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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The amazing thing to me–as a fifteen year resident of metro New Orleans and the director of missions for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans–is that some are saying New Orleans actually dodged the bullet with hurricane Katrina. If that’s true, we do not want to see that bullet, is all I can say.

Here’s what I know.

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Jane Tompkins and I have one thing in common: we both love westerns. What we do not share is her fanatical dedication to the genre. I read a Louis L’Amour to relax my mind and refresh my spirit; Tompkins is a professor at Duke University who studies L’Amour and Zane Grey and Elmore Leonard to find trends and deeper meanings in their writings. That’s what brought her to write “West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns.” She watches “High Noon” and “Shane” for hours on end, searching out what these popular films tell about the characters they portray and the culture of modern life they produced.

At its heart, a Western is “antilanguage,” Tompkins writes. “Doing, not talking, is what it values.” The men who make up the old west’s heroes do not have vast vocabularies purchased by costly degrees. They don’t read all that many books. The men in these stories speak sparely: “Turn the wagon. Tie ’em up short. Get up on the seat.” (Red River) “Take my horse. Good swimmer. Get it done, boy.” (Rio Grande)

That may tell us something about Westerns, but for my money, it tells us a lot more about men. At the core of his being, a man trusts action rather than words. In fact, he is suspicious of a man whose livelihood is about words. That’s why preachers and politicians get short shrift in men’s stories. Which is fine with me, because even Scripture warns, “My little children, let us not love in words or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” (I John 3:18) When you get a free hour, count the times in the Gospels where our Lord urges “doing” the will of God. That’s as opposed to talking about it, approving it, reading, hearing, thinking, reflecting, liking. “Just do it” was biblical long before it became commercial.

“Last summer my wife and I met a couple at a restaurant. After an enjoyable lunch, the women decided to go shopping, and I invited the man to go sailing. Later, while we were out on the water, a storm blew up. The tide had gone out, and we were downwind trying to work our way back through a narrow channel. At one point the boat grounded and we had to climb overboard and shove with all our might to get it back in deeper water. As my new friend stood there, ankle deep in muck, the wind blowing his hair wildly, rain streaming down his face, he grinned at me, and with unmistakable sincerity said, ‘Sure beats shopping!'” (From the Reader’s Digest, quoted by Jane Tompkins in “West of Everything.”)

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Our family gathered last Saturday at a restaurant at the edge of Birmingham to celebrate our oldest brother Ron’s 70th birthday. As special as that was, it was made more wonderful by the fact that our parents attended. Mom and Dad are now 89 and 93 and working on their 72nd year of marriage. Their other five children–Glenn, Patricia, Joe, Carolyn, and Charlie–made them promise not to show partiality, that, since you attended Ron’s 70th birthday party, you have to do it for the rest of us. Mom said this might have to be a “one for all” type thing.

To those who asked, somewhat facetiously I expect, whether Mom and Dad gave the birthday boy his birthday money, the answer is yes. Although they long since graduated beyond the dollar-per-year category. It’s been a hundred dollars per birthday for some time now. With six children, that’s not an insignificant thing. They have however quit putting money under our pillows when we lose a tooth. Some of my siblings have gone the dentures route, and Dad says it could break the bank overnight.

Among the presents we all brought Ronnie were bananas. I brought three, my sisters brought at least a dozen each. Ronnie needs lots of bananas. Here’s the tale.

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After seeing the movie “The Great Raid,” a portrayal of the greatest rescue in World War II, I dug the book on which it was based out of a bookshelf and read it. “Ghost Soldiers” tells the story of 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slipping behind Japanese lines in the Philippines to march 30 rugged miles and bring out 513 American POWs, many of them dying in the primitive conditions of a camp that made some of Hitler’s prisons seem like resorts.

I had not read a dozen pages when something not in the movie jumped out at me. The leader of the raid, Colonel Henry Mucci assembled C Company, his Rangers who had been trained for just such a mission. Mucci told them the nature of this raid, stressing the risks and the hardships. Then he said, “I only want men who feel lucky.” Well, all of them felt lucky. No one dropped out.

“One other thing,” Mucci said. “There’ll be no atheists on this trip.” On adjourning, the colonel commanded each man to meet with the chaplains and pray on their knees. Services would begin in half an hour. “I want you to swear an oath before God,” he said, ” Swear that you will die fighting rather than let any harm come to those prisoners.” Then they all went to church.

No atheists on this trip. As I say, not in the movie.

My friend David is a Baptist pastor who hails from a large family of believers and with more than its share of preachers. However, he told his congregation recently, an uncle and one cousin work in the scientific field and wear their atheism like a badge. “The rest of the family treats them like lepers,” he said, “but I decided a long time ago I would not judge them, but just love them.”

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