“Evangelism is a carnival in the village, a boisterous parade that marches through town. It displays Christ with marching bands, beautiful floats, vivid symbols, and a way of living so powerful that it threatens the surrounding principalities and powers.”  David Fitch

March 22, 2010 

It has been a good year so far for New Orleans. I am seeing signs of emerging racial reconciliation and of the passion of New Orleanians to continue to work hard for their own recovery. The election of a new mayor has brought hope to the city. Regardless of one’s views of his politics, we cannot help but be encouraged to see blacks and whites united, each giving him an equal share of their vote. He received twice as many votes as the other eleven candidates combined. The very same weekend, the city was further united as we together cheered the Saints to win their first Super Bowl. There were 800,000 people at the Saints’ victory parade (double our city’s population!). What had been for New Orleans an emblem of failure—the once hapless Saints—has given many the hope to imagine progress in other areas of life that they never thought possible. The Saints were a team of mostly castoffs, so this was a victory of imagination.    

Redeemer has tried to be a church like that. Resting in the assurance of God’s sovereign rule, knowing that he is near to the broken hearted, we have encouraged each other to use our imaginations. Out of the rubble of a shattered city, with just 17 members, haunted by the legacy of a couple of other PCA church plant attempts that never took root, we believed God was calling us to use our imaginations and trust him.    

We have seen such progress, however much work remains. New Orleans is back to almost 80% of its pre-storm size, about 400,000 within the city limits. But there remain 65,000 blighted homes (over 30% of our houses). Redeemer, with mission teams from around the country, has worked on almost 400 homes, restoring many buildings, and many lives in the process. For example: 

• Sherri is an assistant principal of a Catholic school, and lived 150 yards from a levee break. She has helped several of her neighbors work on their homes. We did her dry walling and interior painting, and she hopes to move back soon.

• Signora lives with her 90-year-old mom in a trailer behind their home. Contractors took her money and never finished the work. Her brother Kennie took time off of work every day to work alongside our teams.  

Friends, I am generally so encouraged. Hosting and supervising mission teams is exhausting and expensive, but well worth it. Redeemer continues to grow, even with the enormous turnover rate. We had a quarterly members class this fall, which was larger than the size of our whole congregation four years ago!  The past two Sundays each had over 160 people in attendance (including about 30 missionaries). Yesterday a reporter from CNN called and interviewed me for an hour, and is planning to feature our work again, this time for their 5-year Katrina anniversary special. 

Yet our needs remain, and this is where we ask for your continued help. 

While internal giving continues to climb steadily, our congregation is largely made up of young people, many unchurched, and many very mobile. New Orleans is also a more expensive city in which to live and work compared to other areas of the country, making our community more financially draining and precarious than most. Last year our outside support fell by almost 50% over the previous year. I assume this is partly due to expectations for church plants to be self-supporting in three years. That is understandable. But urban works in a city as historically resistant to evangelicalism as NOLA, take longer. Probably some of the outside drop-off in support is related to the economy: oftentimes mission giving is the first to be cut.    

But friends, we need your help now more than ever. Let me share some areas in which you might better see our need and our potential: 

• Not only do we not own a church building, we do not even have a lease on the one we rent. And our church building has not had heat since I’ve been here. We literally handed out blankets and hot drinks one Sunday, as it was 45 degrees inside even at the conclusion of the service!  One of our goals for 2010 is to build a heating system for the church we rent from, in exchange for a cost effective five-year lease.

• We also have called an RUF campus pastor to Tulane. (Our hope is that he is approved by presbytery next month, in order to begin in the fall). While he will raise lots of outside support, our church is making a large ongoing commitment in order to bring him here. Your support will allow us to minister to more college students.

Not only is our need financial, it also continues to be physical: Please keep sending teams of volunteers! We currently host about half as many teams as we used to, and in 2010 we’d like to reinvigorate our service to the people of New Orleans. This is not only a faithful response to the command of Christ to serve the homeless, the poor and the suffering, but it is also cost effective: our overhead costs remain the same (supervising staff, tools, housing, extra insurance), even when we have less teams. 

Most of all we need prayer. Prayer is the only explanation for how we’ve survived and even grown, and how we’ve been able to celebrate and serve our community.

Thank you for your love and prayers,

Ray Cannata