After returning to the city, one of my tasks is going through the newspapers to see what I’ve missed. I mean, other than a men’s magazine naming Jennifer Aniston (is that her name? I’m so culturally hip) its “man of the year.”

ABOUT OUR SCHOOL SYSTEMS

To my amazement, the St. Bernard Parish public schools has reopened. The people who live in this parish are now virtually all residing in FEMA trailers, I understand, but to re-establish some kind of normalcy and to send a signal for others to come on back and get to work rebuilding the neighborhoods, the school board opened the St. Bernard Unified School. It meets in trailers and runs on generators and had 330 students the first day.

Meanwhile, New Orleans became the only public school system in the region that has not opened any of its schools since Katrina, even though several of their campuses in Uptown and across the river in Algiers had no damage. Out west in Jefferson Parish, the attendance is about 80 percent of what it was pre-Katrina. The Christian schools are all in crisis, if I’m any judge. Our First Baptist (Kenner) Christian School is running half the 300 students they had at their peak a couple of years ago. The church met Wednesday night to discuss what to do, and yes, considered the nuclear option of closing it down after 20 years, but decided to stay the course for a while longer. A church in South Carolina has sent some money to help, plus they have some insurance money coming that should buy temporary relief.

REBUILDING THE CITY AND WHAT WE ARE DISCOVERING

The contractor assigned to bring the Superdome back to speed says he’s finding materials and labor pricier than he had thought and the cost is going to be in the neighborhood of $200 million. That’s some neighborhood. The dome cost about $75 million to erect, as I recall. This being Louisiana, the original estimate was about half that. Those were 1970 dollars which were larger and stronger than the ones in our billfolds today, although we did not know it at the time.

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I drove back to New Orleans Wednesday from Monroe and reflected on what we had done and not done this week.

All of us from the storm-damaged section of the state were grateful for the attention given our situation on the program. Sometimes it was videos on the large screens in which our pastors talked. At other times, convention leaders gave their reports. Pastor David Crosby of New Orleans’ First Baptist Church made an eloquent appeal for the convention to stay with us for a long time to come.

There was politics (there WERE politics? I’m not sure) at the convention, as there always are. But I’ve been so out of the loop. Someone asked who I was voting for as president of the state convention and I didn’t even know who was running. We’ve not received any third class mail down here since August, and that rules out our state Baptist paper. It is available on-line and I keep trying to remember to look it up. Our Baptist Message is a terrific paper, and surely worthy of our attention.

Lynn Clayton was honored as he retires from editing the Baptist Message after about a hundred years. Well, almost. He’s truly one of a kind, and I have treasured our relationship which began in 1979 when Lynn’s pastor, John Alley of Calvary, Alexandria, and I were serving on a committee for the Foreign Mission Board (now called the International Mission Board). The Internal Revenue Service was calling for all U.S. missionaries serving overseas to pay income tax here in the states as well as in the countries where they were serving. This would impose a financial burden on the FMB of at least another million dollars a year. So, John and Lynn and I descended on Washington, D.C., and started calling on senators. We literally pounded the pavement. Louisiana Senator Russell Long gave us the support we needed and introduced the bill which we then lobbied for, calling Southern Baptists around the country and asking them to contact their senators. When it passed, the IRS was made to go stand in the corner (so to speak), and ever since a million dollars a year of the Lord’s money has gone to something other than taxes. Lynn Clayton was a great help. I’ve loved the man ever since.

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Last weekend when our son Marty was down, we rode around the area and took a few more snapshots of damaged churches and I gave him the CD which Ed Jelks had made from some of our church-assessment trips several weeks ago. He carried this all back to Charlotte and has posted several of the church photos on our website.

All of these churches are in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, the worst hit area of Louisiana. There were plenty more pictures, but in the honorable tradition of editors through the ages, Marty chose only the most dramatic scenes.

And he included the shot of the horse in the tree. It’s not a great shot and was made from the inside of the pickup truck, I believe, but you get the idea. Ed Jelks thinks it was a mule. I say it was a horse. We both agree that it’s dead.

While you’re on that page, if you haven’t already, check out the Nehemiah cartoons. Even better, call them to your pastor’s attention. Many of our churches will be studying this wonderful Old Testament book this winter, and these cartoons are meant to complement that. Some will print out the ‘toons and transfer them to power point or to overhead cels and display them for the congregation in the lessons. Others print them out as posters to advertise the study. Permission is automatically granted for you to use them any way you choose.

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In a couple of weeks, some of our churches plan to have block parties to welcome their communities home, to celebrate God’s goodness, and to strengthen their relationship with their neighbors. One of them, the Vieux Carre’ Baptist Church on Dauphine Street, one block over from Bourbon, will hold theirs in Woldenberg Park, on the river’s edge, next to the French Quarter. One of their workers said, “Help us find a couple of people to give testimonies. Dynamic stories of God’s grace.”

Saturday, I spent a couple of hours seeking out pastors to deliver checks from the Louisiana Baptist Convention and the adopt-a-church program. Significant checks. Ten thousand dollar checks. Eye-popping figures for the pastors who opened the envelopes in my presence.

“May I make a suggestion?” I said to the pastors. “When you tell your congregation about this gift, read the letter to your people.” The accompanying letter from Missions and Ministry Director Mike Canady is such a blessing, assuring the people of the support of the entire denomination. This is welcoming news to people who have lost their homes and church buildings and whose friends are scattered across the countryside. Just knowing that several churches have adopted them and are committed to help them re-establish a presence in their community makes all the difference.

I said to one pastor, “Every church has people in it who wonder what difference the denomination makes. And maybe one or two who are even hostile to the denomination. These are the people who especially need to know the commitment God’s people called Southern Baptists are making.”

“What church are you going to this morning?” Margaret asked me early Sunday. I said, “To as many as I can find, but just long enough to deliver these envelopes.” From 9 to noon, I got to only four of the churches, but traveled 75 miles doing it. I started with Mark Mitchell’s Urban Family Church in Kenner, then Tony Bellow’s Hahnville Mission, then the West Marrero Church where Anthony Barrett pastors, and finally to Oak Park Church under the leadership of Paul Brady. Paul was in the middle of his sermon at that very moment, but I left the envelope with someone to give to him.

“God is really blessing,” said Tony Bellows of the Hahnville church. “Our congregation is multi-racial now. We have a white lady teaching a Sunday School class.” He said, “You know, God rescued me out of two prison terms. I’d been selling drugs big-time. Thomas Ayo, pastor of the Krotz Springs Baptist Church, started coming to the Hunt Correctional Center, visiting prisoners. He witnessed to me and led me to Jesus. Later, he paid my way through the seminary.”

Thomas Ayo. One of my classmates from seminary in the 1960s. Good work, old friend.

I knew I had my testimony for the block party in Woldenberg Park.

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Thirty new cartoons for the book of Nehemiah are available in the image gallery.

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“BAGNO” is the acronym for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans. Our pastors are scattered from one end of this country to the other, thanks to Katrina. Those who read this may know some whom we have not located (yes, we’re still trying to find several), and we would surely appreciate your passing this along to them.

1) About our Wednesday ministers meeting. We gather ALMOST every Wednesday from 9 to noon at the First Baptist Church of LaPlace, ending with lunch at 11:30 which the church provides. These informational/inspirational/fellowship meetings have been the best thing we have done.

However, a couple of changes are about to occur as we move into the holiday season. One, this Wednesday, November 16, the meeting will be abbreviated, beginning at 10 am. Some of us will miss it, as we will be driving back from the state convention in Monroe on Wednesday. Then, the following Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the LaPlace church will be closed, so we will not be meeting at all. We will resume on Wednesday morning, November 30, at 9 am.

2) About the money that is available to help you, your church, and your members. Thanks to the generosity of the Lord’s people, we have several hundred thousand dollars available to assist you. Our committee of three (Gonzalo Rodriguez, Tony Merida, and Lionel Roberts) meets weekly to receive written requests for these funds and to make decisions about who gets what.

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“Well, I see life is returning to normal,” said one of my sons Friday. We were driving down Rampart Street at the edge of downtown New Orleans and he had spotted a lady-of-the-street sashaying down a sidewalk. A few residents have moved back into that neighborhood, but the city is being repopulated by construction workers from all fifty states, and I suppose she’s trying to befriend this group.

The Sav-A-Center grocery store, the successor of the old A & P, has reopened at Franklin Avenue and Leon Simon, not far from the University of New Orleans campus. Since very few people in that area have power (our associational office still doesn’t), I wondered why. My sons and I checked it out Friday. Construction trucks were literally everywhere–filling the parking lots, medians, etc.–and the store’s clients were almost exclusively these out-of-town workers. With nothing else open in that part of the world, we ended up having lunch alongside them in the store’s deli.

Outside, someone handed a flyer to my son Neil, advertising “Rooms Available–$28.” “Bunk beds-showers-fresh linens-cable-internet” it said, adding, “Must prepay for one week stay. Location: Downtown New Orleans on Canal.”

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“Preacher, I have some good news for you.” “Good. I could stand some good news. What do you have?”

“I have a truckload of clothing, men and women’s clothing, boys and girls, babies. Really good stuff, almost new. Where do I send it?”

“Friend, I sincerely thank you. I know you went to a lot of trouble to assemble these gifts from wonderful people. That means so much to us. However….”

“We don’t need clothing. The people who need clothing are those who have lost their homes and all their contents. We have lots of homes like that, but the people are not here. There’s no place for them to live here, so they’re still wherever they evacuated.”

Long silence. “You can’t take them?” “No, sir. I’m sorry, because I know you need to get them out of your truck and get back home. I’m sure there are people needing the clothes, but they just aren’t here.”

I have that conversation by phone at least twice a week. Thursday morning, it was face to face. The nice man met me coming out of one of our churches. “Where do I unload all this clothing?” He was bright-eyed and friendly, and I hated like anything to tell him we can’t use it.

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My wife says if there is money on the street anywhere, I will find it. Once I found a ten dollar bill and twice five dollar bills in my early morning walking. Last Sunday morning, walking on the paved track atop our levee that parallels the river, I spotted two quarters lying together. Then, today, Wednesday morning, a quarter of a mile away, I found two more quarters lying there just waiting for me. Too, too strange.

It pays to walk early in the mornings.

I told our pastors, “It pays to attend these Wednesday meetings.” We handed out lots of money today.

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Tuesday morning I dropped in on a church staff meeting already in progress. When the pastor asked for my prayer requests, I said, “Pray that churches wanting to help us will be willing to do whatever the situation requires. Many have their own agenda. They want to do what they want to do, and usually that means the kind of dramatic, save-the-city efforts that gives them a good feeling when they leave. But it’s not always what we need.” The others in the room shook their heads; they’re seeing it, too.

Now, I understand the problem. You go to a great deal of trouble in north Alabama or Tennessee or Kentucky to assemble a team of volunteers, the congregation raises money to send them, and you travel 500 miles. When you arrive, the host pastor says, “I need you to grind those stumps.” “Cut that grass.” “Clean this building.” “Fill in for the cooks from 3 to 7 am.” “Put on a block party for our neighborhood.” And you’re frustrated.

“I thought the city was in trouble,” you think to yourself. “I thought they needed us to clean out sheetrock and insulation, to rewire churches, and replace roofs. We went to a lot of trouble to help them, and they’ve got us pushing brooms and going down the street to asking the neighbors if they need our help.”

Make no mistake, this city is in desperate trouble. It has endless needs. More and more, we will be able to use outside volunteers to bring the city back. But it’s not so simple. To work in the worst affected areas, workers need training and equipment. To rewire a church or home, one needs permits and approvals from city offices, a time-consuming process that is causing many people to tear their hair out.

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