NEW ORLEANS (BP) – Pastors in St. Bernard Parish have taken steps to expand worship opportunities in the New Orleans-area parish where Hurricane Katrina sent floodwaters crashing through their sanctuaries Aug. 29.
By Keith Manuel
Pastor, Calvary Baptist Church, Algiers
NEW ORLEANS (BP) – Pastors in St. Bernard Parish
have taken steps to expand worship opportunities in the New
Orleans-area parish where Hurricane Katrina sent floodwaters crashing
through their sanctuaries Aug. 29.
Before Katrina, approximately 67,000 people lived in
the New Orleans-area parish. Since the storm, the pastors estimated 500
residents have returned to live, but thousands of temporary workers are
there. Beginning Feb. 12, Poydras Baptist Church at the lower end of
the parish will host one worship service, while another service at the
upper end of the parish will be held at a location in Chalmette yet to
be determined.
Only First Baptist Chalmette and Delacroix Island
Baptist churches have had any type of meetings, but neither in their
buildings. The Chalmette congregation meets on Saturday mornings in
Baton Rouge at Florida Boulevard Baptist Church, along with others from
the parish, in services led by Pastor John Jeffries, with attendance
ranging from 20 to 150. Boogie Melerine, the Delacroix leader, is
living in the Poydras area, where they’re running 15 or more in
home meetings.
“What we’re trying to do is get the churches to
choose one meeting place and all worship there for the time being,
until the population is strong enough to justify opening the other
churches,” said Joe McKeever, director of missions for the Baptist
Association of Greater New Orleans. “We are trying to be good
stewards of what God has given us.”
“If I opened Hopeview Church anytime soon, we’d be
so few and so needy that I’d have to spend all my time raising money
just to pay our bills,” said pastor Jeffery Friend during a Jan. 17
meeting of St. Bernard pastors, their second since Katrina.
“Better to leave it closed and let’s work together
until enough people have returned,” he continued. “Let’s put the
emphasis on building the people instead of building the churches.”
Danny Decker, the point man for the Missouri Baptist
Convention’s partnership with St. Bernard Parish, reiterated the
commitment of Missourians to provide support for the work of these
pastors. Teams from Missouri are helping to get the buildings at
Poydras Baptist ready for services in February, as well as continuing
to provide their mobile kitchen to cook meals for the Red Cross to
distribute in St. Bernard, Plaquemines and Orleans parishes. To date,
Missouri volunteers have cooked more than 600,000 meals and have
provided numerous mud-out and chainsaw teams to work in St. Bernard.
St. Bernard Baptist Church called Paul Gregoire as
pastor in January 1983. Twenty-three years later, he remains undaunted
even though his church was only 100 feet from an oil spill during the
storm that deposited a million gallons of petroleum over the parish.
Gregoire not only is trying to find church members
spread over numerous states but as the registrar of New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary, he is helping students regain some sense of
normalcy. The seminary resumed commuter classes in the city Jan. 23.
“God has told me to rebuild St. Bernard Baptist
Church,” he said. “We started the church from zero …. It doesn’t
frighten me to start all over again.”