This week, New Orleans has been hosting the national (annual) gathering of the state directors of evangelism from across the country. Included among these leaders were their associate staff members, professors of evangelism from our six SBC seminaries, and leaders in this work from our North American Mission Board. All in all, there must have been two or three hundred here, including a few spouses, all of them champions of the Lord’s work.

Tuesday afternoon, we chartered four buses for tours of the Katrina-affected areas of metro New Orleans. Freddie Arnold, David Rhymes, Keith Manuel (former pastor of Calvary here, now associate in our state evangelism office), and I were tour guides. We left the Westin Hotel on Poydras and drove north into Lakeview, across to Gentilly, down Franklin Avenue, eastward on Galvez to see the Baptist Crossroads/Musicians Village home sites in the Ninth Ward, out Claiborne Street into St. Bernard Parish, past Celebration-St. Bernard and FBC-Chalmette churches, north on Paris Road to Interstate 10, and then westward back into the city. We drove onto the campus of our seminary where an official boarded each bus to give us the grand tour of this site. Then, it was back to the French Quarter for caf