I barely remember my first day of classes back in August 2004.  I know I had a roommate who flew in from Korea just days before, speaking virtually no English.  I went to chapel for the first time that day, and it would be one of less then five times I’d go throughout my seminary career.  I mentioned the now cliche’ statistic that 89% (it’s up to 91%) of Southern Baptist Churches are plateaued or declining.  Four years later and I’ll miss hearing Dr. Kelley make use of his ancient Hebrew word: “Wow!”

I spoke about leaving NOBTS after just one semester, but by October I knew I was where I needed to be.  The Spring semester was better, and I had the opportunity to hear NT Wright and John Dominic Crosson speak about the resurrection of Jesus.  It was probably one of the greatest lectures I’ve ever heard.  I’ve had a good seminary experience, despite a lot of the complaints I’ve made about how much better things could have been.  There’s always room for improvement, but I can walk away from here satisfied that even if I didn’t learn everything I thought I would in class, the last four years’ experience taught me more than I ever imagined.

I lived in New Orleans when the worst natural disaster in United States history occurred.  The events of that period still feel like they were yesterday.  My mentor and his wife were in the hospital downtown watching their first son being born just two days prior to the landfall of Hurricane Katrina.  The fear and confusion of that period is something I can’t forget.  I think we all learned so much during that time.  For all the talk of being “the church scattered,” I truly began to grasp the gravity of what that means.  The last line of my scattered post was, “Pray for the city. It’s grown on me, I’d like it to still be there when I go back.”

It wasn’t, and sometimes I can’t help but feel like the last couple years have shaved off a few from the end of my life.  They say seminary is one of the dryest times in your spiritual life.  I agree.  Coming back after Katrina was just that much harder.  I have so many friends who had such more complicated situations moving back, but they did.  Nothing I experienced was as difficult as those who struggled to bring their families back into a post-Katrina New Orleans, search for a suitable home, and pursue God’s mission here.  I’ve got a lot of heroes among those I’ve known here.  You can read the post I wrote on the second anniversary of Katrina, and what I had to say last June, having been back in New Orleans for a year after Katrina.

But there’s more to my New Orleans experience than seminary and the flood.  One of the most significant aspects to my time here has been as a member of Edgewater Baptist Church.  It’s not a perfect church, but it’s the best church family I’ve ever been a part of.  My first semester here I became a member, leaving behind what was a difficult and frustrating time in Mobile.  Through Edgewater I joined a small group that became the support I needed to make it through the first year in New Orleans and in seminary.  Those brothers (and sisters) of mine were such a huge reason I came back after Katrina, and I owe them such a huge debt of gratitude.  After four years, there’s no question that the New Orleans I’ll miss most has Edgewater at its center.

Edgewater has always had a large group of seminary students, which makes its membership pretty transient.  One of the traditions at Edgewater that impressed me was that when a member left, the church body gathered around that person, laid hands upon that person, and prayed as a church body for the person and ministry.  I don’t know if a lot of other churches do that (my past experiences say they don’t), but I know it made an impact on me then, and still does today.  This past Wednesday night was my night.  It was just as humbling and just as much an honor as I thought it would be.  I’m going to miss them greatly.

It seems easy to experience something new every day in New Orleans.  Friday night I drove through City Park on my last errand before the move.  Just south of City Park in the Esplanade area of Mid-City, as the legend goes, someone let out their parrots, which took up residence in the trees along the avenue.  My last new thing as a resident of New Orleans was seeing a flock of parrots on the side of the road in the middle of City Park.

So long, New Orleans.  Thanks for that last new experience.  The next chapter begins.  Fort Worth, here I come.

Our current pastor’s daughter is a student there, and our former pastor’s son is as well.  Pray for the Stewarts and Shaddixes if you can, or if you know the families I’m referring to.

And so far… He has.

After the service a friend came up to me and said that two Chinese girls were in attendance.  They were open enough to say they weren’t Christians.  They wanted to know what a Bible Study was like, so they came tonight.  They mentioned how different it was and that they were raised believing evolution, and that what I said was new.  One girl said she felt very close to becoming a Christian.

Not because of me.  But because for the last few weeks, God hasn’t let me move past the magnitude of John 1:1-18.  Tonight, we found our hope in the one true living God- the Word, full of grace and truth, who became flesh, lived a perfect life, was brutally massacred on the cross, and on the third day resurrected so that we could have the hope of salvation and worship Him appropriately.

This is what it’s about.  There is nothing more.

Joe McKeever, the Director of Missions at the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans (BAGNO), wrote a post on his blog a few weeks ago outlining the status of our local Baptist churches. He broke them down into three categories: struggling, flourishing but with issues, and normal. My church, Edgewater, fell under the struggling category, as did many others. It’s really no wonder why a lot of Baptist churches are struggling. Dr. Charles Kelley, president of NOBTS, always opens up the semester in chapel by telling us that 80 percent of Baptist churches are plateaued and declining. Some say it’s close to 90 percent. In New Orleans, I wouldn’t be surprised if 90 percent were a low estimate. This post isn’t to discuss why that is. I’ve addressed that in other places, and will continue to do so elsewhere. This is a guide to help you, if you’re interested, pray for the people of New Orleans.

I’m asking you to pray for The Church, the inter-denominational universal Body of Christ in New Orleans. That means pray for the Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, Mennonites (yes, they’re here), and all the other followers of Christ in this city. How can you pray? Be creative. Be positive. But here are a few I can immediately suggest (please, don’t limit yourself to what I’ve suggested):

• Hope. The number one issue in New Orleans is that the people have lost hope. The Church MUST be a voice of hope to New Orleanians. This is a priority.
• Unity. We don’t work together. Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Pentacostals- we aren’t working together. Until we show that the Body of Christ can get along, we can’t expect the people in our city to get along. And they’re not getting along. Pray for our unity- maybe not in doctrine, but in the common mission to bring hope and love to New Orleans.
• Faithfulness. Pray that our Christ-followers would grow in faith, which would make us more active and bold in offering hope and love.
• Strength. We need emotional strength to go along with our physical strength. The suicide rate is up. It’s difficult when you’re surrounded by people without hope. We need God to give us the strength to endure, so that we can be the voice of hope to New Orleans.

Please pray over these things, and whatever else you can think of, while they’re still fresh in your mind. Know that we are thankful for your encouragement.

I went down Lakeshore Drive the other day. It’s the first time I’ve been able to drive from Franklin Avenue to Metairie along Lakeshore in a pretty long time. Before the hurricane, it was my preferred route west. It took much longer, but it was worth the time to see Lake Pontchartrain. It reminds me of the Mississippi Gulf Coast where I grew up. Looking out over the lake I see waves crashing onto the seawall on a cloudy day just before a storm rained down upon the city; lightning crashes down all around me.

Maybe that’s the image that best fits the last two years. There’s beauty in the pending devastation. You know it’s coming; you can feel it raising the hair on your arms; the suspense is overwhelming; the calm becomes unbearable. Then it’s here. Nothing will ever be the same. And from the depths of that revelation comes the hope of renewal. A chance to start over. Hope rises out of the rubble.

I don’t know if any of this means something to you. It might not even make sense. All I know for sure is that for the last few days, these words have run through my head:

After night, comes a light
Dawn is here, dawn is here
It’s a new day, it’s a new day

Everything will change
Things will never be the same
We will never be the same

Oh, the glory of it all

I guess maybe it’s somehow fitting that I haven’t stopped thinking about John 1:1-18 for the last few days either.

And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him. [Mark 15:16-20, ESV]

There is so much in that passage, but one blatant truth struck me that day. (Donald Miller actually discusses this topic in one of his books too, although I forget which one.) Throughout the mockery and beatings, Jesus continued his mission of love. When we get pushed around or mocked, we tend to retaliate by withholding our love from our aggressors. But Jesus, regardless of the pain he suffered, refused to give up on them or us. He followed through on the two most important commandments in the whole of Scripture.

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” [Matthew 22:37-40, ESV]

Love God. Love people. It seems so simple. So why aren’t we crucifying our own desires, taking up our cross, and following Jesus in the way of love? Why are we more prone toward pithy and hurtful condemnation, filled with contempt and bitterness, and compelled to hurt those with whom we disagree? Just because that’s how it is doesn’t mean it’s the way it should be. It’s about time we all take some time to evaluate our efforts in following Jesus.

I’ve got one more year left in New Orleans thanks to That Storm. I’ll be reflecting more on that on August 29th. For now I’d like to look back on my adventures and experiences over the last three years.

The Road Trips

The summer before I moved here, I went on a mission trip to Siberia. It didn’t start my passion for traveling; for as long as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with maps and history- combining the two for a desire to see the world not just as it is, but as it was. Since August 2004 I’ve been to 21 states and 4 provinces. I’ve made a handy map for you. I told you I was obsessed.

See? I’ve been a lot of places, but the green is where I’ve been in the last 3 years. I went on two separate trips to Canada (in 2005 and 2007) and I went to Nashville three times: once on a mission trip and twice for Passion Conferences. I went to Atlanta several times- once for class, once for Catalyst, and once as a stop on my way to Canada. Oh, did I mention I haven’t set foot on a place since I went to Siberia? I was born a ramblin’ man. And I enjoyed every second of it- even the time on one-lane gravel mountain roads at dusk in the middle of Montana.

A Little Adversity

I’ll admit, Hurricane Katrina messed me up. Sure I lost a bunch of books and a lot of stuff from my dorm room. Sure FEMA has given me more trouble than help in the last year. But I’ve also watched family suffer with illness (in particular, Mom’s cancer), and last April I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The blessing is we’re both still alive. I’m still here. I survived Katrina and I’m surviving diabetes. Somehow, I’ve managed to keep my sanity in the last year. Granted, another hurricane could finish that sanity off anytime between now and December 1st, but so far, I’m alright. And God willing, I’ll stay that way.

The Mission and the Church

When I started here, I visited one church before I made a decision on where I’d belong. Day one: Edgewater Baptist Church. There was no other choice for me. I knew immediately. They haven’t let me down. One semester in, our pastor Jim Shaddix announced he was moving to Denver. I’d already seen what happens to a church when a pastor leaves, and I was convinced that Edgewater, like my previous church, would fall into angry power struggles. I was wrong. When I got to Edgewater I heard the phrase “the church gathered, and the church scattered.” On Sunday we gathered, and during the week we scattered throughout the city. When Katrina came, we really learned what it meant to be the church scattered. There was talk of disbanding- giving up. But a small group of remnant members came together in the home of Charlie and Sheryl Ray, while Edgewater’s building soaked in over 9 feet of water. Dr. Shaddix’s church in Denver sent Edgewater money, which was distributed among the families in the church. Then they sent teams to help us rebuild. The church scattered, and the church gathered. In the last three years I’ve seen what the church is really about. How they band together through adversity instead of falling apart. It’s the bigger love of the family (to quote the Family Matters theme song). I can’t and won’t forget it.

So three years gone, and another one to go in New Orleans. Here’s to making one more matter.

In August 2004, I moved to New Orleans to attend seminary. In August 2005, I left thinking I’d be back in a few days. It took nine months. June 1, 2006, actually, was the day I moved back. The first day of hurricane season. It’s been a year now. Ray Nagin was re-elected. So was William Jefferson. And Cynthia Hedge-Morrell. The National Guard were deployed here. I still remember the strange feeling that I was in a war zone when I saw the first convoy of Guardsmen driving in. That was just in the first month. At one point, we started selling t-shirts asking, “C. Ray Nagin? Not me.” At least we have a sense of humor.

In August 2006 the city tested our newly installed pumps (which are technically supposed to pump water out of the city when it floods. You see, since we’re a bowl, we built levees to keep the water out. But the levees also tend to keep water in.) Apparently nobody told us that didn’t go as well as it should have. We found out in March that they were faulty. Then we found out last week that, at least, only one is still broken. But as some of our friends at my church in the Filmore neighborhood learned last week- pumps are only good if they are turned on. Not to mention that someone discovered all those FEMA trailers were toxic.

As for our crime rate, well, it seems to be back up. Less people, same crime. Eddie Jordan, the DA here, is a class act, having fired a dozen white employees and replacing them all with African-Americans. More importantly, he’s had trouble keeping criminals in jail- most offenders are released to repeat the same crimes again. But at least the Appeals Court has kept the ones who did go to jail in there. For now. In January, we had a huge rally against crime- Silence Is Violence. So at least some of us care (even though, for the record, I missed the rally). There was a moving speech given that day. And it didn’t come out of the mouth of Willie Wonka.

And then there was that tornado that carved out a swath from the West Bank to Lake Pontchartrain. I stepped outside about 5 minutes after it woke me up that night. It just missed the homes of several of my friends. Only a few blocks to my east it killed several people.

Anyway, I just wanted to say all that in response to the billboard on Gentilly Blvd. across from campus. “You’re not crazy.” I beg to differ.

We had a team of Baptists from Georgia scheduled to work on our sanctuary for last week. Two weeks ago, we found out that the sanctuary had suffered extreme termite damage over the years. One contractor suggested we tear the building down. (We just put a brand new roof on both of our buildings, so that would have been pretty crappy.) Another contractor said it would cost about $200,000 to fix the damage. That’s about what we have in our building fund, and the goal since the beginning of our rebuilding has been to stay as much out of debt as we can. Basically option two was to spend all of our money to bring it back to the point it’s at now- gutted and empty. Well here’s the neat thing. That team of Baptists scheduled to work last week came down, and four of them were all very knowledgeable in construction. In particular, they knew exactly what to do and how to fix our termite damage. So we told them to go at it, and forget cleaning up after themselves. Spend all their time fixing it and forget the rest. And they did. And our sanctuary is good to go. Termite damage fixed.

We were all very excited about that news. This week our building coordinator said he had all this work to clean up but no workers. Then he ran into someone who said there was a MissionLab group on campus whose week-long plans had been sidelined. There was a mission group staying on campus at NOBTS with nothing to do… until now.

Cool, huh?

Today, one of my professors called transparency “foolishness” but honesty and openness “wise.” I’m hoping this isn’t too transparent, but mostly honest. It’s not easy living here, regardless of what one of my friends recently said. I think if you have an ounce of compassion in your heart and you see the things I do every day, then you can’t let yourself become complacent. It’s no Indonesia post-Tsunami, but it’s sure as hell not suburban Fort Worth either.

I keep asking that my friends in other cities would pray for us here. Some say, “when the Lord puts it on my heart, I’ll pray.” Some promise they will, but I sense they often forget. I know because I feel it. Just like I feel the raw emotion of the people here in the air. It’s not the humidity. It’s frustration, anger, depression, and pain. I don’t care what anybody says, these are not positive emotions. They’re killer. So we hear about that Times-Picayune photographer who snapped and drove down Napoleon trying to commit suicide by cop. So we hear about people flipping out and killing themselves. So we find out that the depression rate has spiked as we get closer to the one year anniversary, and that the suicide rate has tripled. But man I know you’re praying for us, as the Lord leads you to.

Maybe I’m not at a loss for words after all. Maybe I just had to sit down and start typing. Maybe I just needed enough of this frustration to well up inside me and spring forth like a fountain of sorrow. Poetic, I guess. My friend James who works at Rue De La Course on Magazine Street took Clint and me to the Little Miss Sunshine premiere in Kenner tonight. I don’t think it’s coming out anytime soon, but I knew when I saw the previews on tv that I needed to watch it. It’s about a massively dysfunctional family. I won’t really talk about it until it’s on dvd, so I guess we’ll get to it in a year or so. But I will say that it reminds me a lot of New Orleans. No matter how jacked up we all are and how much we try to cover it up, we do all have issues. And sometimes we cover it up with goals that in the end come crashing down around us, so that we have to, in one deep breath, let it all out.

I think maybe it’s in these moments we’re the most honest before our Creator.

It’s Friday now. It has been for a little over an hour. I spent a little time in Uptown tonight and ate with the guys at The Boot near Freret Street. Pretty empty. Today, I guess, I have to go down there and look for a job. I’m hoping for a job at an art gallery, bookstore, or something to that effect. The problem is that I’m not a super-avid reader, and I know little about art except for what looks cool to me. The lingo may be a problem. I’d like to get much better at my photography, so if I found a photo gallery to work in, that’d be great. We’ll see. In case you’re wondering why I’ve been spending so much time in Uptown, you should know several things. First, it’s one of the few places that doesn’t look like Filmore Avenue. Second, I’m now a part of this community of faith called Sojourn. I’m transitioning away from Edgewater over the next couple months. Third, I like it down there. In some ways it reminds me of where I grew up in Mobile. It works. And it gets me into the real world again. Where I feel the pain again. Where I feel the emotion. Where I can’t grow numb. Where I am forced to face my Creator in an honest way again.