I’ve learned this week of three church mergers being discussed in our Baptist association. Only one am I at liberty to mention. The flooded-and-decimated First Baptist Church of Arabi has voted to “merge” with Metairie’s Celebration Church. This basically means their building site, soon to be bull-dozed and cleared off by St. Bernard Parish, will be deeded over to Celebration as will some of their financial assets. This will allow Celebration to begin an extension of their ministry there, on the other side of New Orleans.

Celebration Church is a Willow-Creek-model, I think it’s fair to say, with cell groups meeting during the week. Pastor Dennis Watson is their founding pastor, having come from the First Baptist Church of Chalmette over 15 years ago, so he’s familiar with the area of their new ministry. Celebration has grown to be one of our largest churches, second in the association only to Fred Luter’s Franklin Avenue Baptist Church. Last year, just a few days before Katrina vented her wrath on our area, Celebration merged with Crescent City Baptist Church in Metairie, a congregation that had fallen onto hard times. They began having services at both sites, and the future looked great. The hurricane did a lot of damage at both locations, but flooded the larger Airline Drive site, with millions of dollars in damage. Volunteers restored the “Crescent City” site on Transcontinental, and they have been meeting there ever since. Work continues at the Airline location. Ministry tents occupy most of the parking lot.

With one of the other two merger discussions, leaders are discussing and praying and getting excited about what this could mean. As one pastor said to me Thursday, “I know the Lord can use small churches, but if you won’t take this the wrong way, Joe…” I said, “Go ahead.” “We are cursed with too many tiny, struggling churches in this city. We need some stronger churches with more effective ministries.” I agree wholeheartedly.

I took some flack in this website months ago for saying this very thing. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not against small churches. I like to quote Francis Schaeffer: “There are no small churches and no big preachers.” He makes a great point. But it’s not entirely the case. A church is too small when it never has enough workers, never has enough money to do anything but keep its own building up, never sees beyond its front door. There are some great small churches and some that desperately need an infusion of members and vision and resources before they will become effective.

I am a product of a small, rural, wonderfully-effective church, the New Oak Grove Free Will Baptist Church of Nauvoo, Alabama. But it was the larger church in the city–Birmingham’s West End Baptist Church–with a full-time staff, exciting youth ministries, and visionary laymen that built on the earlier foundation and had the greater impact on my life.

Take nothing I say here as against small churches. Take everything to mean I am opposed to weak, ineffective churches (of whatever size) that require all their resources just to keep their buildings maintained and their insurance and preacher paid. I would never, ever be so impudent or presumptuous to approach any of these churches and suggest they go out of business or be absorbed into another church. That’s a matter for the Owner; I’m just His helper.

Mergers alone will not solve anything. But if they are Holy Spirit-inspired, each merging congregation will bring leaders and members and resources which the other needs, and the result will be like a great marriage, stronger together than the sum of their parts.

Saturday was the primary election for the mayor of Kenner and the city council members. As I write this, the polls are still open. Nothing was on the ballot for my district of Jefferson Parish, so the trip to my voting precinct this morning was futile. Only later did I realize why the building was dark. (At first, I thought they had moved the voting place; that is happening all over the city.) (I’m so fanatical about voting, I go to the polls when the only issue is some minor office or constitutional change. I figure my vote counts several times as much when only a fraction of the electorate show up.)

Louisiana is shutting down Saturday night for a few hours and watching a ball game. LSU is going against UCLA in the “Final Four,” basketball’s college championship. Winners of the two games will play for all the marbles Monday night. Most of our people desperately need and are enjoying the diversion.

Saturday, a joint effort from several churches and the Global Maritime Ministries put on a block party on the riverside in Gretna for a FEMA village of trailers occupied by port workers. In addition to Calvary and FBC Gretna, a large contingent from Calvary, Shreveport, was on hand with games and music, giveaways, facepainting, literature on the Christian life, etc. I sat under a tent and drew people from 11 o’clock until after 2. Great fun. Someone asked later if my doing this (I did it last Sunday evening for Memorial Church also) falls under any of my job description as a Director of Missions. I said, “I honestly don’t spend a lot of time reflecting on my job description. I just think about ‘what can I do to help our churches.'”

The odd thing is that after Katrina, when I started suggesting that churches merge, some felt threatened by the permanency of that. So I dropped that word ‘merge’ and started encouraging the affected churches to worship together temporarily until their communities return and it’s time to start rebuilding. Now, the churches themselves are picking up the concept of merging. I had nothing to do with any of it. Which makes sense, now that I think about it.

Because I can remember when I said through my tears, “Father, I don’t know how to help these churches and this city.” He answered back, “It’s not about you. It’s about Me and what I will do.” That was so liberating.

God is at work. On so many fronts, on so many levels, on so many hearts. In so many ways.