good day comrade

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our visitor's from the northwest

two weeks ago pam, my wife, got an email from an internet buddy of heres in bend, oregon. this buddy wanted to know if her church in oregon could bring a large truck load of supplies from oregon to our church in baton rouge for working with the hurricane katrina evacuees. of course, we said "HECK YEAH!" saturday the truck made it to baton rouge after traveling 2450 miles over four days. needless to say some of us were very excited about it.

here's the video we used during the worship service this morning explaining and celebrating the whole thing.

we're hosting a church!

i love the time my city is in right now. i hate all that hurricane katrina did within the gulf coast but i love being a part of the CHRISTian church's response to the hurricane. for once it is nice to see the church respond correctly. the CHRISTians around baton rouge have been giving their time, resources, homes and their very selves to meet the needs of the evacuees. watching the body of CHRIST actually be the body of CHRIST has been a wonderful experience. mathew 25 has been written all over the events of our time.

one of the ways i have seen matthew 25 at work is in our church hosting another church. celebration church of metairie, louisiana is presently underwater. since the largest number of evacuees from the new orleans metro area are in baton rouge it only makes sense that they would meet in baton rouge. so for the next month to three months our church is hosting their church. we held our services together today (their pastor and our worship leaders) and next week we will provide them with a space so they can have their own service. it should be a wonderful experience.

katrina videoes

this blog actually began as a discussion of my jumping into the world of digital video and trying to use it within the youth ministry at our church. i don't talk much about video anymore, even though we use it a fair amount.

here are two videoes we have used and will use tomorrow in response to hurricane katrina and the needs that have developed because of it.

southern university shelter work - 9 11 2005

hurricane katrina sermon - 9 4 2005

the greatest moment of my ministry life

friday was the greatest moment of my ministry life (thus far). wednesday night at the view i spoke about the fact that we are in front of one of the greatest opportunities for ministry that we will ever face in our lives. statistically it is improbable that any of us down here in baton rouge will ever be on the front lines of response to such a devastating catastrophe again in our life times. this means that we will be judged for all of our lives and eternity based on how we respond now. most likely this is our one and only shot to do things right.

based on this i told the kids and the adults in the room that they needed to live their lives at present based on the desire to have as little regret as possible. allot of people say they "have no regrets" but they are either lying or have a really bad memory. most people have tons of regrets. thirty years from now i don't want to regret not having done enough to help the evacuees of hurricane katrina. so i asked to the students and adults at the view to consider where JESUS would be during this disaster and respond appropriately. i told them i was convinced that JESUS would be at the shelters and i invited them to check out of school and take vacation time and join me there. i actually got to tell kids in front of their parents that their school work, sports, and activities are not as important as meeting the needs that are in front of us. i have to admit that i loved telling everyone this.

thursday the phone calls started coming in but none of them were negative. all of them were about getting more information. the parents that called were more concerned with when their kids needed to be there than they were concerned with their kids missing school or activities.

friday i had six teens skip school and go to the shelter with me. there were as many students at the shelter as there were college students and adults. i think i smiled the whole time. seeing kids skip school to answer matthew 25 is quite possibly the greatest moment of my ministry life.

now i see if it is real

i know i haven't posted very much lately - life has been busy.

over the past six months my wife and i have been really struggling with the concept of hospitality. actually pam has been the one delving into it and i have merely followed along for the ride as i have heard her explain how important this concept is within scripture. my wife is always very far ahead of me when it comes to the things of GOD. the biblical concept of hospitality involves opening your life up to those who are strangers within your community.

well as of tonight we will find out if what we have been dealing with and studying is actually real or not. we now have three hurricane katrina evacuees living with us. a friend of ours found out these two sisters and a daughter were living in their car. pam and i talked about it and decided to ask them to stay with us. they have an apartment that will be available september 28 or so. thus they will only be living with us for three weeks of so. until this evening we had never met this family before. this should be an interesting experiment. i'm fairly sure that our lives and the lives of our kids will never be the same.

a sure thing?

trying to stay up to date

i'm sorry i haven't done a better job of posting entries up on this blog. i know some of you who read this thing are not from baton rouge, or the gulf coast, and therefore aren't any the middle of this thing. i'll try to post a little more so you'll know what's going on.

some really cool things continue to happen around here in the midst of the tragedy. i told the people at church yesterday about will and members of the church started responding immediately with offers of shelter in their homes, airline tickets to see his wife, etc., etc. the 100 entergy workers that we have been housing the past week left this morning and donated their cots and supplies. right after they left a group of 80 relief workers from texas called to see if we might have a place they could sleep on the floor. nope! but we more than enough cots for you! :) some of us are actually going up to the chruch today at 1:00 p.m. to set up the cots for the texans so they don't have to do that.

we have a group of nursing home residents from new orleans who lost everything except for the clothes on their backs. we started trying to get them clothes last night. i checked the blog last night and our friend brad, who owns a slik screen printing company, wrote to see if we could use some spare clothes! these senior adults will be the coolest dressed seniors in the world.

we have also received offers of three to four truck loads of supplies. these are from people with whom my wife has contact through some internet forums.

i'll try to keep y'all updated on everything that happens around here.