By Karen L. Willoughby, Managing Editor POINTE-AUX-CHENE – Tom Bellon, pastor for the last two and a half years at Live Oak Baptist Church in Pointe-Aux-Chene, tells a similar story as that of Barataria Baptist. “It’s funny how God opens doors,” Bellon said with peace rather than laughter in his voice.  “It [the oil spill] is good in that the Lord  has opened doors for us to speak with people about Christ and share our faith in Christ, so it’s been very good in that respect. There are people we’ve been able to interact with and share Jesus with that we wouldn’t have been able to, otherwise. “Right now there’s a lot of money because we’re working for BP,” Bellon said, identifying himself with the town because this is where he was reared. His father was pastor of the church years ago. “One of the tribal chiefs – we’re a tribal town – wrote a letter to BP and BP came down here to see what they could do. They didn’t have any facilities available so we opened the church to them.” BP set up a temporary office in the church, and uses the church for Hazwoper training and 6 a.m. daily safety meetings, which the pastor opens with scripture and prayer. “That’s a huge thing,” Bellon said. “There’s over 100 people there. It’s … [Read more...]

By Karen L. Willoughby, Managing Editor VENICE – This town of about 400 people at the southern end of Plaquemines Parish is near to bursting with newcomers. Venice is the closest point of land to the ruptured Deepwater Horizon wellsite. As many as 5,000 clean-up personnel – perhaps more! – are expected to converge on the town. About 1,400 already fill a tent village at the south end of town, beyond which the road dead-ends. Several smaller groupings of people have squeezed in around town, and a flotilla of vessels offshore also houses people, said Steve McNeal, pastor of First Baptist Church of Venice. It’s the overcrowded conditions, lack of entertainment and traffic tie-ups that are wearing people down, McNeal said. [img_assist|nid=6524|title=Gulf Oil Spill|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=83]“The media is trying to paint a picture down here of despair and how the oil industry has ruined peoples’ lives,” the pastor said. “That’s just not true. The people here are very tenacious. The emotional upheaval is simply because life is so difficult, and it happened so quickly, and it’s not going away, and you don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring.” Shrimpers, for example, are used to managing their time … [Read more...]

By Quinn Lavespere, Message Summer Staff Writer HORNBECK – It was a seed planted two years ago. First Baptist Church of Hornbeck celebrated its first-ever quilt camp on June 7-12, after months of planning and praying, quilt camp director Mary Wind said. “It was an idea I really prayed about that God just wouldn’t allow me to let go of,” Wind said.  “I just had to do it.” Wind described how the idea for the camp came into existence. [img_assist|nid=6526|title=Participants in First Hornbecks Quilt Camp had a chance to visit and admire different quilts during the camp|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=75|height=100]“I grew up in Hornbeck,” Wind said. “I met my husband, David, who was in the Air Force and stationed at what was England AFB in Alexandria.  We eventually moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, but I would periodically come home to Hornbeck to visit. “The grandmother who raised me taught me to ‘hand piece’ quilts,” Wind said. “When I left home my mindset was ‘I’ve been there and done that, and I’m not gonna do it anymore!’ It just goes to show you that God often has other ideas. “About 20 years ago,’ Wind continued, ‘a friend in Miami, Fla., introduced me to ‘rotary cutting and strip piecing’ and there was no … [Read more...]

By Diana Chandler, Regional Reporter NEW ORLEANS – “I’m a survivor,” Mary Rose Washington said during audience feedback at the recent “No Greater Love Conference” on domestic violence and sexual assault at Franklin Avenue Baptist Church. Women and men in the morning session joined Washington in praise, some echoing her proclamation. [img_assist|nid=6528|title=Teens, Single Adults, Men, Women, Couples and Friendships were targeted by the No Greater Love Conference.|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=67]Rochelle Head-Dunham, a psychiatrist with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, had just finished talking to the group of 25 adults on the facts and myths of domestic violence, part of Franklin Avenue’s first such outreach, with sessions targeting teenagers, single adults, men, women, couples and friendships. “The illness is in the perpetrator. The victim is never to blame,” Head-Dunham said. She cautioned victims not to remain in situations of abuse, whether physical or psychological. “Don’t get it twisted. This has nothing to do with God, this whole notion of staying in a [violent] marriage,” the psychiatrist said. “I’m a Christian. I absolutely believe in prayer. Pray and do, ’cause faith … [Read more...]

By Jerry Love, Director of Planned Giving Louisiana Baptist Foundation It’s 1939. A young lady steps off a bus in a small, predominantly French-speaking town in South Louisiana. She and the two friends with her spend the day going door to door, looking for people interested in starting a Bible study. Before the end of the day, and before the bus returns to pick up the three, they have found several adults and children interested in joining them to study the scriptures. This was how young Kathryn Carpenter spent her life in those years. She and her friends were students at Baptist Bible Institute, now New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Over the next few years, the trio would return regularly to Napoleonville to worship, study God’s Word, and grow a congregation. Eventually the small Bible study became a new church. Carpenter was a charter member. This story is but a piece of Carpenter’s lifetime of service and a building block in the Legacy of Faith she established through dedicated service to her Lord and Savior. Born in Baton Rouge and raised in the small town of Norwood, Carpenter accepted Christ as a young teenager. By her own accounts, she felt as if God always had a specific task to do in His … [Read more...]

By Katrina Cassel, Living with Teenagers What’s an evening meal like at your house? Is there a mad rush to different activities? Does everyone microwave their food at different times and eat separately? Do you sit down together to share daily events? When your children were little, you probably made sure that everyone ate together. You realized that this was important for your youngsters. You knew your little ones would eat more nutritiously, learn table manners, take turns talking, improve their vocabulary by listening to others, and keep in touch with other family members. [img_assist|nid=6531|title=The family meal still remains a primary factor in influencing children.|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=67]As your children grew older, though, soccer practice, piano lessons, cheerleading practice, marching band, sports competitions, and part-time jobs were added to the schedule. You may find there are activities every night of the week that interfere with being together at dinnertime. Family meals may not seem so important now that your children are teens. After all, they know how to talk, and they’ve learned their manners (hopefully). However, it is still important to have that family … [Read more...]

By James B. Law, Senior Pastor First Baptist Church, Gonzales, La. In preparation for a recent study on heaven, I Googled the word and discovered the first five pages of the 142,000,000 references on the Worldwide Web took me on an incredibly confusing journey. From my Google search, I learned from a YouTube clip that a Bryan Adams’ song, “Heaven,” claims that heaven is having your girlfriend in your arms. [img_assist|nid=5978|title=Jim Law, Senior Pastor First Baptist Church Gonzales|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=94|height=100]When I clicked on Wikipedia for some help, I read for 45 minutes a conflicting survey of heaven among world religions.  From there I consulted a link with ABC News, and Barbara Walters’ attempt to answer questions like, “Where is heaven?” and “How do you get there?”  Trust me on this one, if you want clarity, don’t bother going to Google. My Internet research allowed me to discover how heaven has been trivialized. There was a nightclub in Seattle called “Heaven,” and there was a restaurant named “Burger Heaven.”  And of course, Disney has an animated film assuring you that all dogs go to heaven. The trivialization of heaven has brought a manifest scorn regarding the future hope and home … [Read more...]

By Erich Bridges, IMB Senior Global Correspondent I almost got flattened by crazy drivers the other day – not once but twice. The first near-miss occurred in the parking lot of a burger joint, where I dodged an SUV barreling toward the exit. Less than an hour later, at a gas station, I was walking toward my car when a pickup truck speeding through the station missed me by about a foot. Before I could recover from the shock of the moment and think about reacting, the pickup was gone. [img_assist|nid=6535|title=Erich Bridges IMB Senior Global Correspondent|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=67|height=100]You have your own nightmare stories about bad drivers, I’m sure. My larger point is this: Many folks no longer seem to care enough about others to observe the basic rules and courtesies that separate civil society from anarchy. From highways to law and order, from politics to media slugfests, from online flamers to breaking in line at the supermarket, examples are endless. And they range from the mundane to the deadly. In Chicago, 54 people were shot – count ‘em, 54 – over a single weekend in June. Ten of the victims died. Some of the shootings were gang-related, but others reportedly were caused by minor … [Read more...]

By Kelly Boggs Editor Louisiana Baptist Message Apollo 11, NASA’s first manned mission to land on the Moon, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on July 16, 1969. Four days later, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface and proclaimed, “One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” While the first activities by man outside the Apollo 11 lunar module were broadcast and publicized, one of man’s first acts on the moon’s surface – a religious observance that took place inside the lunar module – was kept very private. [img_assist|nid=5974|title=Kelly Boggs, Editor Louisiana Baptist Message|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=78|height=100]On July 20, approximately two-and-a-half hours after landing and prior to exiting the lunar module, Buzz Aldrin broadcast to Earth: “This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” Aldrin then paused and took Communion. It was “a ceremony I had planned as an expression of gratitude and hope,” Aldrin wrote in his book “Magnificent Desolation.” … [Read more...]

By Joe Guthrie, Member Lewiston Baptist Church, Kentwood, La. There seems to a great deal of political grandstanding of late regarding the establishment of the United States as a Christian nation.  Both sides of the argument seem to have neglected the true purpose of “freedom of religion,” and how it truly benefits believers. It was not that the United States was formed as a Christian nation, but rather a nation established by Christian men.  Once again, rhetoric and emotion push aside and try to hide history and the beliefs of our founding fathers. During colonial times, each American colony, by law, had established its own state religion. The religious intolerance and bigotry of Europe played one of the most important parts in the colonization of the New World.  As a result, colonial America was left with groups that wanted religious freedom for themselves, but were unwilling to grant it to others. Massachusetts Protestant Pilgrim Puritans fled to the New World as religious refugees, but showed no religious tolerance for Quakers in laws established in 1657.  Later Roger Williams, a Baptist minister, fled Massachusetts as a result of religious persecution to establish the colony of Rhode Island. Pennsylvania was … [Read more...]