Black clergy team explores needs in New Orleans
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Pastors from the Baltimore Washington Annual (regional)
Conference of The United Methodist Church don hazmat suits prior to
gutting the home of Virgie Holloway (second from left). UMNS photos by
John Coleman.
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By John W. Coleman Jr.*
Dec. 14, 2007 | NEW ORLEANS (UMNS)
“Please come back, and bring your people with you. We need you here.”
With that plea, the Rev. Martha Orphe bid an emotional farewell to 34
clergy and three lay people from the Baltimore-Washington Annual
(regional) Conference.
The team had spent a week before Thanksgiving repairing flood-damaged
homes and visiting New Orleans pastors, churches and communities.
To encourage their return, Orphe, director of the Louisiana Annual
Conference Mission Zone, sent them away with invitations for their
churches to form partnerships with New Orleans congregations. The team
also left with a compelling awareness of its ability to meet the needs
of African-American churches in the “mission zone.”
Upon returning to the Northeast, the all African-American “Mission Dream
Team,” as the group called itself, committed to respond to the critical
needs that members witnessed and to counter the acknowledged lack of
African-American volunteer participation in the recovery effort.
In almost every church and community they visited, they heard concerns about the absence of African-American volunteers.
“We appreciate the many thousands of volunteers who have come to help,”
said one mission zone pastor. “But we keep wondering, where are the
black people? Why are there not more black people coming to help us?”
The Mission Dream Team spent two of the seven days clearing and gutting
two flood-damaged homes. Members dressed in white hazmat suits and
goggles to protect themselves from mold and debris.
One crew removed and discarded furnishings from a house, while another
crew wielded hammers and crowbars to rip out the walls of another home. A
third group conversed and prayed with visitors at a homeless shelter
and residents in a nearby community.
Seven churches survive
The entire team visited with leaders of seven predominantly black
United Methodist churches that had survived the storm. A dozen pastors
and lay members told the team about their Katrina ordeals, described
their current status and shared their plans for the future.
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The team visits Brook Shaw Temple, a predominantly black
United Methodist church in New Orleans that survived the 2005 hurricane.
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Three of the churches –– Brooks-Shaw Temple, First Street-PW (Peck,
Wesley) and the now interracial First Grace –– are the result of mergers
because of damaged and closed church buildings.
Cornerstone, Bethany and Hartzell churches are small congregations, but
growing numbers of people now worship in their rebuilt sanctuaries.
The heavily damaged, mold-infested sanctuary of historic Mt. Zion Church
is still unusable, but the congregation is using its renovated
auxiliary building next door for worship and Sunday school. The building
also houses a free health clinic two nights a week.
A devastated community
The visiting team toured a waning multicultural metropolis that was
deluged by onrushing waters from the Gulf of Mexico and Lake
Ponchartrain during the August 2005 storm. Team members saw once-broken
but now rebuilt floodwalls that most experts admit are still inadequate
to prevent flooding from future Katrina-like storms.
They visited high- and middle-income communities with rebuilt and
renovated homes, churches and businesses, as well as low-income
neighborhoods with countless dilapidated houses and buildings, many
owned by people who have not returned or cannot afford to rebuild.
They also saw tiny Federal Emergency Management Administration trailers
that have become poor substitute dwellings for many and were recently
reported to have dangerously high levels of formaldehyde.
They viewed multitudes of homeless residents living under highway
bridges and in red, blue and green pup tents that populate a downtown
park in front of City Hall, offering a mass protest against the lack of
affordable housing.
They observed abandoned public housing projects that the city refuses to
reopen and reportedly, plans to demolish; and they saw closed schools
and hospitals, while learning that only six of the city’s 26 hospitals
have reopened.
On the evening before their departure, Orphe took her guests through the
desolate, long-neglected Lower Ninth Ward. They were stunned by the
sight of empty houses and streets overgrown with weeds. Cement steps and
foundations were the only remaining clues that houses had once stood on
those sites. There were only scattered signs of rehabilitation.
Signs of hope
But in that same community, they also witnessed the promise of new
life at Hartzell United Methodist Church, now part of a cooperative
parish. Hartzell recently reopened for worship and will soon house
social service agencies, a relocated United Methodist Committee on
Relief recovery center and lodging for volunteers who come to rebuild
homes.
“We learned how significant a source of help the churches have been here
in people’s lives,” said the Rev. Otto Kent, pastor of Metropolitan
United Methodist Church in Severn, Md.
In a closing debriefing, the visiting clergy voiced their frustration
and anger at the poverty and neglect they witnessed and the political
exploitation and financial malfeasance by city leaders, as reported by
residents. Such conditions deter evacuees from returning to a city in
need of capable, principled leadership.
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The ministers gut Holloway's
New Orleans home.
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During the team’s visit, New Orleans held elections that resulted in the
first white majority city council in 22 years, signaling, in part, a
shift in the racial balance of the city.
But the clergy also expressed confidence in the people they had met and
in the prospects for continued rehabilitation with the help of
additional volunteers. They made it clear that their congregations will
be part of those rebuilding efforts.
“Our presence here gives me hope and validity that I am a servant of
God, and I am responsible for my neighbor,” said the Rev. Irene Pierce,
pastor of Elijah United Methodist Church in Poolesville, Md. “We need to
bring more African-American people to join in this effort.”
The historic visit was organized by Sandy Ferguson, a
Baltimore-Washington Conference staff executive, and by leaders of the
conference committee on Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st
Century.
Ferguson presented checks totaling $10,000 for rebuilding efforts during
the Bishop W.T. Handy Convocation, an annual learning event, at United
Methodist-related Dillard University.
Future plans
Since their return home, many of the Baltimore-Washington clergy say
they have talked with church members about their experiences and their
desire to form mission partnerships. Several are planning to raise funds
and recruit rebuilding teams.
The Rev. Eric King, pastor of New Life United Methodist Church in
Baltimore, is helping to arrange a sister-school relationship between an
elementary school near his church and one near a New Orleans mission
zone church.
The visiting clergy members also plan to lobby the U.S. Senate to pass
the stalled Gulf Coast Housing and Recovery Act (S.B. 1668). The bill to
provide additional federal dollars to help the homeless in New Orleans
has already passed the House of Representatives.
The team plans to report on the visit and ensuing mission efforts at the
2008 session of the annual conference, aided by a video about the
journey produced by the United Methodist Commission on Religion and
Race.
Orphe expects to use that same video to share her new partnership
cultivation model with other conferences and encourage them to send
clergy teams — especially African Americans — who will in turn involve
their church members in the mission zone’s long-term recovery efforts.
“I’m looking for 30 or more partnerships to develop from this model,”
Orphe said. “We need more volunteers not only to gut and rebuild homes
and churches but also to help us rebuild our ministries of nurture,
witness and outreach.”
“This is only the beginning for us,” said Ferguson, who has heard from
other African-American clergy who were unable to make the trip but still
want to participate in partnerships. “We expect these partnerships to
become long-term and to multiply as we continue to tell this story.”
*Coleman is the communications specialist for the United Methodist
Commission on Religion and Race. This story is adapted from an article
in UM Connection, a newspaper for the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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Resources
Katrina Church Recovery Appeal
Louisiana Annual Conference
United Methodist Commission on Religion and Race
Baltimore-Washington Conference |
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