Alabama Baptists to help rebuild part of New Orleans

Alabama Baptists are known for their quick response following disasters, but they are also about to be known for their endurance and persistence as they launch a long-term cleanup and recovery project in New Orleans.
    Baptists from across the state have spent tireless hours assisting the devastated Louisiana city since Hurricane Katrina ravaged it in August 2005, and now those efforts can be coordinated through the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM). 
    “For so long, New Orleans has been known as the ‘Big Easy,’ … now I think it’s the ‘Big Hungry,’” said Tommy Puckett, SBOM director of disaster relief.
    A four-member assessment and visionary team, including Puckett, traveled to New Orleans Dec. 13–14 to learn about the needs and ministry opportunities in what will be Alabama’s focus area on the western side of Orleans Parish — known as Zone 6.
    “We just saw the surface of the (partnership’s) potential,” Puckett said. “Different groups will go down and develop it more deeply and create more opportunities.” The zone, which is five-miles long and two-miles wide, encompasses some of the “best of the best and the worst of the worst,” according to Freddie Arnold, church-planter missionary with the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans. Although it includes the New Orleans Country Club, Notre Dame Seminary and Xavier and Tulane universities, it also is home to areas of great poverty and high crime rates. 
    Rebuilding New Orleans is “the greatest opportunity we’ll ever have for changing this city,” Arnold said.
    To facilitate that change, New Orleans and the surrounding parishes in southeastern Louisiana were divided into 27 zones by Southern Baptists’ Operation NOAH (New Orleans Area Homes) Rebuild. NOAH, which has undergone several name changes since its inception in March, is a partnership project between the North American Mission Board, Louisiana Baptist Convention, New Orleans-area associations and churches and The Salvation Army to rehabilitate more than 1,000 homes and 20 churches.
    The New Orleans association, led by Alabama-native Joe McKeever as director of missions, is working with in Operation NOAH volunteer teams, as well as those state conventions that are partnering with specific zones.
The most urgent need for Alabama’s Zone 6 is rebuilding work, Arnold said. As the team toured the zone, blue tarps waved from the roofs of houses with FEMA trailers in the front yard. 
    Almost all the houses still sported the spray-painted cross inside a circle left by search parties after the hurricane. The numbers and symbols note which team came through and when, the method of its assessment and the number of dead bodies or animals found.
    Steve Gahagan, construction coordinator for Operation NOAH, shared with the team about the more than 100 construction projects that awaited it.
    He and Tim Agee, a member of Pine Hill Baptist Church in Bethel Baptist Association, who is also coordinating construction and assessing houses, explained that gutting has been requested on about 35 homes in the area. Other work needed includes installing new plumbing systems, rewiring the houses and hanging Sheetrock.
    While plumbers and electricians are desperately needed for the work in New Orleans, there are jobs for everyone, Agee noted.
    Puckett said volunteers will likely be sought in January for March work. But while the partnership’s infrastructure is being developed, one important component is already being implemented — prayer.
    Through the SBOM prayer network, Max Croft, director of the SBOM office of discipleship and family ministries, is organizing prayer warriors from across the state to pray for the pastors and people in Zone 6, the direction of the partnership and that God will raise up Alabama Baptists to answer the call to help rebuild New Orleans.
    The volunteer efforts will encompass a range of prayer, church planting, evangelism and discipleship projects, Puckett said. “If you utilize all the different areas of ministries you’ve got … more people will be able to be reached.”
    Before leaving the area, team members met with local pastors to find out what they need to rebuild and strengthen their churches.
    The zone is home to three Southern Baptist congregations — Loving Four Baptist Mission, a small black congregation led by Pastor Matthew Tanner whose church was recently cleaned out and rebuilt; Faith Baptist Church, a small congregation without a church building or a pastor but which is still meeting; and a group led by Pastor Kelly O’Connor, who wants to start a church in that area.
    Tanner said it will take new strategies to evangelize the area around his church. “Instead of bringing them to church, we need to take the church to them” with activities that reach into the community, he said.
Reggie Quimby, director of the SBOM office of global partnerships and volunteers in missions, said the time line for the partnership will be worked out once all the needs, resources and volunteer interest are determined.
    For more information, call 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 273. For information specifically about the prayer network, call Ext. 210.