Louisiana convention aids displaced pastors

With so many churches in the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans severely damaged or destroyed, the Louisiana Baptist Convention is seeking to give financial help to the pastors of its mission churches.

Joe McKeever, director of missions for the New Orleans association, said of the 135 Baptist churches in his region, 60 are mission churches whose pastors are eligible for a monthly stipend from the state convention. The stipend usually is filtered through the mission’s sponsoring church and the mission before being given to the pastor.

Now with many churches gone or inaccessible, the convention is “trying to locate those mission pastors to send it to them directly so they can buy groceries,” McKeever said.

Though many were unaccounted for initially, mission pastors are starting to communicate by e-mail from where they are scattered across the country.

(TAB)