Turn my Mourning into Joy
Ministry after the Storms
The Katrina Catastrophe started with ominous forewarnings of a hurricane in the Gulf and a Called Session of the Louisiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. While neighbors and businesses were boarding up in our towns and cities, the clergy and laity of the Annual Conference gathered for what seemed at the time a momentous vote to sell a long-time agency of our people, Lafon Home, a nursing home in New Orleans.
We had compelling reasons to meet and address the future of our relationship with Lafon. It had been an important part of Louisiana Methodism, with a long and rich history. No one took the proposed sale lightly, and we listened intently as the Rev. Andrew Douglas described its plight and laid out a plan. Within the hour the decision was made. We would take the necessary steps to sell.
As we closed in song and prayer, our bishop urged us to “go gentle on our way,” knowing that some of us faced a threatening weather system called Katrina as we drove back to churches, home and family. We exchanged the usual hugs and goodbyes as we left, but none of us had the foresight to imagine what we were about to face, first in the wake of Katrina and, then, Rita. Had we known we might have held on to each other a little longer or asked to sing, “Through it all” just one more time before we parted.
We drove home on a day so clear and sunny it could have been the one Oliver sung about, the one “captured in a bottle and saved for a rainy day.” Yet the radio and television reports were getting more detailed and threatening by the hour. At some point, it became evident that this would not be a usual Sunday, that all of us with the means to flee would be leaving southern Louisiana for another destination.
It was in that moment of truth that pastors had to decide – at what point do we cancel services for Sunday morning? Or do we valiantly move ahead with the morning schedule? That pivotal decision would become only the first of hundreds and thousands of critical decisions that pastors across the Gulf Coast would have to face in the coming weeks and months. After the storms, new issues would arise, decisions that we could never have imagined on that sunny drive home.
How do I find the flock that has scattered across the land? Where can I gather the remnant for a time of prayer and worship again? Who needs my pastoral care in the hospital? How do I get a message out when the e-mail merge list is back in the church office? Where can I find a quiet place to work and plan for the next steps? Where will my children go to school?
And of course, always, always we ask – When will I be able to go home? What will I find there – in the dwelling place of God and the parsonage where we once lived? What has become of our beloved community, and what is needed there?
As I have met with clergy and talked of our experiences, I often hear a common story. We all left home with three days’ change of clothes – the kind of clothes you mostly need for hurricane wear. We left also with an innocence of spirit, believing that we would be home in a very few days. We would simply pick up the fallen branches, clean up what was needed, and go on with our lives and ministry.
None of us expected our evacuation would take us away for long weeks and require such deep patience and trust. We had no idea what we would face when we finally made that first ominous drive back to what we had known before Katrina and Rita–and what was left after.
Our ministry now -- and for the foreseeable future -- will be defined by what we found and what we have continued to discover in the days post-hurricane. Hurricane aftermath is a lot like Good Friday. It lingers, and it cannot be ignored.
So what does it mean to deal with sustaining excellence in ministry in these after days? What becomes of pastors who no longer have sanctuaries, and sanctuaries that no longer have people in the pews? Where does the energy and the will come from to move forward?
That is the amazing grace that has flourished in this time of desolation. It is the very desolation that creates the space for consolation and for new beginning. If ever we had to believe in a future that is God’s future, now is that time for this generation. Out of the debris and rubble left behind, there has come a mighty band of men and women who every morning continues to answer the call they heard as a whisper long ago: “Follow me.”
No course at any seminary can teach the survival skills needed for these post-hurricane days. But every course has in some way fashioned the faith and the mission out of which pastors are leading their people into a new future. They do it in rubber boots and work clothes, with a mop in one hand and a cell phone in the other. They get up every day asking, “What next?” And then they get on with what is in front of them. For some, Sunday worship has been held on the front steps of a sanctuary that is condemned and in rubble. Now they are getting closer to having worship in donated chairs on a concrete floor that has been cleaned and dried after days of labor.
The very presence of the teams who drove across country to bring chain saws and new Bibles has given bright hope for tomorrow. It has caused us to reach deep to find the path and a little light to see by. We are encouraged by the small things – the return of the hummingbirds, the reopening of the grocery store, and above all, the return of neighbors and friends, school buses, and children.
These days of post-hurricane have taken our ministries to a place none of us could have imagined or would have chosen. Yet, we are moving forward. We are discovering new ways to give ourselves to excellence in ministry. It is evident when we show up. The preaching I hear has gone to a deeper place. The prayers seem to soar to the heavens. The army of faithful has risen to their feet, has driven all night, to be present and to be helpful.
It is not what we would have asked for. But neither was the Garden of Gethsemane.
We are finding our way, and it has brought new depths to our ministry. One day we will look back, and we will see these days as among the most abundant of our time in ministry.
The following prayer was in the bulletins that were never used at Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church in New Orleans on that fateful Sunday of Evacuation. It has become a starting place for our clergy gatherings when we are together. I pass it on to you. Pray it, and then pray it again, until one of the phrases speaks to the place in your heart that is post-hurricane.
O God, most loving Comforter,
I pray that you will always turn what is evil into good,
and what is good into what is better.
Turn my mourning into joy,
my wandering feet into the right path,
my ignorance into knowledge of your truth,
my lukewarmness into zeal,
my fear into love,
all my material goods into a spiritual gift,
all my earthly desires,
all that is transient into what lasts forever,
everything human into what is divine,
everything created and finite into that sovereign and immeasurable good
which you yourself are,
O my God and Savior. Amen.Thomas à Kempis, 15th century
Carole Cotton Winn is director of the Academy for Spiritual Leadership, a ministry of the Louisiana Conference of the United Methodist Church and a component of the Conference’s Sustaining Pastoral Excellence project.
