Operation Noah - Thursday

We finished work today, although there remains work to be done before the Jackson's can get into their home. Lou, the crew chief from Operation Noah, said that we had given this couple hope that it can happen and they can eventually get back into their house. They had been trying to do a little here and there and hire a few work crews when they had the money, and they were discouraged and feeling they would never get into the house. But we got so much done this week, that they now have new hope. Becky took a "Before" and "After" picture of the outside of the house, and the difference inside was even more dramatic. "Glenn's Wall" is now painted and looks great, as do the baseboards and tile in many of the rooms.
We took up a collection and bought a Home Depot gift card for Mr. Willie across the street, as a thank you for him letting us use his water all week to wash our hands, wash our brushes, etc. He was touched, and we hope that we left a good witness to him as well as to Julie and Tony Jackson. But the other part that was such a blessing was how our team of 12 got to know each other. We had devotionals together each night, sharing and praying. We joined hands to pray over meals and enjoyed fellowship as we ate together and worked together. We came to help rebuild New Orleans, and we are leaving with a new bond built with one another.

Operation Noah - Wednesday

We had a great day on Wednesday and got a lot done.
Julie, the homeowner, came by again with her daughter and granddaughter (picture with Frances). They were really excited and grateful to see the progress we are making. They showed us pictures they took after the hurricane, showing how devastating it was before they began renovating. I just wish we could finish the house this week, but it will probably take at least one more team to get the house ready for them to live in it.
A man came by from the power company and stopped just to thank us for what we are doing and to say that he knew the couple we were helping, and that "if anybody deserved help, they do." It has been so rewarding to play a small part in the rebuilding of their lives.
Pray for safety as we are climbing on ladders a lot to paint outside. Also pray for the neighbor across the street, "Mr. Willie," who has really warmed up to us and today invited us all over to his house. He is Roman Catholic. I did not have an opportunity to talk to him about his personal faith, although we did talk about his attendance at a local Catholic church.

Operation Noah - Tuesday

Today we got a lot of work done at the house, which is located in the Upper 9th Ward of New Orleans. Glenn built his sheetrock wall to cover a huge hole with a lot of help from Frances, and Dan and James also put down a lot of baseboards and thesholds. Most of the rest of us painted or helped them with those projects. Julie and Debra spent a lot of time painting the baseboards. Bob scraped the ceiling of the porch and Bob, Milton and Becky painted a lot outside, while Mary, Pat and Greg painted a lot inside.
There are a lot of druggies in the area who will steal anything to sell it for drugs, so we had to keep a constant watch on our supplies, and after we finished we had to take it with us or hide it so they couldn't look in the windows and see what was there. We may have hid the equipment from the thieves, but the love bugs found us, and we had them even get into the paint!
The owners, Tony & Julie Jackson, came by to see the work and we got to talk to them. Julie came in the middle of the afternoon after getting out of class. She is going to school to be a nurse. Tony got off work early from his job at a container company, and came by to see us in the late afternoon as we were finishing for the day. Here is a picture of Julie with James, Mary, Dan, Milton and Becky, and a picture of Tony with Brother Bob.
We learned that Tony & Julie's home had about 5 feet of water inside it after Katrina. The water was actually 8 feet deep, but the house is about 3 feet off the ground. They went to Texas, then Hurricane Rita made them flee Texas and go to Georgia. After over a year and a half, they were able to come back, but they are having to rent a place in East New Orleans while they try to fix up their house. He said, "We go two steps forward and then two steps back," because their house has been broken in twice. The thieves even stole his door. The good thing is that his neighbors watch his house and report anything to the police.
Tony and Julie are Baptists, although Tony admitted to me that his work had kept him from attending church much. We prayed with both of them, and Tony was eager to get a "Here's Hope" New Testament in modern English. They were very excited about what we were doing and very appreciative. Tony said, "Everybody here knows what Operation Noah is." Since June of 2006, there have been 25,000 volunteers with Operation Noah in New Orleans who have completed 1735 jobs, including 169 homes completely rebuilt, 18 churches completed, and 407 people have accepted Christ as Savior!
Pray for the safety of our equipment from thieves, and pray for Tony & Julie as they rebuild their lives.

Operation Noah - Monday

On Monday we began our work. We went to a closed church which had been transformed into a warehouse for Operation Noah, and got our supplies. Then we went to the home on Piety Street in New Orleans, in a neighborhood where more than half of the homes are abandoned. We began work on a home that is basically a duplex. A family lived in one apartment, and their adult children live in the other apartment. The neighbor across the street said his own home had 7 feet of water after Katrina. He said the home where we were working, the owners had gone to Texas, but now they were back. They had hired contractors to renovate, but the contractors did shoddy work. So now Operation Noah teams are working on it. We were painting the inside, and several places some of the men were repairing places in the floor. Glenn Womack worked on a place where the wall was open and you could see straight through the floor to the ground below. Frances Callaway was Glenn's helper, and they were able to close up the hole with sheetrock and put putty over it.

Operation Noah- Sunday night in the French Quarter

Here are some pictures from our visit to the French Quarter on Sunday night. We enjoyed a meal at Cafe Maspero. We walked down Bourbon Street, famous for it's bawdiness, and saw the bar with all of the homosexual rainbow flags. We moved away from there pretty quickly. Then we went to Jackson Square where St. Louis Cathedral is located, and across from the Square we had the French donut, called beignets, at Cafe du Monde. As you can see, Greg really got into the beignets!
I guess you could call Sunday night "the good, the bad, and the ugly."

Operation Noah- Sunday: Arriving in New Orleans

We arrived in New Orleans on Sunday afternoon, and checked in to our lodging at Hopeview Baptist Church in Chalmette. This is a church that closed, and was taken over by the North American Mission Board as the operations center for Operation NOAH. They made the Sunday School classrooms into dorm rooms with bunk beds, and the worship center is a cafeteria and meeting room. We were given an orientation by Nicole, pictured here with the group, who is the manager of the headquarters at Hopewell Baptist. Then we drove into the city and toured New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (my alma mater) and went to the French Quarter to eat and tour.
New Orleans is a strange contrast. You see many abandoned homes and homes that are falling in, but other areas, particularly the French Quarter, are thriving with activity and tourists. Sadly, some of the things we saw in the French Quarter are too vulgar to post on this site. Suffice to say that the "Big Easy" is hard in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Operation Noah- Sunday: Church in Mississippi

On Sunday, we left our hotel in Mobile, Alabama, and drove to Gulfport, Mississippi, where we went to church at New Evening Star Baptist Church. This is the church that we helped in January 2006 to repair after it was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. At that time, Rev. Charles Harris was pastor. They have a new pastor now, but Rev. Harris and his wife were there, and there is a picture of him (seated in the chair) and his wife with our group. It was a great service, and wonderful to see the church doing so well. They baptized six young people at the beginning, and I remembered that we had repaired the ceiling above that same baptistry back in 2006. The members were excited to see us. After church, we drove on to New Orleans.

Operation Noah- Saturday: On our way to New Orleans

We left Rincon at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, and drove all the way to Mobile, Alabama, before stopping at our hotel for the night. We ate lunch at Lane's Packing, the famous peach place, in Fort Valley, Georgia. Here's a picture of us at the peach at Lane's. Everybody is doing well.
We have decided to go to church on Sunday morning in Gulfport, Mississippi, at an African-American Baptist church where a friend of mine, Rev. Charles Harrison, is pastor. This is the same pastor that we helped in 2006 when his church was flooded by Hurricane Katrina. He is starting a new church in Gulfport, and we're going to attend that church before we head on over to New Orleans to check in to our lodging.

New Orleans mission trip

Pray for the 12 people from our church going to participate in Operation NOAH (New Orleans Area Housing) April 25-May 2. I will attempt to post pictures and reports on this blog regularly.
Pray for:

Bob Rogers

Greg Hartzog

Debra Long

Glenn Womack

James McElveen

Milton Morgan

Dan Frailey

Becky Cowart

Frances Callaway

Julie Weddle

Mary Lynes

Pat Bagley

Why men LOVE going to church!

On March 28, 2009, I posted a blog at MyChurch.org about a book I was reading, Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow. I never dreamed that the post would generate over 4,300 reads and 177 comments in less than a month. I even got the cartoon you see here, thanks to Steve Waldrip of Horn Lake, Mississippi.

But now it's time to stop asking questions and start giving answers. So this blog is dedicated to Why Men Love Going to Church. Let's share great ways to reach men for Jesus Christ. Some of those ideas were shared on the other blog, and you are welcome to repeat the best of those ideas here.

I will start out by listing ten of the ideas from Murrow's book that caught my imagination.

1. The pastor should focus on being a spiritual father. After all, the apostle Paul said he was a father to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 4:14-15). Have the pastor mentor 12 men, and teach those men to each mentor 12 others, etc. Women can meet for discipleship groups as well to mentor women on this model.

2. Get groups of men to "partner up" (don't say build relationships) by doing ministry activities together. Perhaps the groups could be called "platoons." Let the activities have a beginning date and a time to finish. Then start more platoon projects to follow those.

3. An idea that might work especially well in a smaller church: at the end of worship. Dismiss all of the women a few minutes early for fellowship, asking the men to remain for a minute, and the pastor can give the men a 5-minute story or object lesson to teach a spiritual truth to his family. Then encourage the men to use it during the week. The women will naturally be curious about what the pastor said, and the men can then tell the story or share the object. This teaches men who to be spiritual leaders.

4. Make sure that your worship service is constantly moving with changing activities, no element lasting too long. Use lots of video and visuals.

5. Expand ministry in areas where men can excel. Why not have a ministry once a month where men work on cars of the poor, the elderly, single moms, etc., offering oil changes and light maintenance.

6. Encourage women whose men (husbands, sons, etc.) are away from the Lord to band together for intentional, focused prayer for the salvation and spiritual growth of the men in their lives

7. Have male-only events on a regular basis (such as Wild Game Banquet, Fishing and Golf Tournament, Auto Repair Class, Christian comedian), where men in the church must bring with them a man who does not go to church.

8. When groups pray, instead of holding hands or a bunch of people laying hands on someone (actions where are uncomfortable to men unless they have been attending church a long time and got used to it), try a more masculine "prayer force" where a group sits in a circle, and as the Spirit leads, people pray one at a time by going to the person and putting a hand on his shoulder and praying.

9. Ask your music minister to take the words to some of the strong, masculine-spirited Reformation hymns, and match the hymn to a popular contemporary tune to sing in worship

10. Set challenging goals in your church, and challenge your people to go after them. Men respond to a challenge, and it's Biblical. After all, Jesus told men to drop everything and follow Him, and they did.

Okay, these ideas are a start. What has worked in your church? What ideas can you share? Remember, we're only looking for positive things that reach men for Christ. This is not the place to complain about the church or anybody else. If you want to do that, go back to the other blog on why men hate going to church and post a comment there.

Seven things worth more than money

According to Proverbs, there are seven things worth more than money:

1. 1. Righteousness.

Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath,
but righteousness delivers from death. Prov 11:4 (NIV)

2. Kindness

A kindhearted woman gains respect,
but ruthless men gain only wealth. Prov 11:16 (NIV)

3. Peacefulness

Better a dry crust with peace and quiet
than a house full of feasting, with strife. Prov 17:1 (NIV)

4. Wisdom

Of what use is money in the hand of a fool,
since he has no desire to get wisdom? Prov 17:16 (NIV)

5. Integrity

A fortune made by a lying tongue
is a fleeting vapor and a deadly snare. Prov 21:6 (NIV)

6. A good marriage

Houses and wealth are inherited from parents,
but a prudent wife is from the LORD. Prov 19:14 (NIV)

7. A good name

A good name is more desirable than great riches;
to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. Prov 22:1 (NIV)