell, so not knowing what to expect, I left early. With almost no one living in East New Orleans, the traffic was alarmingly light. I arrived at Gulfport ahead of schedule and decided to take a 30 minute break and throw a little business to the Krispy Kreme folks. I ordered two glazed and a small coffee and bought the latest edition of the “Sun-Herald.” The contrast between what these folks on the Mississippi Gulf Coast are going through, recovering from the storm, and what New Orleanians are experiencing was stark in some ways, the same in others.

Three hundred homes on the Gulf Coast will have to be checked out for their historical value before owners will be allowed to rebuild. The Mississippi legislature has approved a bill which will lend rebuilding homeowners up to $25,000 at zero-interest for 20 years. Some coastal towns are discussing elevations and stronger building codes as their communities come back. Meridian is trying to find trailers to house its evacuees. Mardi Gras parades will be held as usual on the coast. Oxford was burying legendary football coach Johnny Vaught, 96, who had assured former player and now pastor, Gerald Morgan of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, “I’m ready. I know Jesus Christ has forgiven me for my sins.” The news from tiny Pass Christian, location of the state Baptist conference center and wiped out by Katrina, read: “Today is the last day for ‘Right of Entry’ forms to be turned in.” Fellow writes in to “Sound Off,” that he returned to his slab–the only thing left of his home–and found that the American flag he had erected had been stolen.

I said to the Moss Point folks after dinner, “Let me tell you what happened today at our associational offices.”

I arrived this morning to find Baptist volunteers from Arkansas and Kansas rebuilding the sidewalks in front of our property. The city had had to take out our big tree and the walk to repair a busted water main not long after the hurricane, and it’s been a mess. Under Freddie Arnold’s direction, the men were pouring new sidewalks. I went over and introduced myself to them, expecting the usual friendliness and bonhomie. Instead, they were quiet and intent on their jobs. Later, we ordered po-boys for lunch and the men sat around the table in our break area, had prayer, and dived in. I joined them and we swapped names and I tried to get a little conversation going. No luck. Finally, it occurred to me what was going on. They were still in Katrina shock. The devastation throughout our city had stunned their minds, sapped their strength, and depressed their spirits. We live with it every day, but they were still adjusting. So, I decided to try something.

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One. Here’s what a pastor told me Wednesday. He leads a church–or led it, to be exact–which was completely erased off the map by Katrina. He’s back in the neighborhood now and, without a church building of any kind, gathering 60 people for worship on Sundays in what he calls a porch and someone else said is a shed. Before the hurricane, his little church did good to run 25. “Half of the sixty we’re running now are Catholics,” he said. Two things make that remarkable. “They used to ridicule us,” he said, “that we were some kind of sect or cult. Now we’re the only church down there.” And the other thing. “We’ve been told the Catholic diocese had only 14 million dollars insurance on all their buildings in the whole area. With so many church buildings destroyed, they don’t have the money to bring them all back, so they’re closing down the churches in the outlying areas. And you know that good Catholics have to go to church each week, and they are taught if you can’t get to a Catholic church, go to another one.” He smiled and said, “So, they’re coming to our Baptist church.” He says he grew up in that same remote area decades ago, himself a Catholic and persecuting the Baptists.

(Do I need to say again that we’re not anti-Catholic. I know many dear brothers and sisters in Christ who are Catholic. I’m just reporting how things are changing around here, sometimes for the better, sometimes the worse.)

(An inserted note: 24 hours after posting this article, the Friday, Feb 10, Times-Picayune announced in a front-page article that the New Orleans Catholic Archdiocese is indefinitely shuttering 30 local churches, out of a total of 142 in the area. They are closing many schools and completely shutting down seven church parishes. This is due to the tremendous damage to the buildings, the loss of hundreds of thousands of local citizens, and the staggering $84 million in uninsured losses the churches incurred.)

Two. Thursday, I went to see for myself the FEMA base camp on the West Bank where we are now boarding hundreds of volunteers from all over, people who come to help us gut out and rebuild houses and churches. Terry Henderson directs the disaster relief work for Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board. He and several volunteers sit at computers in a house adjoining Calvary Baptist Church in Algiers answering e-mails and taking phone calls from churches interested in coming to help, getting and giving information.

“There are two of these camps,” Terry said. “One in St. Bernard Parish and this one. Each tent contains several hundred cots.” The one we stuck our head into had perhaps a dozen men sleeping across a darkened area; this was two-thirty in the afternoon. A large tent nearby served as the feeding station. “They get three meals a day here,” Terry said. “The workers will pack a lunch for a volunteer to take to his job site. It’s actually pretty good food.” Down the path was a row of large pods. “Shower units,” he said. And on what was obviously a playing field, tent after tent in a row, one of them designated “Women.” This base camp easily accommodates two thousand people.

“No one under 18 is allowed to stay in a FEMA camp,” Terry said. “The church groups with kids have to try to get into one of our mission centers or take over a church fellowship hall somewhere.” (To arrange for that, call Aaron Arledge 504-235-6462.)

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“Joe, I might be late for the pastors meeting Wednesday morning,” the e-mail note said. The writer, one of our displaced pastors, explained about his wife’s surgery and the death in his family. His job is in jeopardy and he still doesn’t have direction on what to do with his flooded church, which has been gutted by teams of volunteers and needs to be restored internally, but what’s the point if no one lives in the neighborhood.

Now–not knowing any more about him than this–would you say there’s a brother who needs your prayers?

Last August, one of our pastors evacuated the area ahead of the storm and found shelter in his home state, only to see both his daughters in car accidents and his father come down with a serious disease and die a few weeks later. Internal stresses with his congregation led him to resign and take a temporary position in another church.

One pastor who lost both his home and his church had a stroke and while he was in the hospital recovering, his mother died.

Want me to go on? I could. I can tell you of another dozen New Orleans ministers who have come through the storm and its devastation only to turn around and find more trials coming, one after another, each one worst than the one before.

We keep asking for prayer for our ministers down here. Only the Lord knows what pressures each one is enduring and only He has the resources and strength to get us through this.

I’ve been camping out in Psalm 84 lately. I was first attracted to that short passage several years ago when a college-ministry committee I was chairing met in a classroom at the old First Baptist Church of New Orleans on St. Charles Avenue. Someone had gone to the trouble of cutting out large letters and stringing on the walls around the room verse 11 of that psalm: “The Lord God is a Sun and a Shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” I sat there transfixed, drinking that in, thinking, “What a great verse. What a wonderful praise, what an incredible promise.”

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(Twice in North Carolina on Sunday, January 29, I told my tarheel friends some discoveries we are making post-Katrina. I keep tweaking that message, and today–February 5–I’m sharing it with the folks at the First Baptist Church of Luling, on the west bank from New Orleans, and this week with the directors of missions at the Texas Baptist evangelism conference at the FBC of Euless.)

“How blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee; in whose heart are the highways to Zion! Passing through the valley of Baca (weeping), they make it a spring… They go from strength to strength.” (Psalm 84:5-7)

1. Everyone down here was affected by the hurricane.

At first, we thought you had to have at least some building damage to be among the suffering. Of course, hundreds of thousands lost their homes due to the flooding that followed the hurricane, but another hundred thousand or more in the western half of the metro area had typical storm damage caused by wind and rain. What we’re finding out, nearly six months post-K, is that every single person down here was affected.

Every church lost some members, every church had members who suffered, every person has friends who were hurt. Every business suffered and many thousands remain shuttered. And in the rare case of a citizen who came through unscathed and knows no one who was hurt, whose business is prospering and whose church is normal, they still see the devastation of New Orleans every time they drive that way and they hear of it continuously. It’s all the news there is in the Times-Picayune and on the radio talk shows. Everyone is affected. It follows therefore that…

2. Everyone is sick and tired of the subject.

On the NBC Nightly News the other evening, Brian Williams told of some critical letters his network is receiving because of the on-going coverage of the rebuilding of New Orleans. “Enough with New Orleans already” and “Give it a rest” were typical. He explained that since millions were displaced by the two hurricanes, the coastline of the USA was rearranged, a major city was devastated, with hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed, and billions of government money being spent to reclaim the area, this was a major story which they intended to cover to the completion, and how people feel about it is beside the point. I wrote him an email that evening thanking him and said, “We surely understand the people who are sick and tired of the subject. We are, too. We’re ready for it to go away. We wake up every morning wishing it had all been a bad dream. But there it is.” The result is a witch’s brew of depression, sadness, the blues, fatigue, and who knows what all else, all of it poured upon this entire population. No one is unscathed, everyone has been affected, we’re all weary.

When Emeril Lagasse pleaded stress as his excuse for saying some negative things about New Orleans, columnist Chris Rose answered, “Hey, this just in: we’re all stressed out.”

A friend said, “Out where I live we have a saying: ‘Too blessed to be stressed.'” I respond, “We’re blessed also. But is it possible to be blessed and stressed at the same time?”

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Severe storms tore through this part of the world early Thursday morning. The headline in Friday’s paper read, “Tornadoes knock down what hurricane didn’t.” I confess that I’m not much of a Christian because, as the storm raged outside, I lay in bed feeling snug, thinking that my house is strong and the roof is new. Only later did it occur to me that thousands are living in flimsy, FEMA trailers. Some took a lot of damage. A friend arriving at our airport Thursday morning said it’s the first flight he’s ever had where people screamed. “The bottom would drop out and the plane would fall. It was really scary.”

Local celebrity Emeril Lagasse has been in the news, slamming his adopted hometown. I must have missed it, but according to columnist Chris Rose, Emeril was being interviewed by New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams. He told her, “The mayor’s a clunk. The governor is also a clunk. They don’t know (blank-blank) from a hole in the ground. All my three restaurants got hit. I’ve reopened Emeril’s, but only a few tourists come. There’s no tourists. No visitors. No money. No future. No people. It’s lost. It’ll never come back.”

Emeril was already under fire from a lot of local citizens for his absenteeism in the weeks and months following Katrina. His people said he had a heavy schedule of appearances that had been booked in advance. And now this. Chris Rose writes, “Nobody is asking Emeril or our politicians…to be civic-boosting automatons. No need to be in denial about business prospects here. No need to say what you don’t believe.” But how about a little common sense, he asks. “To tell the country’s most famous gossip columnist that New Orleans is dead is not wise. Particularly if you own three restaurants here.”

In his defense, Emeril said he was stressed out when he said that. Rose writes, “Well, this just in: We’re all stressed out. Particularly those of us who have been here and not spending time in New York City or touring for our book.”

I told some friends Friday that much of my stress is probably self-induced. I wake up in the morning, overwhelmed by a city that is almost empty and the political land-scape in disarray, the news all discouraging, and wonder what in the world I can do to make a difference. I make a few phone calls, answer dozens of e-mails, spend a few hours in the office, visit a church where volunteers from a church in another state are working, and at the end of the day ask myself what possible difference anything I did made today.

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Ken Taylor has pastored our Elysian Fields Avenue Baptist Church for the past 18 years, watching it transition from suburbia to inner city without moving an inch. He has seen the neighborhood deteriorate somewhat over the years, yet has steadily led his members into the community with loving ministry and the truth of the gospel. All the time, he has served as a professor at the nearby New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Right now, he’s on campus teaching Monday and Tuesday classes, then in North Alabama where he evacuated with his family until his residence on campus is made habitable again. I received an interesting report from him Tuesday afternoon.

In an internet spot where Ken’s classmembers register their comments on his classroom material, a student waxed eloquent on the depravity of New Orleans. He said, “I found New Orleans utterly disgusting in almost every facet. I wouldn’t deny a few aspects of the city will be missed; but on a scale of overall good versus evil the city was clearly due for destruction. After being there for three years, living on campus, and discovering how ineffectual the Christian community appeared to be, the best thing that may have ever happened for the souls in New Orleans was to be disbursed.”

Ouch. That was brutal.

(Incidentally, the student probably did not mean ‘disburse,’ which means ‘to pay out,’ but ‘disperse,’ meaning ‘to scatter.)

Ken responded on the site, “I react strongly to the words ‘utterly disgusting,’ ‘clearly due for destruction,’ and ‘ineffectual Christian community’ applied to New Orleans and to its churches. Clearly there was the disgusting, and the evil, and the imperfect church…. I challenge anyone to show me a city that does not have great evil. Were (this) to be the determination of what or who was to be destroyed, how many of us…would be saved?”

For two more pages, Ken gently and kindly answers his student. He tempers his words and softens their impact by explaining that he has mulled over the student’s comments during his 380-mile drive that afternoon to North Alabama. “Nothing personal is meant by this response,” he cautions, “so please do not feel that I am attacking you.”

You are too kind, Ken. So, let me do it for you.

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