plant and run

A day at the Rock/h[s] | June 10, 2009

Back in the NOLA. Alf is here to spend a couple of days primarily focused on his new house. While he is in town, though, we figured we would spend at least a couple of hours doing some factfinding.

Alf's new house

NOLA is a unique city. Yeah, everyone knows about the Quarter and the food and the jazz. That makes it unique but that is not what I mean exactly…although that is part of it. It’s bigger than the weirdness that a tourist observes on the surface of the city.

The culture of New Orleans is cut from a foreign fabric. It’s complicated. It was French and then Spanish and then French and then American. It is a port city with all of the ethnic influence that comes with. It is Catholic in a Belt of Protestantism. It is supersititious. It is gumbo incarnated.

and then there was this storm.

The status quo just doesn’t fly here. If you wanna dig deep into the souls of New Orleanians, you can’t just franchise any old successful church model from another city. It just doesn’t work that way here.

So as we begin blueprinting a church for Gentilly, we are thankful for model churches around the US, but we know that we need to learn from the guys that are swinging here in NOLA.

On Tuesday, that led us to the Rock/hs.

St. Roch Community Church is focused on the St. Roch community that is due South of Gentilly. Ben, their Community Development Pastor was kind enough to show us around and tell us their story. What struck me the most was the fact that they know their turf. They know it really well. They have taken the time to understand the unique needs of their immediate neighborhood and they are intent on changing it. It will take things like: mentoring a couple dozen teenagers to follow Christ and go to college, moving two families away from predatory landlords and into their own homes, and doing tax returns.

Do that for 25 years and you’ll begin to overcome generations of poverty for Jesus.

The second church we visited was Castle Rock Community Church. We met with John [Pastor] and Laura [Development Director]. It was really cool to see a church that is a little older [pre-dates Katrina] and kinda in the next developmental stage. Their turf is Central City. We talked a lot about the complications that come with a church that has developed into a place where a people from diverse backgrounds have ownership and are in leadership. It is a beautiful problem to have.

Some overall impressions from these two meetings:

-We need to focus on Gentilly. New Orleans will only be changed by mission outposts that focus on bringing Jesus to their immediate neighborhoods. If only we had one of these in each area of the city…

-We need to be in this for the long haul. Don’t get me wrong, St. Roch and Central City are both very different neighborhoods than Gentilly. But I don’t want to have rose-colored glasses and pretend that this will be easy.

-Being native New Orleanians isn’t enough. We can’t assume that just because we grew up here means that we are experts. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t missionaries.

-So we need these guys. We want to be their friends and hang out with them. All too often churches in New Orleans are struggling to stay alive and don’t cooperate too well. We want to know their struggles and we want them to know ours.

-It is friggin’ exciting to see concretely where we hope to be in a couple of years. I’m so dang excited.

Okay, I’ll stop typing now. If you are still reading, thanks for your patience while Doug rambles yet again.