Franklin Avenue Baptist Church returned to its home today, and you may have felt the vibrations where you live, wherever you live. Pastor Fred Luter had the day that pastors dream of and few ever experience.

“Standing room only” doesn’t quite tell the story. When I arrived for the 7:30 am service–a second one would follow at 10:30–the foyer was filled and the crowd was spilling out the front door onto Franklin Avenue. Inside, I learned that overflow rooms had been set up with closed-circuit television. Apparently, they too were filled.

So, my first problem was how to get inside. Having sat on the platform or near it for nearly 50 years of worship services, I am aware that often the vacant seats are down front. The problem is getting there. Then, a woman solved it for me. I don’t know who she was and it had nothing to do with me, but she had that official air about her. “Excuse me,” she called to the standees in front of her. They opened up like the Red Sea to let her through, so I just followed. I’m sure it appeared that she was opening a path for me, and that suited me just fine.

Inside, every seat seemed to be taken, although I was well-prepared to sit on the floor down front or to one side. I ended up at the very first row beside Karen Willoughby of the (LA) Baptist Message and David Crosby, pastor of the First Baptist Church of New Orleans. The sign on their row said “reserved,” and the row was comfortably filled, but everyone moved over and made room. I now had a ringside seat for the event of the year, or any year, in these wonderful people’s lives.

The choir loft was filled–that might have been a hundred or more–and the musicians were earning their pay. The people sang, they rocked, they swayed, they clapped, they laughed and hugged and shouted. Quite a few tears were shed. The joy was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.

Pastor Luter said, “Franklin Avenue! We’re back!” The place erupted in cheers and shouts. “We’re back, y’all!” “Welcome home!”

I wish you could have heard Elizabeth Luter’s welcome. This pastor’s wife took the microphone on the floor level and said, “I fell in love with a young man over 30 years ago. I never imagined what a ride it would be.”

She looked up at her beaming husband behind the pulpit and said, “To my mate for life, you are my hero. You persevered like a true champion and I love you more today than ever. I salute you for staying the course in troubled times!”

Then she welcomed the visitors.

David Crosby was introduced. The crowd jumped to its feet, cheering for this godly man whose church had been their host for nearly 2 years as Franklin Avenue Baptist Church met at 7:30 am at the FBC-NO location on Canal Boulevard. The two pastors hugged. David was in tears.

Pastor Crosby said, “God let everything get turned upside down so we could get some things straightened out in this city.” He told the congregation that showing hospitality to them had been his church’s greatest privilege. When he finished, he headed out a side door to his own church. “It’s going to be lonely over there,” he said, to their laughter.

But he wasn’t laughing and he wasn’t kidding. He meant it. David and First Baptist Church will never be the same after sharing their facilities with Franklin Avenue all this time. We look for them to find ways to work together in the future.

Pastor Luter introduced a number of distinguished visitors and guests. “The young people from New Hope Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Georgia, are with us!” he said. These blue t-shirt clad youngsters stood and were applauded. “They’re in our city on a mission trip this week.”

Every spoken line was cheered or amen-ed. Like the crowd, the joy was spilling out the doors, overflowing the building, and nothing could contain it. There are few things as fine as undiluted, unrestrained joy, and we had it in good measure this morning.

Here’s a question for the Southern Baptists who read this. Do you know what a church covenant is? Nearly a hundred years ago–someone ought to pursue the history on this–Baptists produced a full page document which they called the church covenant, an agreement church members enter into when they affiliate themselves with a congregation. Decades ago, I recall seeing it framed and hung inside church auditoriums. Once in a while a church might have made a reference to it. But in recent years, the church covenant has gone the way of the dinosaur. Until today. Franklin Avenue Baptist Church has it printed inside their bulletin and one of their deacons read every word of it from the pulpit.

Here’s the opening, just to refresh your memory.

“Having been led, as we believe, by the Spirit of God to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, and on the profession of our faith, having been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, we do now, in the presence of God, angels, and this assembly, most solemnly and joyfully enter into covenant with one another, as one body in Christ….”

Down in the body of that document, the readers promise “to avoid all tattling, backbiting, and excessive anger” and then, the one which if enforced would clear many a membership roll, “to abstain from the sale and use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage….”

“People are here today from California, from Texas and Georgia and so many places,” Pastor Luter said.

After the Lord’s supper was served, after a time of honoring and remembering the Franklinites who have died since the church last met at 2515 Franklin Avenue, and after the offering, Pastor Luter stood to preach.

“We need to ask a tremendous favor of you,” he began. “We will be needing your seat for the 10:30 worship service. So, y’all have to go home.” The place erupted in laughter. A lot of people had been planning to do what I was, to hang around for the second service. (Even though the service began at 7:30 and did not end until 9:40, I met several who told me they were staying for the second service.)

Luter’s sermon text was the book of Habakkuk. “Don’t be proud,” he teased. “Open your Bible to the table of contents and find it. It’s in there. H-a-b-a-k-k-u-k.” They laughed and he gave them time. (My line on these more obscure books of the Bible, just for fun, is that if the Lord had intended anyone to read that book, He wouldn’t have hid it!)

He read everyone’s favorite “Praise-God-Anyway” passage, Habakkuk 3:17-19. In fact, he read it twice.

“The title of my sermon is ‘From Disaster to Dancing.'” He spoke it and they were off again, praising God, lifting hands, shouting, and laughing. Their joy was always just a half inch beneath the surface and it didn’t take much to bring it out again.

“This woman named Katrina has affected us all,” he said. How many of you are living in another state now? Another city? Another house? With another job? Another school? Another husband or wife–uh oh, forget that!”

“We’ve had two and a half years of disconnect, disorder, disappointments, damage, and dysfunction. But now, we’re back! Our disaster has been turned into dancing.”

“At the start of Habakkuk, the prophet is crying. ‘O Lord, how long?’ And at the end, he is dancing. So, the question is how does he go from crying to testifying, from disaster to dancing? The answer is right here before us.”

“One, he had to realize that life is full of foes. You are going to have enemies. If you follow Jesus Christ, you’re going to have a bull’s-eye on you. You become a target for the devil.”

“But look around here today. Your presence with us tells us that giants can be defeated. ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?'”

“Two, to go from disaster to dancing, you have to realize life is full of failures. You thought you had a bad day, look at Habakkuk. Failure in his crops, in his cattle, in his finances. We in New Orleans know about failure. FEMA failed us, the federal government failed us, the State of Louisiana failed us, the City of New Orleans failed us, the Corps of Engineers failed us, the levees failed us.”

“Habakkuk’s faith in God was not based on what he expected God to give him. He was losing everything. Failure is a part of life. But in the midst of failure, you must put your faith in God. ‘The just shall live by faith.’ Habakkuk 2:4.”

“Three, life is also full of favor for the child of God.” (Someone behind me called out, “I know that’s right!”) “Favor means blessings of God. There are special privileges for the people of the Lord.”

Fred told of going to the New Orleans Hornets-New York Knicks basketball game Friday night at the N.O. Arena. He and Elizabeth were having a date night and their tickets were waiting at the “will call” window. As he opened the envelope, he had a shock. The seats were in Section 308. The nosebleed section. Oh no. He dared not even tell Elizabeth. She hates sitting so high you can’t even see the players. Uh, no, honey–I’ll handle the tickets. They went through the turnstile.

Then he noticed something.

Inside the envelope was a note. “Pastor Luter, you and your wife have been invited to be the guests of the owner of American Factory Direct. Section 114. The club level.”

“The seats were plush, and the food was plentiful and free!” He smiled and said, “I was dancing!”

Toward the end of the sermon, the pastor alluded to the unlit screens on both sides of the front of the sanctuary. “Had the screens been operating today,” he said, “at this point in the sermon we had some footage of mountain deer walking on their high places. They are all beauty and grace. They have no fear. That’s what Habakkuk is saying.”

“It’s been two-and-a-half years. It’s time to dance.”

And he did. Bedlam erupted throughout the worship center, as the musicians gave everything they had to offer and more.

The invitation followed, with a number of people joining the congregation. I would have joined myself if the Lord had even nudged me a little. What a church. What a congregation, and what a pastor. What a privilege.

As a teenager, I attended a family reunion with my girlfriend. She and her parents were the only ones there I knew. It would be overstating things to say I was miserable–it wasn’t that bad–but I was an outsider and knew it. People hugged and told stories of family members long gone, leaving out parts that were unnecessary to them but essential to an outsider like me to know what that was all about. In the afternoon, we went to a movie and all was well.

But it wasn’t like that today. Today, we were all family. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. And, even though I hung around for the first 10 minutes of the second service to see if the place was packed out again (it was), I still did not want to leave.

Up in Jena, Louisiana, they’re having a revival. It moves around from church to church, and different preachers are bringing the sermons, and from all I hear the Holy Spirit is doing a work there. People are driving in just to get a touch of it and maybe bring some of it back to their church. That’s fine and I recommend it. But for those who live in this corner of Louisiana’s boot, drive over to Franklin Avenue.

Pastors especially would do well to line up a supply preacher one Sunday and plant themselves in a comfortable pew at Franklin Avenue for both morning services. Bring a bottle of water and some mints to tide you over. We “anglos” are not used to 2-hour services, especially followed by another 2-hour service, and we have to prime ourselves for the experience.

The “anglo” pastors who do this will not be able to return home and duplicate what Pastor Luter and his musicians and singers do, and they wouldn’t want to. But they will learn some things about doing church.

What will they learn? I have my own answers, and you’ll get a different list when you come. This is the Holy Spirit’s turf, telling you what changes you need to make to make your worship service more lively and relevant to your people.

The other day I read in the (MS) Baptist Record something the pastor of Oakvale Baptist Church in Brandon, Mississippi wrote. A church member named Kay arrived for the Wednesday evening service with her little granddaughter. On the way, they had passed by a rural church with a cemetery off to one side. The little girl stared at it and said, “Mimi, why doesn’t our church have any dead people?”

The pastor laughed and said, “Because we are a live church!”

I like the story, but have a tiny different slant on its application. Every church has some dead people, but it is absolutely essential that the worship service not be planned by them nor presented by them. Every detail of the service, from the welcome to the offering, from reading the church covenant (!) to presenting the choir specials, and from the sermon to the invitation, should be bathed in prayer from the first, planned in the hearts of the leaders in conference, and presented by Godly, spirit-filled men and women in whom the love of Jesus Christ is flowing.

And when it is all put together, present it with a view to raising the dead.

I stood outside the church as people were arriving for the second service this morning. They were streaming in from all directions. The church has almost no off-street parking (don’t let people fool you into believing you have to have large spacious parking lots to get people to your church) and the cars were lining the streets for blocks in every direction. I found myself acting like a greeter, even though a number of them were waiting back at the front door. “Good morning. Good morning. It’s a great day. Get ready to rejoice.”

Two ladies with skin the color of mine–that’s very pale–got out of a car. “I used to be a member of the old Franklin Avenue Baptist Church,” one said. “We live in Denver now, and my husband had to be here for a meeting. How wonderful it’s the same weekend as this first service back in their building. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

Friday night at the WMU meeting in Baton Rouge, DOM Roddy Conerly told the participants how their association is doing something unique. “We are transitioning some of our old Anglo churches into ethnic churches, and doing so joyfully and peacefully.” I thought of our home church in Birmingham, the wonderful West End Baptist Church, which refused to minister to its changing neighborhood and eventually died. Finally, the congregation sold the property to an African-American church and the members dispersed to other churches. That’s not a good model, and it’s what Roddy was referring to. Better that church would have worked with their association and turned over its facilities intact to the right congregation without a dime being spent. It’s the Lord’s church after all, and not the congregation’s.

Actually, what my friend and colleague Roddy said is happening in Baton Rouge is not new at all. Franklin Avenue Baptist Church did it several decades ago when they saw the hand-writing on the wall, enlisted the assistance of the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans and a young man named Fred Luter was asked to take over the leadership of that church. The rest, as they say, is history.

This article is turning out to be as long as the services this morning, but we have one more thing to add.

In 1932, I believe it was, in the heart of the Great Depression, a Reverend Thomas arrived in New Orleans with his wife. The Lord had placed New Orleans on their heart and they had come to plant a church. They selected the Franklin Avenue area and visited from door to door in search of people interested in being a part of a new congregation. Eventually, they found several and a Catholic lady who offered the use of her garage as a meeting place.

Next, they went over to the Baptist association, then called the City Missions Office, with offices at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. “Are there any funds to help us get started?” they asked. They would need some hymnals and folding chairs among other things.

I don’t want to know who answered their question, because the answer wins the prize for short-sightedness and ignorance.

“There’s no money to start a new church,” the Thomases were told. “We only have $130 in the bank and it’s marked for evangelism.”

Thankfully, the Gentilly Baptist Church lent them folding chairs and hymnals and they were off.

Toward the start of this morning’s service, Pastor Fred Luter told the congregation, “Eleven years ago when we entered this sanctuary, I did not preach the first Sunday. Daniel O’Reagan, pastor of our mother church, Gentilly Baptist Church, and my mentor, Dr. Tony Evans, preached. So, I’ve been asked–who is preaching at our first Sunday back? The answer is: me. Many wanted to come and were willing to preach for us, but I wanted to do it.”