Yesterday, a number of us met in Hammond, Louisiana, at the North Shore Associational office to begin laying plans for “Adopt-A-Church,” the plan to match New Orleans churches up with sponsoring congregations all over the country.

I think the storm was still raging when Roger Freeman, pastor of Clarksville, Tennessee’s First Baptist Church, sent me an email suggesting that we partner churches in his state with New Orleans churches. I thought it was a great idea, and made special sense coming from Roger, who pastored New Orleans’ First Baptist Church in the late 80s into the mid-90s. He knows and loves our city and these churches. The editor of the state paper was working with Roger on this partnership.

A couple of days later, I began to hear that other states were thinking of the same type linkup. Then, last Tuesday in Baton Rouge, I learned that the North American Mission Board in Atlanta was proposing the same thing nationwide. That’s where we are now.

Several times a day I’m getting emails from people informing me their church is ready and willing to come to New Orleans to help a church rebuild. They know we’re not ready for company yet. In fact, we’re not even home yet. Although daily we hear reports of some residents being invited to re-enter very soon. As soon as it happens, we’ll be open for business and ready to welcome teams from the churches…so long as they understand a few things.

Understand that New Orleans is going to be different. No tours this time to exotic locales. No dining out in your favorite restaurants. It’s all work this time.

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I may be wearing my welcome out with my friends. Tonight, I’m staying with Charles and Shirley Martin in Brookhaven, Mississippi, former members of our church in Kenner before they retired and moved to the country. They belong to Easthaven Baptist Church here, a congregation that has basically turned over their facilities to evacuees from the coast.

“We’re not able to have Sunday School right now,” Charles said, “because they’re everywhere. We’re having a great time, though. Yesterday, our choir was packed and the guests really seemed to enjoy the worship service.”

“There’s an old trailer park outside of town,” Charles said, “that we’ve taken over. Another church and we are buying a dozen or more trailers and we’re setting up there for some of the families.”

“We have three requirements,” he said. “It must be a real family, not just some people living together. They must agree to go to church, and third, they have to get a job. We’re helping them find jobs.”

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What a day to be thinking of the events of 9-11 four years ago. So many similarities.

This morning, I preached in Meek Baptist Church in Arley, Alabama. This is on the banks of Smith Lake, a resort area. The church is prospering and has relocated with all new buildings in the last few months. In fact, the dedication is next Sunday. They had over 200 in attendance. I talked with them about I Corinthians 16:9 where Paul says, “A wide door for effective service is open for us and there are many obstacles.”

Opportunities and obstacles are frequently found hand in hand. God opens the door for a great opportunity and the enemy arrives with obstructions. John Wesley once wrote a brother, “I hear great things about what God is doing in your area. I wonder that the enemy has not raised up a champion against it.” He understood that as a rule, where you find one you find the other.

I told the congregation that naive people, those with a shallow understanding of scripture, perhaps think if God opens the door for a great advance, there could not possibly be any opposition. And likewise, if there is opposition, it’s a sign God is not in it. Both are wrong.

A little scripture study takes care of that, doesn’t it. The history of the movement of God’s kingdom through the ages is a story of great opportunities on the one hand while facing incredible opposition from the enemy on the other hand. And often the obstacles grow out of the opportunity, and the opportunity grows out of the obstacle.

September 11, 2001, saw this nation plunged into shock as severely as it has ever occurred. Yet, out of that great tragedy came waves of opportunities to present the gospel to this nation, person by person. And so must it be with Katrina, as God’s people take in evacuees and minister to them one by one.

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They’re now saying they may have overestimated the number of dead in New Orleans. I certainly hope so. It beats me how they ever came up with figures of 20,000 or even 40,000 in the first place. You get these local politicians in front of microphones, they’re exhausted beyond words, trying hard to say something that might be helpful, and these numbers come out. To their discredit, the media took it at face value. I pray that on reentering New Orleans, we’ll have surprisingly few funerals to conduct.

I noticed something this week about television. The people most affected by the hurricane, people who have relocated into homes and hotels, are watching very little of the continuous coverage. I’ve not asked any of them, but can tell you personally, it hurts too badly. Neil and Julie and I ate burgers yesterday in BackyardBurgers here in Columbus, MS, and the lone television mounted on the wall had closed captioning. We sat there glued to reading the words from anchors and leaders, and felt the burdens descend on our shoulders again. We will meet this soon enough, just as quickly as we are told it’s safe to come home.

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Rick Warren said, “There are three stages to helping people in tragedies like this. The first is RESCUE. The federal government is in charge, and it usually takes a few days. The second stage is RESUMING. This is the restoration of utilities, water, services. The local government is in charge and it takes a few weeks. The third stage is REBUILDING. This is the duty of everyone including the churches and it takes years.”

Rebuilding is harder than building, Warren said. When you build, you have the fun of seeing something rise where there was nothing. But in rebuilding, you first have to tear out, muck out, and clean out. It’s messy. It’s the same for restoring human lives. It’s harder to rebuild a life after a great loss.

Rick Warren was speaking to a roomful of Louisiana Baptist leaders who had gathered last Tuesday in the fellowship hall of Florida Boulevard Baptist Church in Baton Rouge. He and his wife Kay and several members of the staff at Saddleback Church in Southern California had just visited the Astrodome and spoken to the thousands who found shelter there, then in Memphis to a large group, and in Jackson, Mississippi. They had come to Baton Rouge to sit down with local leadership to hear our plans for rebuilding the Lord’s work in New Orleans, and then to decide how their church and the vast numbers who make up the Purpose-Driven network will respond.

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Have you ever suffered from sensory overload? You are talking to so many people, both cell phones are ringing, someone else needs your attention–and pretty soon you do not remember what you said to anyone. “Did you get my call?” someone asked. “I suppose,” you answer. Anyway, this is where I am today.

After a day of meetings in Baton Rouge on Tuesday to discuss what to do once we’re all able to re-enter metro New Orleans, I spent the night with a cousin, then left town early Wednesday morning, bound for my community in Jefferson Parish. The authorities were allowing residents four days this week to get in to check out their homes and pick up any necessities. Son Neil and his wife Julie did it Monday; Wednesday was my day.

The 70 mile drive from Baton Rouge took four hours. My wife had sent along a list of things to bring and a flashlight so I could see inside the closets. Only a wife would have thought of the light; it had never entered my mind. Our neighborhood looked rough. All the trees were not down, but all were damaged. The streets had been cleared of downed trees, so somebody has been working. Shingles from the rooftop littered my yard. If it rains before we can return, I’m in a lot of trouble. And no, I decided not to empty the scary refrigerator or freezer. What’s the point; they’re ruined anyway. By the time we return, the electricity will be on and the spoiled things will be refrozen, making it safe to remove them before discarding the appliances.

I spent an hour driving around our part of town. Here’s a quick synopsis.

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Tonight, I’m overnighting with a cousin in Baton Rouge after a long day of meetings at Florida Boulevard Baptist Church here. I drove down from Columbus MS Monday afternoon and spent the night in accommodations owned by the Adams-Union Association in Natchez. Across the street in the First Baptist Church of Natchez, some one hundred evacuees were being housed in their fellowship hall. Volunteers from the First Baptist Church of Comanche, Texas, are helping to provide for them.

When I got to the room last night, Charles Wade called. The executive director of Texas Baptists informed me that they are sending one million dollars to assist churches on the Gulf Coast hurt by the storm. That means churches from South Alabama all through lower Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana. Dr. Wade assured me Texas churches will be receiving special offerings too, and he estimated a couple more million may be coming. Consider that Mississippi alone has had one hundred churches partially or completely destroyed, and you see how great the need is.

How many churches in our area of Louisiana were hurt? We have no idea. So many regions are still off limits due to the high water, blocked roads, and unsafe conditions. Once we’re able to return, job one will be finding out which churches still exist and which were erased from the map.

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As far as I can tell, every town of any size in the southeastern USA is hosting evacuees from the Gulf Coast region and especially New Orleans. In a program I was watching, participants agreed that these countless thousands consigned to shelters all over this part of the world are not White or Black, not African-American or Anglo or Hispanic; they’re all of this, but mostly they’re just poor.

This morning at Fairview Baptist Church in Columbus, MS, Pastor Mickey Dalrymple was interrupted in the sermon by one of his men who entered from the rear, walked to the front, and asked for a microphone. He needed twenty men to volunteer to help right then down at Hughes Elementary School where hundreds of evacuees (refugees or displaced persons; what to call them?) are receiving shelter. Was there a problem? No, he needed help in erecting hundreds of cots that had just arrived. Pastor Mickey told me at lunch that more evacuees are supposed to arrive today. I’ll be in their service tonight to share the New Orleans situation.

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I learned yesterday that a disaster relief group from Arkansas has been in Kenner feeding hundreds of meals a day ever since last Tuesday! No sooner has the wind passed into central Mississippi than these good folks pulled into the city and set up operations. When one group of them announced their intent to use chain saws and clear roadways, they were told the timing was not right for this, so they drove into Mississippi and have been at it ever since.

The group in Kenner, I understand, is being housed and restricted to the Kenner city jail. They cook the meals and police drive the containers to the two shelters in the city where the “refugees” are being held. The Arkansas group is not allowed to venture out into the city for security reasons, I’m told.

All of this is as it came to me, as they say, from a reliable source, but I do not know it personally. And something else.

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My North Carolina granddaughter — an eight-year-old well named as Darilyn (think: darlin’) — was praying for her Cajun cousins and grandparents the other night. She said, “I hope their homes are okay, but if they aren’t, let them move close to us.” It’s great to be loved, is all I can say.

New Orleans is being loved today in a thousand ways.

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