Hard Lessons from Katrina

Discoveries we have made since the hurricane
from Joe McKeever


(Twice in North Carolina on Sunday, January 29, I told my tarheel
friends some discoveries we are making post-Katrina. I keep tweaking
that message, and today--February 5--I'm sharing it with the folks
at the First Baptist Church of Luling, on the west bank from New
Orleans, and this week with the directors of missions at the Texas
Baptist evangelism conference at the FBC of Euless.)

"How blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee; in whose heart
are the highways to Zion! Passing through the valley of Baca
(weeping), they make it a spring... They go from strength to
strength." (Psalm 84:5-7)

1. Everyone down here was affected by the hurricane.

At first, we thought you had to have at least some building damage
to be among the suffering. Of course, hundreds of thousands lost
their homes due to the flooding that followed the hurricane, but
another hundred thousand or more in the western half of the metro
area had typical storm damage caused by wind and rain. What we're
finding out, nearly six months post-K, is that every single person
down here was affected.

Every church lost some members, every church had members who
suffered, every person has friends who were hurt. Every business
suffered and many thousands remain shuttered. And in the rare case
of a citizen who came through unscathed and knows no one who was
hurt, whose business is prospering and whose church is normal, they
still see the devastation of New Orleans every time they drive that
way and they hear of it continuously. It's all the news there is in
the Times-Picayune and on the radio talk shows. Everyone is
affected. It follows therefore that...

2. Everyone is sick and tired of the subject.

On the NBC Nightly News the other evening, Brian Williams told of
some critical letters his network is receiving because of the
on-going coverage of the rebuilding of New Orleans. "Enough with New
Orleans already" and "Give it a rest" were typical. He explained
that since millions were displaced by the two hurricanes, the
coastline of the USA was rearranged, a major city was devastated,
with hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed, and billions of
government money being spent to reclaim the area, this was a major
story which they intended to cover to the completion, and how people
feel about it is beside the point. I wrote him an email that evening
thanking him and said, "We surely understand the people who are sick
and tired of the subject. We are, too. We're ready for it to go
away. We wake up every morning wishing it had all been a bad dream.
But there it is." The result is a witch's brew of depression,
sadness, the blues, fatigue, and who knows what all else, all of it
poured upon this entire population. No one is unscathed, everyone
has been affected, we're all weary.

When Emeril Lagasse pleaded stress as his excuse for saying some
negative things about New Orleans, columnist Chris Rose answered,
"Hey, this just in: we're all stressed out."

A friend said, "Out where I live we have a saying: 'Too blessed to
be stressed.'" I respond, "We're blessed also. But is it possible to
be blessed and stressed at the same time?"


3. It's a great time to be a Baptist.

Just after the storm passed and even as the floodwaters began to
rise, Southern Baptists were already arriving. Massive trucks
bringing food and water and supplies began to pull in, first on the
Northshore and soon in Kenner and Metairie. Volunteers from Southern
Baptist churches all over the country who are trained in Disaster
Relief rushed in with their chain saws and cooking equipment. They
took over the Kenner City Jail and provided hot meals for hundreds
of military and law enforcement officers who had shut down the
entire metropolitan area and were rescuing stranded citizens. As
citizens were allowed to return, they were quick to notice the
Baptist volunteers, many going up and down streets offering
assistance and food. Some of the churches set up tents in their
parking lots and fed hot meals to the community twice a day, and
erected drive-throughs where people could get crates of water and
supplies without leaving their cars.

Shelters all over the country welcomed our displaced citizens. No
one was more active and more welcoming than Southern Baptists,
whether in Houston or Memphis or Jackson. We say this not to be
partisan, because we thank God for every person who helped, but to
give thanks where it is due. We Southern Baptists, who had built a
reputation for inner conflicts and debates, got something right this
time. It is not egotistical pride to point this out, but justifiable
gratitude.

In the weeks after our return, the talk shows around here were
flooded with people lauding the Southern Baptists. "My church was
shut up," they would say, "and my priest was gone, but the Baptists
were everywhere." Some were angry at their denominations and others
were vowing they had become Baptists in the interim. We know of at
least two churches that are changing their affiliation to become
SBC. Many of our churches are noticing new people in the pews every
Sunday, in addition to the volunteers from all over the country.

In the "Adopt-a-Church" program, hundreds of SBC churches across
America teamed up with congregations in our area to assist them.
They have literally sent millions of dollars to help our people. One
of our pastors told how an adopting Oklahoma church invited him and
his wife out to visit in early December. "It's a wonderful church,"
he said. "They have more members than there are residents of the
town. They had two Christmas trees set up in the church. On one,
they all pinned money, every dollar of it for us. Under the other
tree, they had presents for us." That pastor was African-American
and the church was completely Anglo, but God bonded them permanently
and deeply.

Before Katrina, New Orleans Baptists had a hard time being noticed.
Afterwards, the mayor put one of our pastors on his commission to
advise on the rebuilding of the city, and others of our leaders have
been prominent in leadership roles. At one point, a group of Baptist
pastors--not Southern Baptist, and that's as specific as I'll
get--was in the news after Fred Luter was appointed to the mayor's
commission. They protested that their group was not represented,
that only pastors of big churches had been put on the panel, that
they wanted leadership roles, too. I wanted to say to those
ministers, "Don't ask the mayor to appoint you as a leader. Go lead,
do something, and the mayor will have no other choice. God said, 'I
will make you the head and not the tail.' (Deut 28:13) So, if the
Lord makes you the head, lead out and we will follow."

4. God is doing some wonderful things in all of this business.

Romans 8:28 is still in effect. God is at work, turning these tragic
conditions into blessings. There are the stories of evacuees
returning home to tell of their hosts in distant towns introducing
them to the Savior. There is Horeb Baptist Church of Gretna where
Pastor David Rodriguez evacuated with all 150 members of his church,
staying for 3 weeks in a Baptist encampment across the state, then
returning with every person. During their absence, three members of
their group were saved, and since that time, another 32 have come to
Christ. Some of our Spanish churches are reaching out to the
thousands of Mexican construction workers flowing into the city. And
one of them has opened their doors to Brazilian workers. Pastor
David Lema of Emmanuel Spanish Baptist Church in Kenner tells me
their Portuguese mission--which they started a few weeks ago--is
already running 50 or more, and the new pastor is one of the
construction workers.

Pastor Dennis Watson of Celebration Church in Metairie told the
Louisiana evangelism conference a few days ago of a church member
who came to New Orleans sometime back to open a new business. He
checked into a downtown hotel and walked around. That night, after
seeing the wickedness in this city, he knelt by his bed to pray,
wondering if he should stay. God told him to stay here and said that
He was going to do a mighty work in this city, something not seen
since the days of Nineveh. When Pastor Watson heard that, he said to
the man, "Why, in Nineveh, every man, woman, and child turned to the
Lord. If God were to do that here, New Orleans would have to be
broken."

God is up to some things here, friends. Let us believe and trust
HIm. Let us pray for His mighty hand to do His great work. Let us be
faithful, on our knees praying, responsive to His will. When He does
it, I want to be here and to be part of it.

5. We have discovered how much we need each other.

Before the storm, we would have been hard pressed to get 15 pastors
together for a monthly ministers' conference. These days, we meet
every Wednesday morning, from 9 to noon at the First Baptist Church
of LaPlace, and we have 50 there. When we break for lunch at 11:30,
a few of the ministers move down the hall to eat, but most of them
gather in clusters to talk and encourage and pray together. We never
know who's going to be there each Wednesday, but always there are
Baptist leaders from our state convention office or Lifeway or the
SBC or NAMB or another state convention, and from other churches
around the country, other directors of mission--all of them come
with encouragement, teams of helpers, words of hope, gifts of
assistance. They come early and stay late. This gathering may be the
best thing we could have done, and we stumbled on it. During the
exile, David Crosby of the FBC of N.O. said, "Joe, we ought to get
our guys together." We set up a meeting at the FBC of Jackson, MS,
and tried to contact as many as we could. Twenty showed up. We
called Pastor Bobby Burt of FBC LaPlace and he said they would be
glad to host the pastors the next Wednesday for as long as we wanted
to meet, and they would provide lunch. We've met there every week
since.

One of my great burdens about our churches and pastors before the
storm was our isolation. Our pastors did not know each other, our
church members were strangers to one other. Katrina broke down a lot
of walls, spiritual as well as physical. Our Black and White and
Hispanic pastors have learned each other's names and many have
become great friends. God is doing a new thing in our midst.

We had a leader from the North American Mission Board with us one
day who said, "In 1992 when hurricane Andrew went through Southern
Florida, destroying entire cities, I was a pastor there. No one got
our pastors together. We were all on our own. And within a year,
everyone was gone. We were depressed and hurt and isolated." Then he
said, "It blesses me to see you all meeting and encouraging each
other."

6. How much we need prayer. We need the power of God with us every day.

People frequently tell me they're praying for us. I say to them,
"May I tell you how to pray? Pray BIG. Don't come in here with a
miserly little 'God bless New Orleans.' Pray BIG. Tell the Lord,
'God, you love this city. Jesus died for this city. You have a lot
of people here. Satan has had it long enough. We're asking you to
take it back, Lord. This is your place!'"

Pray BIG. Ask God to do a NEW thing here. In Scripture, the Lord
says, "I am making all things new." He loves to make things new. New
creation. New heart. A new man. We sing a new song to the Lord. Old
things are passed away. New wineskins. Tell Him, "Lord, we don't
want the Old New Orleans back. It didn't work. It failed people and
insulted Thee. We want a new city."

Someone called in to a talk show recently and told host Garland
Robinette, "I want the old New Orleans back. I liked it the way it
was." Garland said, "We had the highest crime rate in the nation and
the sorriest schools. People were dying of HIV and AIDS and drugs.
And you want that back?" The man sheepishly said, "Well, I don't
want THAT. But I want the old New Orleans back." Give me a break. No
one who is thinking clearly wants it back the way it was. God, do a
new thing!

And Lord, make it a GOD thing. In your image, not in the mayor's or
the governor's, and definitely not in Washington's. Regardless what
plans the various commissions bring to the table, we're asking YOU
to make the decisions, set the new course for this city. You said,
"Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it."
Lord, you re-build it. You take the lead. You decide. You are in
charge. You said, "The king's heart is like channels of water in the
hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes." (Proverbs 21:1)
Turn this thing, Lord. You do it!

A Big thing. A New thing. A God thing. That's how we're praying.

There are places in the Old Testament where the Lord says, "I'm
going to do a thing that is so big the ears of all who hear it will
tingle." O Lord, do an ear-tingling thing in New Orleans. And let it
begin in me and in us.

My son Neil told his children, "Pray for good weather tomorrow and
we'll go to the park." Next day, it was a lovely sunny morning. As
they drove toward LaFreniere Park, he said, "Who prayed for this
beautiful day? Grant, did you?" The 11-year-old said, "No, I
forgot." Neil said, "Abby, did you?" The nine-year-old said, "I
forgot, too." At that, her twin Erin said, "Oh good. Then it was my
miracle."

When God sends that revival to New Orleans, when men and women and
children are converted, when the city is no longer known as 'the
city that care forgot' but 'the city that cares for God', when God
works His mighty new thing here, will it be your miracle? It will if
you will pray. Pray big. For a big thing, a new thing, a God thing.

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And the hits just keep on coming...


"Joe, I might be late for the pastors meeting Wednesday morning,"
the e-mail note said. The writer, one of our displaced pastors,
explained about his wife's surgery and the death in his family. His
job is in jeopardy and he still doesn't have direction on what to do
with his flooded church, which has been gutted by teams of
volunteers and needs to be restored internally, but what's the point
if no one lives in the neighborhood.

Now--not knowing any more about him than this--would you say there's
a brother who needs your prayers?

Last August, one of our pastors evacuated the area ahead of the
storm and found shelter in his home state, only to see both his
daughters in car accidents and his father come down with a serious
disease and die a few weeks later. Internal stresses with his
congregation led him to resign and take a temporary position in
another church.

One pastor who lost both his home and his church had a stroke and
while he was in the hospital recovering, his mother died.

Want me to go on? I could. I can tell you of another dozen New
Orleans ministers who have come through the storm and its
devastation only to turn around and find more trials coming, one
after another, each one worst than the one before.

We keep asking for prayer for our ministers down here. Only the Lord
knows what pressures each one is enduring and only He has the
resources and strength to get us through this.

I've been camping out in Psalm 84 lately. I was first attracted to
that short passage several years ago when a college-ministry
committee I was chairing met in a classroom at the old First Baptist
Church of New Orleans on St. Charles Avenue. Someone had gone to the
trouble of cutting out large letters and stringing on the walls
around the room verse 11 of that psalm: "The Lord God is a Sun and a
Shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does He
withhold from those who walk uprightly." I sat there transfixed,
drinking that in, thinking, "What a great verse. What a wonderful
praise, what an incredible promise."

Psalm 84 contains the church ushers' favorite passage. "I'd rather
be a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord than to dwell in the tents
of wickedness," verse 10.

Lately, post-Katrina, I've been claiming for us the promise that God
gives to those whose strength is in Him: "Passing through the valley
of Baca (weeping), they make it into a spring." (verse 6)

We're living in the valley of weeping just now. The wife of a good
friend who is a leader in one of our flooded churches came up and
hugged me last Thursday. She was working on the church grounds with
volunteers from Colorado, and she was in tears. She said, "You would
think I'd be over my tears by now." None of us are. The sadness is
palpable. But there's a promise here.

God can turn it into a spring. A fountain. A place of refreshment
and rest and renewal. It's just like Him to do that. He loves this
kind of alchemy, turning the awful into the awesome. The depressing
into the inexpressible. A place of death like Calvary into a
fountain of life.

When you pray for us, would you claim this, please? That God would
turn this devastation into delight, both his and ours.

"They go from strength to strength." Verse 7. That's what I had in
mind in mentioning this psalm to you, it's where I was aiming, I
just had to point out those other wonderful insights in this psalm
to get to this insight. Like stairs we climb or escalators that
climb for us, God's strength and His blessings come one after
another, each one pushing us a little higher.

Yes, the hits just keep on coming. But so does the strength. So do
His blessings.

Evangelist Jerry Drace has been in New Orleans for 3 months as a
part of the Billy Graham organization's Rapid Response Team. He told
our ministers Wednesday, "I've learned never to ask anyone around
here, 'How are you doing?' They'll tell you, and you don't have time
for their life story."

He went on. "A better question, one that gets right to the heart of
the issue is: 'Are you getting better?' The other day in the Sam's
Club store, I was in a long line at the checkout and the girl asked
about my Billy Graham insignia. I told her what we do and I said,
'Are you getting better?' She teared up to cry right in front of me.
And with that long line behind, I held her hand and led her in
prayer right there. No one complained and no one left."

Everyone understood. The tears are always flowing just beneath the
surface, the woes come one after another. But thanks be to the Lord,
He is here with us, He has not abandoned us, He keeps sending us
friends to comfort and encourage and stand us on our feet; we are
stronger today than we were yesterday.

And one day closer to being out of all this.

The Louisiana State Legislature is meeting right now in Baton Rouge.
Governor Blanco called this special session to get them to
consolidate our myriad levee boards into one with overall, sweeping
authority. You ought to hear the special interest groups hollering.
And to streamline the courts and tax assessors' offices in the city
of New Orleans. With one-third the population we used to have, we
don't need the bureaucracy that weighted us down previously. Again,
those who have lived at the public trough are crying foul at the
prospect of having to find an actual job.

While you're praying for us down here, if you happen to mention the
governor and the legislature, praying they will do the right thing,
we'd appreciate it.

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