Posted: 9/01/06

Houston faith communities
plan for future hurricanes

By Karen Campbell

Union Baptist Association

HOUSTON—A conference on disaster preparedness—scheduled in 2005 but ironically postponed due to Hurricane Katrina—stressed the importance of planning ahead for hurricanes.

Interfaith Ministries sponsored the day-long event that drew more than 400 participants.

“As we found out during hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, the faith community standing united is a tremendous asset during a time of crisis,” Houston Mayor Bill White said, noting conferences such as this one mean “we’ll all be better prepared to deal with the next storm, and the city is a proud partner in that.”

Other presenters echoed White’s sentiments.

“You saw in Houston a city who worked together,” noted Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, referring to the city’s response to Katrina and Rita. “Our faith was tested in the face of that tragedy. Our faith was strengthened as we provided hope. This year is a great year for preparation, because we’ve seen what can happen.”

Several speakers referenced Accu-Weather predictions for at least 17 named storms in 2006.

With 800,000 to 1 million people living in a surge zone area—what former Kemah Mayor Bill King described as “like a tsunami that batters for 12 hours”—the need for planning and preparation is critical.

King, who serves on the Governor’s Task Force on Evacuation, Transportation and Logistics, gave a firsthand account as one of the evacuees who experienced traffic snarls leaving Houston during the threat of Hurricane Rita.

King offered an overview of the recent report to the governor addressing evacuation plans and a comprehensive presentation on what faith groups can look for and do.

He reviewed four of the major recommendations in the report:

• Command and control.

Noting some smaller towns along evacuation routes refused to reconfigure their city stoplights, King suggested a need for a more streamlined approach to decision making. While the report went with a compromise of a unified regional 15-member council, King confessed the committee solution was not his first choice.

“I subscribe to the adage that ‘for God so loved the world, he did not send a committee,’” he quipped.

• Fueling.

The state has acquired the software to better manage fuel distribution with the industry, King reported.

“Just filling the tanks that are usually half filled during hurricane season” virtually solves the fuel shortages that emerged during evacuation, he said.

• Special needs.

King’s loudest call to the faith community came at the point of addressing the needs of the thousands who fall into the category of “anyone who cannot evacuate self.” Special-needs individuals can register by calling 211 and provide information for retrieval during evacuation. But King noted many are reluctant to provide such information in what they perceive as a government database.

• Traffic management.

King referenced Houston’s incident management as a potential model for the aggressive approach needed during evacuation.

“No matter how brilliant these recommendations, we are never going to be ready for a hurricane (level) five in this area,” King acknowledged, adding Houston can’t seem to evacuate “100,000 people from downtown on a Friday afternoon” without stalls. Evaluating the need for evacuation is one means for addressing the overcrowded routes.

Three risk factors should be considered in any decision about evacuation, he noted—whether a person lives in the surge zone, if the residence is susceptible to flooding and if a building is able to withstand sustained winds. A prolonged lack of utilities and special medical needs also are priority concerns, he added.

Evacuating for convenience—such as not wanting to be without air conditioning or having limited groceries—would fall into the category of those who might want to evacuate after the storm, King suggested.

For more information, see King’s detailed presentation at www.weking. net.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

LIFE GOES ON:
Crossroads project aims to rebuild in New Orleans

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

NEW ORLEANS (ABP)—Last year, New Orleans’ Upper 9th Ward was one of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina, with more than 90,000 homes ruined.

This year, it’s the site of the largest Habitat for Humanity project ever undertaken by a single denomination anywhere in the world.

Teens from a youth group at First Baptist Church in Salado work on a Habitat for Humanity housing project in New Orleans. (RNS photo by Ted Jackson/The Times-Picayune in New Orleans)

Inspired by David Crosby, pastor of First Baptist Church of New Orleans, the venture is called the Baptist Crossroads Project. Organized by the nonprofit Baptist Crossroads Foundation in partnership with Baptist Community Ministries, Crossroads plans to build about 31 houses in three months in an area still abandoned one year after the storm.

But the project predates Katrina. Crosby came up with the idea after a 2004 prayer breakfast where New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said home ownership was the most important factor in eradicating poverty. After First Baptist conducted a “40 Days of Purpose” renewal campaign that fall, the congregation embarked on an effort to build 40 homes.

The $3 million project is funded in part by a $1.5 million matching grant from Baptist Community Ministries. After the storm came, Habitat for Humanity became a matching partner as well. Crossroads plans to complete the initial 31 homes soon, and First Baptist hopes to build 100 houses in the same area over the next two years, according to project coordinator Inman Houston.

“We’re focusing here, because after the storm, this was an area that had great need,” Houston said. “But at the same time, this is an area that can and should come back.” Houston is associate pastor of community ministries and single adults at First Baptist.

To get a house, applicants must undergo a screening process that takes into account family finances and demographics. Each three-bedroom, one-bath house is worth $85,000 to $90,000, but families pay roughly $60,000 for them through a 20-year, no-interest loan.

House recipients also must provide 350 hours of “sweat” equity, said Andrew Crosby, ministry intern this summer at First Baptist and nephew of the pastor. That entails long days working on the purple, blue, pink and yellow houses slowly forming a new neighborhood. Crosby is a second-year student at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary in Waco.

Houston funnels a steady stream of volunteers from all over the country to work on the homes. Most stay for a week, sleeping in surrounding churches. They get free lunches provided by area churches as well.

Habitat for Humanity employee Matt Ritter said Baptist Crossroads averages more than 300 workers a week. Over spring break, more than 4,000 students descended on the area to help gut houses. So far, more than 600 have been completed.

The partnership between Habitat for Humanity and First Baptist of New Orleans works well because it plays to the strengths of both organizations, Houston said. While Habitat has the means to procure loans and administrate large numbers of people, the church has received gifts of money, volunteer support and counsel from state conventions like the Baptist General Convention of Texas and from churches like Dallas’ Park Cities Baptist Church, which gave almost $100,000 in undesignated funds to the New Orleans church.

Playing on those convention connections, First Baptist also provides Habitat with a constant supply of volunteer laborers.

“We can say (to Habitat leaders) that we can commit to give you X-amount of volunteers, as opposed to random individuals who work for one or two days at a time,” Houston said. “We see it like we can provide something that is very helpful for them—a level of volunteers. Honestly this summer, we haven’t had the time or need to do much recruiting.”

The key to keeping volunteer numbers up, more than a year after the storm, is constant contact with people still directly affected. Houston said the congregation has “one foot in the flood zone and one foot out of the flood zone.” As a result, members are faced with displaced people every Sunday morning.

“People who want to move on can’t do that because they sit next to people every Sunday who are rebuilding,” Houston said. “We see our own people every day who can’t escape it. Others who don’t want to go through the flood zone never have to.”

Among local authorities, Houston said, churches have become known as the places to go “if you really want to get something done.” The church has created waiting lists of houses in need of gutting and restoration.

First Baptist Church of New Orleans is unique in itself. In 2004, mostly because of “parking, accessibility and visibility” concerns, it moved from a location in uptown New Orleans to the famous Canal Street, which borders the French Quarter. Now that the church can be seen from the interstate, has adequate parking and makes use of a multipurpose venue, passersby are drawn to the building, Houston said, especially after the hurricane ruined so many other buildings.

“Where we are now is such a perfect location,” Houston said, even though the building sustained considerable, but mostly superficial, damage from the storm. “The church is the venue in New Orleans Parish. For us, we’ve seen that this magnificent building is a draw for the community.”

Now, Houston said, the church has the opportunity to partner with non-Baptist groups in need of space—from housing an Episcopal school for six months to allowing the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra to use the building for practices. They’ve even made the building available to the public school system of New Orleans.

Perhaps the most encouraging development since the hurricane, in terms of the First Baptist building, is the development of a relationship between First Baptist and Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, a primarily African-American congregation of 5,000 people.

Members from Franklin Avenue, who had been meeting only twice a month, recently began meeting each Sunday at 7:30 a.m. in the First Baptist building. First Baptist members sometimes usher in the earlier service, and a real sisterhood between the two churches has emerged, Houston said.

“Certainly this is not the way we would have chosen for that to come about, but we have seen good things happen,” he said.

Ultimately, the most important of those “good things” is intangible—it’s that the houses will show non-Christian homeowners that hope exists for the 9th Ward.

“We feel really energized by this,” Andrew Crosby said. “It’s amazing. This has been a wildly successful year.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

East Texas church sends minister
to southern Louisiana

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

METAIRIE, La.—When David Jochum felt God calling him to leave First Baptist Church in Marshall to help a New Orleans-area church in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the East Texas congregation decided to send him as their missionary to southern Louisiana.

First Baptist Church agreed to pay Jochum’s full salary and benefits as pastor of enlistment at Celebration Church in Metairie, La., for one year. The Marshall church also pledged to continue their financial support up to four years on a sliding scale, as Celebration Church becomes capable of gradually assuming responsibility for the position Jochum will continue to fill there.

“We were unanimous in believing this is what God wanted us to do,” said Pastor David Packer of First Baptist Church in Marshall.

Even though the Marshall church has sufficient financial resources to provide Jochum’s support, the loss of their minister of education and administration involved sacrifice, Packer noted. He recalled an appeal Baptist missionary Lottie Moon once issued from China to churches in the United States: “Send me men who will be missed.”

“We miss David here,” he said. “Now, we’ve moved from the theoretical idea of sending him to dealing with the nitty-gritty of having to work out the details (of coping with a staff vacancy). But we look forward to what God is going to do through him down there.”

Jochum grew up in New Orleans, but he moved away years ago to attend Bible college.

“When I left, I never had any intention of coming back,” he acknowledged.

But when Katrina hit, relatives who still lived in the New Orleans area had to evacuate, and they temporarily stayed with Jochum, his wife and their four children in Marshall. Because of that personal connection, he intently followed news reports from southern Louisiana in the months following the disaster.

“God began to tug at my heart,” Jochum recalled. “He gave me a burden for my home city, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”

About that same time, First Baptist Church in Marshall started spiritual preparation for an Experiencing God weekend—a discipleship event based on Henry Blackaby’s popular book about discovering and obeying God’s will.

“I prayed that if the desire in my heart really was from the Lord, that he would show me what to do,” Jochum said. “I was thinking in terms of a mission project—not anything long-term.”

He discussed his desire to help in New Orleans with Packer. The pastor already had talked to him about his concern, First Baptist Church was not fully making use of the financial resources God had entrusted to them. Their individual concerns began to gel.

“The week before the Experiencing God weekend, the pastor came to me with a radical idea,” Jochum said. “He asked, ‘What if we sent you as our missionary to New Orleans?’”

Jochum knew about the recovery ministry Celebration Church in Metairie was providing in the aftermath of Katrina. So, after continued prayer and discussion, he contacted his friend, Dennis Watson, pastor at Celebration Church, to explore the possibility of joining his staff.

Jochum later found out his e-mail arrived while Watson and his remaining staff were in a prayer meeting. They were asking God how their church could reassemble staff with volunteers who raise their own support. Celebration Church, which drew more than 2,000 in attendance before the hurricane, dropped to about 500 when they resumed worship services five weeks after Katrina.

After receiving an enthusiastic reply from Watson, Jochum and Packer took their proposal to the missions, personnel and finance committees at First Baptist Church and then to the church’s deacons.

“They all unanimously recommended it to the church, and the church unanimously committed to a four-year plan of support,” Jochum said. He believes God has placed Celebration Church in a hurting community to minister at a strategic time.

“The church has been able to minister to people and meet needs, and it’s been at the forefront of recovery efforts,” Jochum said. Two weeks before the storm hit, Crescent City Church merged with Celebration. And another church that lost many of its members in the wake of Katrina recently also voted to merge and give its facilities to Celebration Church.

“The vision now is to be a multi-site church,” Jochum said.

Having a physical presence at multiple sites already has enabled Celebration Church to take a lead in offering relief to families in need and providing housing for volunteer builders, he noted.

Jochum started work in Metairie Aug. 2 as minister to Celebration’s Church’s home-based cell groups.

“Before the storm, the church had more than 100 cell groups. Now there are about 50,” Jochum said. “But we are getting out into the community where people are.”

And he sees incredible growth potential because people who remained in the New Orleans area after Katrina—or who have returned in recent months—have a spiritual hunger.

“Everybody really wants this city to be a better place, and as believers, we’re convinced God wants us to be a force here,” Jochum said.

“We want people to know there is hope in Jesus Christ. They are finding that hope. They need it like they never have before in their lives. And our people here at Celebration Church are sold out to God. They believe we have a mandate to reach this city for Christ.” News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

Texas Baptists urged to adopt
unreached groups in Houston

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

HOUSTON—Significant numbers of people in Texas’ largest city never have heard the gospel.

But the Baptist General Convention of Texas is seeking to change that with a new ministry opportunity supported by the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions.

Cathy Dundas, BGCT intercultural ministries strategist, is helping Texas Baptists adopt the 100 unreached—or nearly unreached—people groups in Houston.

None of these groups has a Baptist church that shares the gospel in its language. Few have a church of any kind to minister to them.

Sharing the gospel with these groups is like ministering in a foreign mission field, Dundas said. Texas Baptist groups—including churches, Sunday school classes and youth groups—who would like to minister to unreached groups in Houston are asked to commit to three months of prayer before taking on any ministry projects.

Then they are required to go through cultural training before they become involved in hands-on ministry.

This preparation allows God to build a passion in Texas Baptist hearts for the people groups they adopt, Dundas said. These actions are what many churches do before undertaking a large missions effort.

“I just think that we’re very ‘doing’ oriented when it comes to missions projects,” she said.

“It’s what mission project can we do? With unreached people groups, prayer is the key. If you don’t pray, you’re just doing a bunch of empty activities.”

Ministering to unreached people groups changes lives today but also lays the foundation for larger ministry in the future. There are Vietnamese Baptist churches today because Texas Baptists ministered to Vietnamese refugees 25 years ago.

From there, deep relationships formed, Christians shared the gospel and churches formed.

Refugee groups still are a place where Texas Baptists can make an impact on people groups, Dundas noted.

Some of the unreached people groups will be ministered to most effectively through refugee agencies.

Texas Baptists can have a great impact on these unreached groups, Dundas believes. But they are going to have to be willing to get outside their comfort zone. News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

Miracle Farm offers refuge
to Hurricane Rita evacuees

By Courtney Cole

Miracle Farm

BRENHAM—When Hurricane Rita struck southeastern Texas, residents of communities near Orange found shelter from the storm at Miracle Farm. And everyone involved believed the provision was a miracle—or at least a divine appointment.

“We had extensively planned and were prepared to minister to families that had been displaced by this catastrophic storm,” said Jack Meeker, executive director of Miracle Farm, a childcare agency for boys operated by Children at Heart Ministries. “We soon realized that God had hand-picked a special group to be directed into our circle of care.”

Steve Griffith, coach of the Little Cypress-Mauriceville Bears baseball team, agreed.

“Finding a place to go wasn’t hard, because it was meant to be,” he said.

The team and their families searched and prayed for a safe place to flee as Hurricane Rita turned their town upside down. Griffith believes God responded by directing him to Brenham’s high school baseball coach, Jim Long, who referred him to Miracle Farm.

“It became clear that as we were looking for someone to help us, they were looking for someone to help,” Griffith explained.

Within a few days, 70 people relocated to their new home in the Miracle Farm Retreat Center bunkhouses. They shared meals with staff and residents.

“For more than two weeks, our staff and boys had the unique privilege of hosting and ministering to these special guests,” Meeker said. “Our prayer was that Miracle Farm could not only provide a safe haven, but that they would also experience an outpouring of God’s love while they were with us.”

Individuals and churches from Independence Baptist Association helped by contributing groceries, preparing and delivering meals, giving financially and collecting personal care items, paper goods, linens and pillows.

“We are truly thankful for each person who helped make this special group’s stay not only meaningful and comfortable, but also confirmed that God is working through his people,” Meeker said.

The displaced Golden Triangle residents responded by helping out with campus projects, giving back financially and encouraging the boys at Miracle Farm.

“The great people at Miracle Farm went above and beyond the call in an outstanding way to care for us like we were family,” Griffith recalled. “We have established many friendships that will last a lifetime.”

His wife, Lana, added: “Never in my life have I experienced such an outpouring of concern and Christian love than what we received during our stay … by the staff, the residents and the community. Our family is forever changed and grateful. We feel blessed to call you all friends.”

Griffith’s baseball team returned to Miracle Farm several months later while traveling to a tournament.

They presented the children’s home with a mirrored tile as a token of appreciation.

Miracle Farm benefited from its ministry to the storm victims, Meeker said.

“We thank Coach Griffith for trusting us to touch the lives of those closest to him,” he said. “They all touched our lives as well in ways we will always remember.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

Nederland church marks
new beginning in new sanctuary

By Elizabeth Staples

Communications Intern

NEDERLAND—Hurricane Rita des-troyed the facility of First Baptist Church in Nederland, but it also reinforced the importance of unity among the congregation.

Winds from the Sept. 24, 2005, hurricane stripped the roofs off all the church’s buildings. The steeple fell through the roof, allowing water into the sanctuary and ruining the carpet. Most of the pews, the steeple and carpet in other buildings needed to be replaced. The building suffered nearly $1.5 million damage.

Pastor David Higgs prays with a couple who joined First Baptist Church in Nederland. The decision took place during the re-opening of the church’s sanctuary. View a video clip from First Baptist Nederland here.

The congregation immediately set to work when the city re-opened after the hurricane. The church rented a tent from the Ohio State Fair and met in a parking lot until it could move its Sunday services into its education building.

“Church is the people of God coming together for a common belief, to trust him, to serve him, and to go out and do the things that he would have us to do,” Deacon Bubba Martin said.

Although there was much to do in the restoration process, the project inspired members of the church and people in the community to work together and rebuild.

“People have a tendency to come together in a time of need and a time of disaster,” Deacon Bruce Stracener said. “We saw different groups of people coming together that probably otherwise never would have met one another, never would have worked together. It’s actually been a time of building good relationships—not only with one another, but also depending more on God.”

During the intervening months, many changes have taken place at First Baptist Church. More than 150 volunteers came together from the area to help restore the church.

“What God takes away, he replenishes twofold. And someday we’ll look over our shoulder at this and thank God for what he has done for our church and for our community,” Stracener said.

The congregation was filled with emotion as it anticipated its first time to see the sanctuary restored with new colors and new design. The renovations not only impacted the church, but also the community as a whole.

First Baptist Church “is a lighthouse,” Martin said. “It stands out in this community as a place where people are worshipping God.”

“Our preacher has called us to a time of prayer that we would all be in one accord, that we would all lay our own agendas aside to pray and put our focus to what God wants our focus to be, and that’s to win our community for Christ,” said Phyllis Mosely, a member of First Baptist Church.

The church “is on Main Street. It’s been here. It’s well known, and that’s our vision—that we would win the lost people of Nederland for Christ,” she said.

Help from the Baptist General Convention of Texas brought hope to First Baptist Church in Nederland, as well as much of Southeast Texas, said Montie Martin, executive director of Golden Triangle Baptist Association.

The prayers and support from Texas Baptists have played a huge role in rebuilding the community.

“We would not be opening this sanctuary within eight months if it had not been for the help of Texas Baptists,” said Pastor David Higgs.

“The BGCT came with monies and other support for our people. They also supplied some relief efforts. They came with a chainsaw crew and also made funding available to people who needed funds to buy food and clothing and things of this nature.”

Even though the sanctuary has been repaired, still other buildings are in the process of being restored, Higgs said. It may take years to restore all that has been lost, but the sanctuary, the community and the ways God has met needs have brought hope to the congregation.

“The greatest thing Texas Baptists can do is to continue to lift us up in prayer,” Montie Martin said. “When the state of Texas lifts us up to the Lord in prayer, there is no greater thing they could possibly do.”

Rebuilding the sanctuary marks a “new beginning” for First Baptist Church, its members and its community, Higgs said.

“I have truly begun to realize that with God, nothing is impossible. When we came back from the hurricane, everything looked impossible. It looked bleak. Everything was in ruin. And now we see firsthand that truly everything is possible with God. He truly can make beauty out of ashes, and he is a God of restoration.”

View a video clip from First Baptist Nederland here.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

Nehemiah’s Vision helps
Southeast Texas recover from Rita

By Elizabeth Staples

Communications Intern

VIDOR—Texas Baptists continue to help restore homes destroyed by Hurricane Rita, even as Southeast Texas residents make their way through another hurricane season.

This summer, volunteers from around the state lent a hand through Nehemiah’s Vision, a nonprofit organization facilitating disaster recovery ministry in Southeast Texas.

“Nehemiah’s Vision has given our entire Southeast Texas region a focal point to work in channeling those resources,” said Charles Pierce, a member of Nehemiah’s Vision board of directors. “It’s the coordination and focus for folks who want to donate goods, services, building products or food. We work with a lot of organizations, and we are the focal point for relief coming in.”

Golden Triangle Baptist Association leaders started Nehemiah’s Vision to share God’s love by assisting in recovery efforts in Texas and in future crises elsewhere. The Baptist General Convention of Texas assisted the groups’ launch with disaster response funds.

“It was born in the midst of a very acute thing that happened with Katrina and Rita hitting the same summer and overwhelming our nation’s ability to cope with disaster,” said Andy Narramore, executive director of Nehemiah’s Vision. “Our Baptist people were able to give hope and respond to those people who had no answers because it was such a big thing.”

Since Hurricane Rita hit, Nehemiah’s Vision has completed 125 jobs.

“Directly, we have received 375 requests, with numerous others coming indirectly, of names and information of people asking for our help,” Narramore said. “Our goal is to rebuild a hope in families that are hurting in disasters and point to Jesus in that process.”

Volunteers from churches, associations and Baptist Student Ministries continue to call Nehemiah’s Vision, asking how they can help. The association then finds the strengths of specific churches and sends them where they will be needed most.

A nursing home in Vidor was donated to Nehemiah’s Vision as housing for volunteers. When reconstruction of the nursing home is completed, it will provide lodging for up to 175 volunteers.

“God used hurricanes Katrina and Rita to accelerate and clarify both the needs and a means to meet them,” Narramore said. “Nehemiah’s Vision provides an avenue to go beyond relief into rebuilding and recovery.”

Volunteers are able to clean up the damage and form relationships with people who are “not only accepting the help but the gospel,” he added.

An emergency food-service unit is being built to feed between 8,000 and 10,000 people each day.

Mobile shower, laundry and sleeping units also are being built to be used by volunteers and workers, allowing them to serve longer periods.

Texas Baptist Men has helped Nehemiah’s Vision with the rebuilding, as well as providing disaster-relief training for local volunteers in specialized areas, such as work with chainsaw and mud-out crews.

The local Red Cross asked Nehemiah’s Vision for volunteers to help replace the blue roofs put on homes soon after the storms hit. The old tarps are tearing and shredding and will not stand up against upcoming storms.

To serve through Nehemiah’s Vision or for more information, call (409) 769-1616, e-mail nehemiahsvision@sbcglobal.net or visit www.nehemiahsvision.com. News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

New Orleans churches
radically changed by Katrina

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

NEW ORLEANS (ABP)—In once-vibrant New Orleans, the liveliest things in vast swaths of the city seem to be weeds exploding from once-manicured medians, lawns and parks.

And the rats, mosquitoes, mold and nutria—huge rodents that thrive in the Louisiana swamps—are the only other creatures swarming neighborhoods that—a year after Hurricane Katrina—still are largely devoid of human beings.

Despite that—and the continuing disappointments stemming from human mismanagement of a continuing disaster—Joe McKeever sees hope in the devastated Crescent City.

“We have a saying: This is a good time to be Baptist in New Orleans,” said McKeever, executive director of the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans.

After Katrina made landfall Aug. 29, 2005, resulting floods ended up inundating about 80 percent of the city and drowning more than 1,500 people.

Baptist disaster-relief teams that converged on the heavily Catholic area—legendarily difficult mission territory for Baptists and other evangelicals—often were the first religious presence many New Orleans residents saw after Katrina.

The Baptist presence has continued in New Orleans’ long-term recovery efforts, and Katrina’s aftermath has brought both ruin and rebirth to many area churches. Nonetheless, it continues to be tough for McKeever and the congregations and city he serves.

“I’m not really (an associational) director of missions. I’m a pastor,” he said. McKeever barely had been on the job a year when the hurricane struck. He previously had been a successful pastor at a large suburban New Orleans church and was puzzled why God would call him to the associational position.

But after Katrina hit, he realized the association’s churches and the pastors needed a pastor. “They did not need a great administrator. They did not need a mechanic. They needed a pastor,” he said.

A visit to a recent monthly meeting for the association’s pastors illustrates why so many ministers needed ministering in the hurricane’s wake.

Many had to evacuate. Jose Mathews, founder and pastor of Discipleship Baptist Church in the heavily flooded New Orleans East area, said his church and parsonage took on more than six feet of water.

“Most of my congregation were renters, and they’re spread abroad, and they’ve vowed not to come back,” said Matthews, who recently became pastor of a church in Baton Rouge, La.

He came to the meeting of his former colleagues in New Orleans to bid them farewell.

“It’s been hard, but it’s been interesting to see the hand of God in all this destruction,” he said. “Just hold onto God’s unchanging hand. There’s one thing we can depend on in life, and that’s change.”

That definitely was the case for Jerry Garvey, pastor of One Faith Baptist Church in New Orleans. His devastated congregation still meets, but they’re doing it in Texas.

“What I’ve been doing for the last 11 months for the most part has been ministering to a congregation that went with us to the Houston area,” he said. “We’re meeting from house to house still.”

Like many Katrina evacuees from flooded areas of New Orleans, Garvey and his church members have not been able to return to their homes. Nonetheless, he drives back once a week to maintain a connection to the city, in hopes that he and his people may one day be able to return.

“It’s my understanding … that the Lord wants me here, and that’s why I make that trip back and forth,” he said. “Many of us in this area find that New Orleans is in our DNA. But more than just what’s in our DNA, I have a love and a great concern for the people of God here. … I do believe that this is where God wants me.”

The Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans went from about 140 member churches before the storm to 35 operating a few weeks after Katrina, McKeever said. Now, the figure of operating churches is back up to about 80. But many of the former congregations likely will not rebound.

“Every one of the churches has gone through, is going through, some sort of radical change,” he said.

Occasionally that change is positive.

Jefferey Friend, pastor of Hopeview Baptist Church in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans, said his church building took on 13 feet of water and industrial waste from a nearby Mobil Oil facility. His congregation decided to combine with Suburban Baptist Church in nearby New Orleans East. Friend became co-pastor alongside Suburban’s pastor, Jeff Box, and both congregations meet together at Suburban’s facility.

Friend’s church is historically black; Box’s church historically white.

“Before the storm, it was all chiefs looking out for individual entities; now it’s about kingdom-building rather than building our own individual kingdom. There’s no need to have three churches in the same community when you barely have enough for one building,” Friend said.

There are other signs of hope. A Spanish-speaking church in New Orleans’ western suburbs has started a Portuguese-speaking congregation for the hundreds of Brazilian migrant workers who have come to the city to do construction.

A tiny Baptist mission on heavily Catholic Delacroix Island, southeast of New Orleans, has exploded in growth following the storm—even though its building was wiped off the map and the church has been meeting outdoors in stifling heat.

But there’s still plenty of trepidation in New Orleans. “The first thing that concerns us is that we better not have another hurricane in the next year or so,” McKeever said. “If we do and it’s a major one, this will be a ghost town.” News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

Churches become rallying
points for New Orleans recovery

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

NEW ORLEANS (ABP)—Hurricane Katrina is changing New Orleans’ churches as surely as it changed the face of the flooded city itself—and some of those churches are serving as rallying points in the city’s recovery.

On a recent sweltering August day, Steven Meriwether sweated through his white T-shirt as he knelt inside the living room of a shotgun home on Toledano Street in the Mid-City neighborhood.

Meriwether, pastor of the city’s St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, was attaching squares of prefabricated flooring designed to look like parquet in a house that had taken on six feet of floodwater after Katrina. Volunteers from his church, along with visiting mission teams from churches around the country, had gutted the home.

Meriwether, who before the storm served a well-heeled congregation of about 140 regular attenders in the city’s genteel Uptown area, now is employing his exper-tise in home renovation about as often as his expertise in homiletics.

“We’ve gutted and cleaned out about 30-something houses,” he said while using a table saw to cut a piece of trim for the Toledano Street home. It belonged to Estelle Smith, a longtime nursery worker at St. Charles Avenue. A team from Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, N.C., worked with St. Charles Avenue on the project.

St. Charles Avenue opened up its facilities to house visiting home-renovation teams from churches like Binkley Memorial.

Meriwether said his church first began gutting and renovating homes in the storm’s aftermath—using their own money and donated funds—by starting with the houses of church members and employees who had sustained flooding. Even many middle-class homeowners in New Orleans did not have sufficient insurance to cover the damage to their homes. Many homes sat for weeks, even after the floodwaters receded, with mold eating away at their interiors.

Government funding for such clean-up work and repairs has been slow to arrive. Less than half the city’s pre-Katrina population of 450,000 has returned to their homes.

St. Charles Avenue Church experienced only a 25 percent drop in attendance due to members who left after Katrina. But its life as a congregation is vastly different.

Meriwether, who now is the church’s only full-time staff minister, spends much of his time coordinating and working with new disaster-relief teams. The New Orleans Habitat for Humanity chapter, needing additional office space in the wake of Katrina, took over parts of the church’s educational buildings.

Meriwether remains unsure about the city’s future.

“We still probably don’t know what the bottom is in the city, as far as what’s coming back,” he said.

Meanwhile, across the Mississippi River in New Orleans’ Algiers section, another Baptist congregation is re-envisioning its role more as a volunteer center than the large suburban congregation it had been historically.

Oak Park Baptist Church sustained only minor wind damage from Katrina and was located in one of the few parts of the city to avoid flood damage. Algiers also was the first New Orleans neighborhood to regain city services in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. The New Orleans Police Department even used it as a headquarters briefly during that chaotic period.

The hurricane simply exacerbated the church’s longstanding trend toward statistical decline. Interim Associate Pastor Joseph Kay said attendance dropped from about 350 to about 150, but the church has educational space for 1,000.

The church decided that, with minor repairs, it could convert its educational buildings into a volunteer barracks of sorts. Members installed bunk beds and bathrooms—complete with showers—in former classrooms.

Now the educational buildings can house upward of 300 volunteers a week.

Like many New Orleans residents, the church’s entire pastoral staff left the city and decided not to return. So the congregation asked Kay—who served as Oak Park’s minister of music during a more statistically favorable part of the church’s life in the 1970s and ’80s—to take a leave of absence from his job as a music-software developer in North Carolina and return to Oak Park on an interim basis.

“It’s the most rewarding ministry I’ve ever had,” Kay said. “There’s a higher level of commitment here now than there was in my previous years of service,” he said.

As an example, Kay noted that, although Oak Park’s Sunday attendance is only a third of what it was prior to Katrina, its donations have not dropped proportionately. That’s come in handy, for instance, in paying the church’s utility bills, which have increased exponentially due to the hundreds of people staying in its facilities each week.

Sarah Parnell, another former Oak Park employee who came out of retirement to serve again as the church’s secretary, said the congregation housed 410 volunteers in one week last month. “We’ve really had to stretch it to get them in,” she said, with a laugh.

The volunteers come from youth and adult mission teams coordinated through the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. Many of them are doing reconstruction work in the 80 percent of the city that was flooded.

“We expect to be a volunteer center for some time to come,” Kay said.

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Posted: 9/01/06

Baptist volunteers make impact on Crescent City

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

NEW ORLEANS (ABP)—After serving the homeless for decades in New Orleans, Tobey Pitman finally is making significant inroads among leaders and homeowners in the predominantly Catholic region.

That’s not to say he hasn’t had noteworthy success with his Brantley Mission Center for the homeless. But since Hurricane Katrina hit, the Baptist missionary has led volunteers to help storm victims in ways other groups—religious or otherwise—have not. And that has made all the difference.

“Baptists have arrived,” Pitman said. “We’ve given carefully for so many years. But since the hurricane, we’ve given wholeheartedly. Homeowners tell me that if it weren’t for church groups, nothing would be different.”

Pitman is the executive director of Operation NOAH Rebuild, a North American Mission Board organization that coordinates, houses, feeds and debriefs volunteers who come from across the country to help rebuild New Orleans.

The organization provides the framework and oversight for reconstruction, while local congregations and state conventions do the work of rebuilding. NOAH leaders plan to help churches rehabilitate 1,000 homes and 20 churches. NAMB is funding the two-year Southern Baptist project, which has received positive feedback from homeowners and municipal leaders.

“You’re nobody in New Orleans if you’re a Baptist person, but if you’re a Catholic, you’ve got it made,” Pitman said. “Baptists have been here for many years, trying to earn our place at the table and (contribute) input and value in the eyes of the city.”

Cathy Pitman, his wife and co-worker, agreed. She said while municipal committees spend time attempting to cut through bureaucracy and inefficiency, church-led groups have demonstrated the love of God in tangible ways.

“When our city wasn’t there, the churches were there to help,” she said. “When the churches were working, the city (boards) were waiting to come to a decision.”

A significant manifestation of that servant-attitude is NOAH’s Volunteer Village—three floors in the downtown World Trade Center that serve as a base camp for hundreds of volunteers who trek to the city each week. The village opened in early July and immediately housed more than 800 people working on 46 projects.

The formerly empty space consists of large windowed rooms with cement floors, wooden bunks, and specially made shower stalls lining the walls. A local businessman has donated 24,000 square feet of expensive, hotel-quality carpet, which is partially installed. Complete with an industrial-sized kitchen and parking accommodations, the area sits a block from New Orleans’ nightlife. It’s the perfect place to house large groups of enthusiastic volunteers.

Pitman secured the floors from a businessman that originally had planned to use them as a hostel for construction workers. When few workers showed up to use the place, however, he agreed to sell Pitman the beds, showers, linens and other living accoutrements. Now Baptist workers pay $20 a night for a bed, three meals a day, parking spaces, insurance and construction badges. Not bad, considering that parking alone in the French Quarter costs as much as $27 a night.

And while the village acts as the main home for volunteers, it by no means stands alone. Operation NOAH Rebuild’s 13 staff members support the effort through the office, construction, warehouse and chaplain divisions. Pitman expects eventually to hire more than 20 people for the project.

In his change of focus from the homeless center to NOAH, Pitman said, he simply waited for the city’s biggest spiritual need “to come to the surface.”

“New Orleans is no different than any other mega-urban city in America,” Pitman said. “New Orleans has learned to run their sin up the flag pole and make a buck off of it. The others just sweep it under the rug.”

Plus, Pitman added, the Bible says where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. “I work in the most graced city in America,” he said with a smile.

Ideally, that grace will abound in the form of skilled electricians and a steady flow of workers. The success of the NOAH program depends on volunteers. Workers certified as electricians or plumbers make home reconstruction go even faster, since electricity and plumbing are needed before interior parts like drywall and flooring are added.

As work crews continue to cycle through Volunteer Village, another hurricane season is under way—quietly so far. How dangerous the season becomes could determine how fall and winter reconstruction efforts fare, Pitman said. But the next hurricane is a subject people have learned simply to avoid.

“Mum’s the word,” he said. News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

Volunteer director feels
calling to restore Mississippi town

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss. (ABP)—When Amy Hardee came from North Carolina to what locals call “the Pass” immediately after Hurricane Katrina, the place was a mess.

A year after Katrina’s monstrous storm surge virtually wiped Pass Christian, Miss., off the map, it’s still something of a mess. But thanks in part to Hardee, at least it’s a far better-organized mess—and one she is working diligently to return to its former glory as a Southern beach town.

“The real problem is that our volunteers are drying up—that people think a year is long enough … to be able to recover. And it’s not,” she said. “We’re just getting the debris picked up. We’re just getting to the edge where we’re going to start building.”

Hardee has become one of the organizational gurus at a small temporary building locals have dubbed the Gray Hut. It is the decimated town’s volunteer coordination center, where residents go to request help gutting a home and volunteer groups visit to find out what should be done to help ongoing recovery.

Sitting in the building, the minister and former Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missions volunteer from Hillsborough, N.C., recalled how she has given virtually all her free time the past year to help a town nearly 800 miles away recover from oblivion.

Less than a month after the hurricane’s Aug. 29, 2005, landfall, Hardee—who currently serves as minister of education at a Presbyterian church—accompanied a truckload of emergency supplies donated by Hillsborough’s citizens and destined for Pass Christian.

She fully intended to return to North Carolina after that.

But what she found compelled her to stay for awhile, and then return nine times in the past year, including a stint that began June 1 and lasted through the first week of August.

Pass Christian and the nearby towns of Bay St. Louis, Waveland and Long Beach were Ground Zero for Katrina’s storm surge. The wall of water broke records for the area, with churning water at heights estimated at 30 feet or more above mean sea level, flattening almost everything within a half-mile of the beachfront.

When Hardee arrived, there still were two-story-high piles of debris from beachfront antebellum mansions, historic churches and the shotgun houses of the impoverished. Around town, she found several points of distribution for emergency supplies with lots of donated goods, lots of people who needed help and lots of volunteers. But there was little accompanying coordination that could link residents’ needs with outside resources to meet them.

A natural organizer, Hardee decided she had better coordinate the relief efforts. “I went by and asked everybody for their spiral notebook” that various supply-distribution sites had been keeping, she said. They contained the names of residents who needed help and names of volunteers with skills or resources.

Those scattered spiral notebooks have been turned by Hardee and her fellow organizer—Pass resident Mariah Furze—into a computer database. The various points of distribution and volunteer coordination have given way to the Gray Hut, now the nerve center of the town’s reconstruction effort. A “tent city” of eager college-age AmeriCorps volunteers is across the street.

Volunteers who have passed through the Gray Hut have managed to finish projects requested by local residents at 114 sites in the Pass. But now, Hardee said, the really hard work begins.

“Now we’re reaching the point where all those little jobs are done,” she said—and by “little jobs,” she means everything from lot-clearing to gutting flooded houses. “Now we’re trying to figure out how to get plumbers paid for, how to get electricians paid for.”

Hardee said the town desperately needs skilled volunteers. While hundreds of workers from church youth groups and civic organizations came through this summer, she said, professionals and artisans who can begin reconstruction work in earnest are needed.

“So, the volunteers who came were greatly appreciated, but we’re in need of skilled labor now,” she said.

She also needs a long-term recovery plan and a group to implement it. Now that federal dollars for reconstruction finally are beginning to trickle down, she said, Pass Christian officials and others on the Mississippi Coast need to spend them wisely.

Hardee is working with government and Red Cross officials to get a long-term recovery committee up and running in the Pass. That group can help deal with many other post-Katrina problems she’s run across. News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Posted: 9/01/06

Sabine Pass churches
focus on rebuilding community

By George Henson

Staff Writer

SABINE PASS—Sabine Pass lost both its Baptist churches to Hurricane Rita. Nearly a year later, the two congregations are looking to rebuild a community as much as they are their church buildings.

Dale Martin, pastor of Sabine Pass Christian Fellowship, has put his emphasis on rebuilding homes lost at the same time the hurricane destroyed his church’s facility.

His congregation worships in a trailer supplied by the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Hurricane Rita lifted the congregation’s previous home off four-foot piers and then dropped it back down, splitting the building in half.

Bible recovered from the disaster's remains.

While plans are to rebuild the building for the congregation that once again numbers about 30 people each Sunday, that is not Martin’s focus.

Of the 258 homes in Sabine Pass, 116 were destroyed, and that’s where Martin has concentrated his attention.

“I’ve always said that God will provide for the church if the church will provide for the community,” Martin said. “My philosophy has always been that you build a church by building a community.”

Churches from across the state have contributed to the recovery, including a church in The Woodlands that donated $200,000 and churches in Groves and Simonton that donated $10,000 each, Martin noted.

Volunteers from across Texas and other states also have supplied manpower that was greatly needed and appreciated, Martin said.

The need for volunteers is as great as it ever was, however.

“We need folks that are able to do just about everything. We need carpenters, electricians, people who can make curtains—really anybody who wants to work, we have a job for them,” he said.

George Hill Jr., minister of music at First Baptist Church, said it was hard to see the church’s previous building go. The 143-year-old structure still was standing after the floods receded, but its condition was so bad it had to be torn down.

“That was a very, very hard thing to do,” he said.

The congregation now meets in a nearby Methodist church, but Hill said reconstruction efforts on a piece of property across the street from the former site are well under way.

The sanctuary will sit on piers 12 feet off the ground to try to prevent flooding a second time. The new structure will be about three times larger than the previous building, and church leaders hope it will be completed by Thanksgiving.

A ground-level floor is planned that will provide a place for the community to gather he said. Plans include a room where movies can be viewed, a game room and other facilities to help people in the community know there is a place for them.

“There are no picture shows or anything around here for anyone to go to, so this will give the people in Sabine Pass a place to go,” Hill said.

The ground floor will have “break-away walls, so that if another flood comes, the walls will just break away so the water can pass on through,” he explained.

Those plans are long-range, but Hill said what has been accomplished so far could only have been done through the help of people across the country. Financial aid has come from as close as Westgate Baptist Church in Beaumont, and as far away as St. Louis, Mo., where First Baptist Church provided $30,000 to help with the reconstruction.

Volunteers have come from throughout Texas, as well as Chicago, New York and California, he said.

“It’s amazing the people we’ve met who have contributed to our rebuilding,” he said.

Hill is excited because the new building will retain a special relic from the former structure.

“One of the most wonderful things is that we got to save the bell from our old church that had been there pretty much from the beginning,” he said. “It’s got a crack in it now like the Liberty Bell, but we’re going to have a place for it in our new building. It’s going to be wonderful.” News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.