Cities pulse like living organisms, their centers pumping commerce through arterial streets and squeezing people into, out from and through the organism.
When a city takes a blow to the heart like several Gulf of Mexico rim cities did from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it could be life threatening.
“We’re struggling,” said Gulfport Mayor Brent Warr. “A lot of our heart got ripped out in many ways but that’s okay. There are plenty of incidences in the Bible where communities got ripped to shreds and they came back right, and we’re going to do that too.”
Yet, Gulfport is being renewed.
Warr and Chuck Register, his pastor at First Baptist Church which lost its facility, credit North Carolina Baptist Men with being catalysts for their city’s renewal.
The work of North Carolina Baptist Men is funded through gifts to the North Carolina State Missions Offering. One special offering emphasis this year is getting the characters NiC and Mo to Gulfport with a load of supplies.
The Baptist State Convention is asking churches to consider giving a dollar a foot—or $5,280—to get NiC and Mo a mile down the road. It is 800 miles from Raleigh to Gulfport.
Warr said while the city has paid “a terrible price and suffered an historic and cultural loss,” it is coming back strong and the population actually has grown since pre-storm levels.
“We had over 4,000 homes destroyed in the storm and the Baptist Men came in first and fed thousands and thousands of people hundreds of thousands of meals. They gave people an opportunity to shower, to use a phone, to pray and then they said, ‘Now how about your real property? Let’s try to help you there.’ We would be at square one in many areas of the city had they not gotten here.”
Warr said Baptist Men’s ministry in Gulfport “has given hope to people.”
For weeks immediately after the storm—with national news concentrating on the fiasco in New Orleans—other coastal towns like Gulfport set about rebuilding. Baptist State Conventions cooperated to concentrate on specific areas. In Gulfport, North Carolina Baptists are hailed as heroes.
Their physical efforts are resulting in spiritual gains.
“They’re doing it in the name of God,” Warr said. “So you have people that are unchurched, may be atheist or agnostic and it affects them positively to see someone come in and say all we want is to fix your home for free, and if you’ll let us we’ll say a prayer for you.’ It’s a great witness for Christ.”
Register quantifies that witness and says more than 400 people have come to know Christ, stemming from the rebuilding efforts.
“That’s Kingdom stuff,” Register said. “That’s growth in the Kingdom of God.”
Within First Baptist, Register counts among those who have been helped a retired school teacher who sustained severe water damage who did not have the funds to put her house back together. “North Carolina Baptist Men and women did that for her,” he said. “So the numbers are wonderful and certainly something to celebrate but it is in the lives behind the numbers where, North Carolina Baptist Men have made a tremendous impact in Gulfport.”
Register’s faith did not waver during the storm, or after when he caught the first sight of his destroyed church house on national television. “From Katrina we can learn that God is good and He is good all the time,” Register said. “Even in the midst of a major crisis that has such an impact on an entire region we have learned that God, showing His grace and mercy through people like North Carolina Baptists, has proven to us that He’s good all the time.”
The coordinating work of North Carolina Baptist Men is funded through the North Carolina Missions Offering, an offering Register strongly supports.
“I’ve been the personal recipient of North Carolina Baptists praying for me and my ministry,” he said. “I’ve obviously been a recipient of people who have been willing to go, people who have been willing to give and I hope that in the days to come that Gulfport, MS might become a teaching tool to let your congregations know that what God did through you in Gulfport, He wants to do around the world.”
For more information about Baptist Men’s ministries or the ongoing effort in Gulfport go to www.ncmissions.org. Continue to explore this website to find more ways your NCMO gifts support missions.