hurricane rita gave louisiana another blow. but God is still greater. now, not only do we continue with st. bernard and other parishes and new orleans relief, but now we’re also reaching to the west side of the state. cooking for Christ is there, we’ve got trucks there on the ground in lake charles and port arthur. we’re sending in small teams every day. all that as well as continuing to care for evacuees here in baton rouge. three geographic directions at once, with resources, food/water, and meeting spiritual needs. and over all of it, our emphasis is caring for churches and pastors and helping get them back on their feet.

one thing i’ve learned in all this is that God will never ask you to go thru something you can’t handle if you trust Him. it all seems overwhelming when you step back and look at it. but His grace is sufficient - his strength is showing clearly in these times where we aren’t strong enough to do it on our own.

as for here at hpc, all that happened was that the other side of our sign blew off. what katrina left behind of it, rita finished off. but the big challenge was the power. the power at the highland campus was down. so, after thinking things through, and trying to get a sense of what God wanted, earl rentz and i decided to move the service to the annex campus for the night and just pray hard that we’d have power back on for sunday morning at highland.

john seibeling and his worship team were in town to minister in our weekend services at highland. they flexed with us - what a great bunch! their worship team did a really great job. check them out if you’re in memphis… the life church of memphis. john has been a great friend of mine for about 15 years.

stovall weems, another friend of mine for about as long, came in from celebration church in jacksonville and ministered on sunday at the highland campus. (we did get power for sunday - thank you, Lord). john and stovall, y’all really stepped up to the plate with the messages this weekend. thanks, y’all.

i was with yet another friend - rob ketterling in minnesoooota.

it was his 40th birthday, and his church’s 10-year anniversary. i got to be there for the celebrations - what a blast! plus, i got to speak at a church that sunday morning where darin poli pastors. darin and rob and i go way back to bible college days together. (i’m working on getting some pics to show you of the three of us - one from way back when, and the other from this past weekend.) it’s cool how God has allowed us to help each other plant churches. hpc helped rob start river valley church ten years ago, then last year, they helped (so did hpc) darin start southbridge community church.

October 12 and 19 are coming up quick. this is a time when i enter a mode of passenger and delynn starts to drive for a couple weeks. she’s ready - the band’s ready - the worship team is ready to go. do whatever you can to be there for the recording nights. it’s gonna be huge.

pray that lives are touched during the recording nights and (even more importantly) that the recording will carry a strong presence of the true Wonder of the world.

As Louisiana braces for another hurricane’s impact, I find an encouragement in the fact that there have been so many friends from all over the country – even from around the world – that have come to lend their support. Some of them are long-time friends of mine…

…like Rob Ketterling (my roommate in Bible college and one of my closest friends for 20 years). Rob pastors a great church up in Minnesota, River Valley Church. I’m actually headed to Minnesota right now to speak at his church as they celebrate their 10th anniversary this weekend.

There was (pictured, left to right) Chad Harris, Chad Daniel and Danny Meyer from Joyce Meyer Ministries, coming down to follow up the visit by Joyce Meyer and her son David Meyer.

Stovall Weems from Celebration Church in Jacksonville is here this week, and so is John Siebeling from The Life Church of Memphis. These two guys pastor churches that we are in very very close relationship with here at Healing Place Church.

There is Dale O’Shields, a good friend who pastors one of the greatest churches in our country, Church of the Redeemer in Maryland. He sent a busload of 40 workers here – they had to turn away about 60 more who wanted to come but wouldn’t fit on the bus. And I’ve already written about Kevin Mawae coming down with some of the NY Jets and Randy White from Without Walls International in Tampa, FL.

Tommy Tenney who wrote the book The God Chasers that has been a blessing to so many millions of people came to HPC and spoke last Wednesday night. (pictured: Stovall Weems, Tony Perkins from FRC and Tommy Tenney)

Lindsay Clarke, a great guy I got to meet in Australia who is doing some great stuff as a church planter, came in yesterday to lend his support.

Zhenya and Vera Kasevich who pastor Hillsong Kiev in Kiev, Ukraine came in. (pictured: DeLynn and Vera - they did a Chick Nite at HPC together that was a huge win). Zhenya preached at HPC and gave a great message that was right on time for us.

All of this adds up to an overwhelming statement that the body of Christ is making here. We’re rolling up our sleeves, working side-by-side to help hurting people. The body of Christ – worldwide – is rallying to meet the need.

Thank you to all of you who have worked so hard and are continuing to give all you can to show God’s love and hope to people in these tough times. It’s good to be a part of such a huge family of people who care from Kiev to Melbourne, from Minnesota to Florida to Missouri and Tennessee and Maryland.

Katrina was huge. Rita looks to be about the same. But neither of them is larger than God’s ability to restore hope and to reach into hearts and change lives. I’m glad we’re here in the middle of it, because that’s right where Jesus is - smack dab in the center of where hurting people are found.

Last weekend in St. Francisville there was another first for Healing Place Church. We launched our newest campus in the West Feliciana High School gymnasium with over 200 people - but here’s the first — until last weekend, we had never gone mobile for a campus setup before. It takes tons of work to do church that way, but we’ve got some great people on the job at the new St. Francisville campus. Timmy Straight is the campus pastor - he and his wife Neesa are doing a great job stepping into the vision for the community. And they’ve got Pete and Paulette Wunstel with them - there to help see the new campus get established.

St. Francisville - what a great community! We’ve felt for a couple years that God wanted Healing Place Church to be there along with the other great churches to meet the needs of people in that area.

So now Healing Place is officially 1 church in 5 locations. And #6 is schedule to come online in California next month. All for God’s glory.

Today, Kevin Mawae (of the NY Jets) sent me the first picture above - of the collection point near his home in Garden City, NY. Kevin is a great friend and he’s got a huge heart to help people that are hurting. He and some of the other players got together to start a project to help the hurricane relief effort here and they came down to Baton Rouge last week (second picture - left to right - me, Kevin, Jerald Sowell, Oliver Celestin, and John Abraham). They visited the shelters at Bethany and at the Dream Center in Donaldsonville - that was really cool of them.

And… how about those Jets yesterday takin’ it to the Dolphins? Congrats on the big bounce-back win, Kevin.

I’ve really gotten to see some great things come out of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. Not to minimize the pain and suffering at all, but I’ve seen the people of HPC rally hundreds of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of pounds of clothing, non-perishables and water and everything else you can imagine. I’ve seen hundreds of local churches partner up through PRC Compassion to send thousands of volunteers and millions of pounds of goods into the relief area. Through medical equipment, generators, chainsaws, thousands and thousands of meals, hours of meetings, dozens of chaplains and trauma counselors, cots, bedding, prayers, smiles, hugs – the body of christ has been in the forefront from day one. No one church could have done this – it was just the Church. To God be the glory.