Sunday morning, two of our churches in the devastated area of New Orleans held worship services for the first time since Katrina.

At 9 am, I worshiped with 25 members of Elysian Fields Avenue Baptist Church, meeting in the home of Bob and Linda Jackson, a block behind the church. The area still has no electricity and the Jackson’s home had been gutted down to the bare floor and wall studs. With the temperature outside in the high 40s, everyone bundled up and warmed one another. The Jacksons, now teaching at the seminary, are former missionaries to Africa. “We’re used to this,” Linda laughed. “No building, no heat. This is how we did it for years.” Pastor Ken Taylor welcomed everyone, and with tears in his eyes, brought everyone up to date on the church’s situation.

“It appears that our church buildings will be a total loss,” he told the members. “We had no flood insurance, and we do not know what kind of settlement we’ll get.” He continued, “We’re hoping to be able to build a smaller church, one more suitable to our needs.” With the large sanctuary and a small congregation, they had gone to worshiping in the fellowship hall in recent months.

Interspersed between the spirited worship choruses, members gave testimonies. Paula Stringer told of entering her devastated home and finding paper scattered everywhere. “One page that stood out from the rest,” she said, “contained Psalm 77.” She read some of the Psalm, particularly the final verses, as everyone marveled at their relevance to our situation. “The clouds poured out water, the skies gave forth a sound…the sound of thy thunder was in the whirlwind, the lightnings lit up the world, the earth trembled and shook.” “No one saw your footprints, but you were there,” Paula finished, “You led your people like a flock.”

Pastor Ken invited me to say a few words, after which I left to make the 10 am service at Suburban Baptist Church, some three or four miles further east. I jokingly said if Suburban church was this cold, I might think of a third church to go visit and use that as an excuse to leave early.

Village de l’Est Baptist Church and Pastor Thomas Walters were meeting with Pastor Jeff Box and the Suburban folks today, the first post-K service for either. There must have been a hundred or more in attendance. To my surprise, they had electricity. No gas, so the church’s heaters weren’t working, but one little space heater–and the crowd–warmed up the fellowship hall. The projector flashed an image of a dove in flight on the wall in front, with the words “Welcome Home.” People were hugging and laughing; it was a grand occasion.

Jeff introduced guests–volunteers here to help restore the church–from Oregon, Washington, and New York. Several came from Manhattan and a number from Long Island. Executive Director of the Metropolitan New York Baptist Association Gary Frost greeted everyone and expressed appreciation for those from our area who came to Manhattan after 9-11. “It’s our turn to minister to you,” he said, as he handed a check to Pastor Jeff. I learned that the New York contingent–including Dr. Frost–is sleeping in the educational building of Williams Boulevard Baptist Church in Kenner. (We reminded Gary Frost he will be our featured keynote speaker this September 9 for our annual “Ridgecrest on the River” event. He scrolled through his electronic something-or-other and to his surprise, there it was. As with most of us, he goes where his secretary assigns him. He is truly a great preacher and we’re excited about his coming.)

Pastor Walters added his welcome to everyone and led us in some hymns. His people added a high level of joy and enthusiasm to the service. Pastor Jeff preached on Joshua 1:1-9. “During the evacuation,” he said, “I was hearing all these terrible things about what was happening in New Orleans, and was worrying about what we would do and what could I do. God led me to this Scripture and I saw it wasn’t what we were going to do; it was what He was about to do.”

“Moving into the Future” was the title of his sermon. Jeff said, “You understand that I haven’t preached to you in a long time. Usually my sermons have 3 points, but today it has five.” We move into the future with God’s promises, God’s power, God’s providence, God’s provision, and God’s presence.

“During the evacuation,” he said, “I was invited to preach in a church in a Mississippi town. Just before the service, the mayor said to me, ‘Katrina was the judgement of God on New Orleans. It was his judgement on a filthy city, on filthy people, who do filthy things.’ Then he said, ‘Furthermore, God sent Rita to rinse away what He had washed with Katrina.” Jeff said, “I thought to myself, ‘What an idiot.'”

That day, Jeff said, he preached on Luke 13:1-5 where Jesus mentions some well-known disasters and says, “Do you think those people were worse sinners than you for such a fate to befall them? I tell you, no, but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” He added, “I looked the mayor right in the eye and said, ‘Do you think this town in Mississippi (he named it but I won’t) is less wicked than New Orleans? God says, ‘No! Unless you repent, you will perish!'”

I leaned over to my colleague Freddie Arnold and said, “I’ve never heard Jeff Box preach before, but I’ll betcha he’s preaching with a greater unction than before.” Freddie said, “He’s always preached with power, but there is something special there today.”

Freddie had attended the early worship service of the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, meeting temporarily at the First Baptist Church of New Orleans. “They must have had 900 present,” he said.

At both churches I visited today, people were talking about members planning to return to their flooded homes to rebuild. However, there’s still the unanswered question as to which areas will be allowed to be restored. Congressman Richard Baker of Louisiana is promoting a bill by which the federal government would create a special corporation to buy out the homes and properties in the worst-hit neighborhoods, and eventually clean off the property and sell large tracts to developers who would then build planned, orderly, modern communities. The residents are crying to high heaven over that–as they are over every other plan that does not let them have sole discretion to do as they please–but local columnist Jarvis DeBerry said in Sunday’s Times-Picayune this could be the best deal for many.

DeBerry wonders why the people stirring up protests against the Bring New Orleans Back Commission will not acknowledge that accepting a buy-out may be the best deal. “Instead of equating the proposed buyout plans with thievery, why don’t they admit that property values in certain parts of town may never rebound and that the only compassionate thing to do is to provide homeowners a way to avoid losing all they’ve invested?” He concludes, “Why won’t they be honest with the people they purport to care about and tell them what their properties are really worth? The offer of equity is likely to be the best deal many folks will get.”

James Gill is a local legend, a curmudgeon whose regular column in the Times-Picayune ruffles the feathers of the big birds and takes the starch out of stuffed shirts–and probably some other metaphors too, but none come to mind at the moment. I would venture him to be in his seventies, meaning he’s been taking on politicians in this state a long time. Sunday morning, he directed his attention to the hapless New Orleans City Council, the group that voted unanimously to urge that Doug Williams be made coach of the Saints football team. When Paul Harvey heard they had done that, he said on nation-wide radio, “Apparently, the New Orleans City Council has completed all its work in restoring the flood-ravaged city!”

Following is the entire column from Mr. Gill in Sunday’s paper:

“After the sidelining of its clueless School Board, New Orleans watches its City Council going the same way. Council members are doing their best to hasten their slide into irrelevance by playing dog in the manger as the recovery effort takes shape. They have evidently failed to pick up on the post-Katrina public mood. Our patience with the childish squabbles of tinpot politicians is exhausted.

“Council members feel they have been frozen out of planning for the city’s reincarnation. They got their feelings hurt when only one of their number, president Oliver Thomas, was appointed to Mayor Ray Nagin’s Bring Back New Orleans Commission.

“Council members have long been on the outs with Nagin, whom they accuse of a chronic failure to communicate, but this time they went into a major sulk.

“Their principal contribution to the recovery debate until last week was to pass a resolution in December supporting ‘the timely and simultaneous rebuilding of all New Orleans neighborhoods.’

“That seemed merely to be a fit of spleen, or an attempt to embarrass Nagin and his commission. It seemed unlikely that even the New Orleans City Council could be so stupid on the subject of urban planning as to believe that ‘the timely and simultaneous rebuilding of all New Orleans neighborhoods’ was either feasible or desirable.

“There would, for a start, be nobody to live in all those neighborhoods; huge numbers of evacuees have no intention of returning and it is projected that New Orleans won’t regain even half its pre-Katrina population until 2008. New Orleans has been losing population for decades, and the antediluvian landscape was dotted with abandoned houses.

“It is blindingly obvious that many of the areas where flooding was heaviest will be more likely to accommodate nutria (a local rodent that lives in the swamps–from Joe) than people henceforth. There is no point in hankering for the old footprint. It’s been washed away.

“This is a bitter pill to swallow for property owners in the hardest hit areas and for all thsoe who have managed to persuade themselves that pre-Katrina New Orleans was every inch a paradise. Thus there was bound to be an outcry when the Bring New Orleans Back Commission recommended a four-month moratorium on building permits in deluged neighborhoods while we figure out where there will be enough people to justify starting over.

“In neighborhoods that are truly kaput, the commission calls for property owners to be recompensed on the public dollar.

“Several property owners bristled at the public unveiling of the recommendations, and declared the government had no business telling them what to do. Some of them no doubt will be subject to delay that will turn out to be needless as their neighborhoods are revitalized.

“But in other ravaged neighborhoods, the owner of a rebuilt house marooned in a sea of blight could hardly expect taxpayers to provide the services required to sustain civilized life.

“Property rights may be sacrosanct but they are not absolute, and government has an obligation to protect the general interest through planning and zoning laws.

“Still, the frustration of the property owners who spoke at the unveiling of the report was fair enough, and Nagin himself later declared that he was unlikely to support the moratorium.

“He is, however, in favor of the four months planning review. How that would work with people throwing up houses in every remote corner of the city was not explained. In the end, some kind of moratorium seems inevitable.

“Angry property owners can, perhaps, be forgiven for some of their less temperate remarks. Still, it was probably a little fanciful to suggest that the commission’s planning subcommittee chairman, banker and developer Joe Canizaro, devised the plan to further a private land-grab scheme in the Lower 9th Ward.

“There can be no forgiveness for the furious posturing with which council members greeted the recommendations, however. They seemed about ready to fit Nagin for jackboots.

“Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson’s charge that the commission had just proposed ‘a blatant violation of property rights that is unprecedented in America’ typified the measured tone of the press conference called just before the recommendations were released.

“The council will no doubt do its best to thwart whatever plan Nagin finally endorses, but its options are limited; the feds and the Louisiana Recovery Authority will control the pursestrings.

“That’s why the council’s so mad.”