By Lili Rose Tullos
Editor’s Note: Lili Rose Tullos is a graduate of Louisiana College and a retired Louisiana school teacher.
In the early nineteen hundreds, Milton and Mary Hall felt the call to minister in St. Landry Parish.
Graduates of Mary Hardin Baylor University in Texas, the couple knew little about the culture of south Louisiana except it had almost no Baptist ministry.
Milton pastored First Baptist Church in Opelousas and then seeing the need for Baptist work along the winding Bayou Courtableau, moved to minister to the French population in this remote and rural area.
Then tragedy struck.
The great flood of the century, better known as the Great Mississippi flood of 1927, caused widespread destruction along the rivers and tributaries in numerous states along the Mississippi River, but especially in Louisiana. It was to become the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States.
The flooding, due to the lack of dams and protective measures, completely destroyed the land and displaced thousands of Louisiana families.
The young Texas mother with seven children watched as all their possessions floated down the bayou. It was mentally devastating and she had to enter a nearby treatment center for depression.
The three youngest children were sent to the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home in Monroe. They worked on campus and the younger girl traveled each weekend to churches and sang in a trio to make congregations aware and garner support for the home.
Various other Baptist institutions in Louisiana began to recognize the need for a joint effort to support Baptist work and the Cooperative Program was born in 1925.
In coordinating the spreading of the gospel the Southern Baptist Convention came up with a unified plan of giving through which Southern Baptist churches in giving a percentage of their undesignated receipts to accomplish this goal.
In today’s generation, many Baptists are becoming independently funded and see little value in a network, such as the Cooperative Program, to hold together our Baptist work on a local, national and world wide basis.
Let’s join together once again and help spread the Gospel in a coordination that has proven itself through the years to be extremely effective.
Remember the Apostle Paul? It was he that first began the idea!
