wfn.org | [ENS] Louisiana's bishop set to bring message of hope,

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Daybook, from Episcopal News Service

November 3, 2005 ? Thursday: People of Purpose

Louisiana's bishop set to bring message of hope, gratitude to New York

Fifth Avenue parish to welcome Jenkins; ?Episcopal Life? carries
Q&A interview

[Episcopal News Service] The Rt. Rev. Charles E. Jenkins, bishop of the
Diocese of Louisiana, will preach on November 6 in New York City at St.
Thomas? Church, Fifth Avenue, for the parish?s 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.
services.  He will also speak informally with parishioners at the coffee
hour following the 11 a.m. service.

Jenkins will describe relief efforts in response to the devastation
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita brought to the diocese which resulted in
destruction or severe damage to 26 parishes, representing 50% of those
in the Diocese of Louisiana.

He will also acknowledge a $49,500 gift from St. Thomas? parish,
representing contributions from individual parishioners and a matching
grant from a church fund designated to support work outside the parish.

Episcopal Life?s associate editor Nan Cobbey recently spoke with Jenkins
from the loaned offices at St. James? Church in Baton Rouge. Excerpts of
that interview, which also appear in Episcopal Life?s November edition,
are reprinted below.

More information about specific needs and ways to help the church in
Louisiana is posted on the diocese?s frequently updated website at
http://www.edola.org/.

- - - - -

Episcopal Life: What news do you have about the diocesan offices? The
Cathedral in New Orleans?

Charles Jenkins: In the offices, we had falling water, water through
the roof, and we will need a mold count.

EL: When will you be able to return to those offices?

CJ: It depends when they get us power. The water is not drinkable. Nor are
you supposed to wash with it. I had to move our freezer and refrigerator
out to the street.

EL: In your vision statement you mention a use for something called the
Glimmer Inn. What is the Glimmer Inn?

CJ: Next to the diocesan office, on a block that is mostly owned by the
cathedral, is an old Bed and Breakfast called the Glimmer Inn.

One of the most difficult things [we face] is our inability to deal
with peoples need to minister. The Episcopal Church is generous. The
Episcopal Church has a need to express that generosity and not only
with money and gifts but also with presence.  We are an incarnational
church. We are a sacramental church. We need to be present to one another.

What we hope to do with the Glimmer Inn is establish an urban ministry
center. With it, ministry teams can come and be with us in New Orleans.
Also, we need an office for our disaster relief folks as they can go
to New Orleans? and I haven?t stopped to count how many families of
displaced clergy I have.

EL: So you are envisioning this for the really long term?

CJ: Absolutely.  Our needs are going to be long term. ERD thinks they
may be with us eight to 10 years.

God bless ERD. God bless the Episcopal Church! The generosity has been
incredible.

EL: Where have you seen it?

CJ: Where have I not seen it! The promises and the reality of prayers:
We had three brothers from the Society of St. John the Evangelist here
in the initial days of our trauma. You need to realize that everybody on
my staff, including myself, are displaced persons. And some on my staff
are homeless.  So we are trying to minister to the needs of others,
and enable others to minister to the needs of others

The [brothers] prayed when we could not pray. They prayed for us. They
prayed through us. They prayed with us. They maintained the daily round
of prayer here [at St. James]. They went to the morgue and were trained
and did volunteer work at the Disaster Morgue dealing with the families
that came in to identify bodies.  But that?s just one example. We?ve
had gifts from all over the world. Sunday schools all over the world
are making little greeting cards? We are passing those cards out at
the shelters. Our shelter here continues to repopulate.

EL: How many remain in the River Center here?

CJ: Over 10,000. And the gifts have been pouring in from around the
country..

EL: What kinds of things are coming?

CJ: Let me just tell you what we do not need. We do not need any more
clothes. The second wave of a disaster is used clothes.

EL: What do you need?

CJ: The things that we need right now are Clorox. You can?t buy
Clorox around here. That kills mold. We need personal hygiene supplies:
antiseptic cream, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, toothbrushes. Those
kinds of things.  We need ant poison, believe it or not. Fire ants. We are
blessed with fire ants and Formosan termites. They will raft up together
until they come to something stationary like a house and invade. We need
squeegees, with the long handles, so that you can move mud out of a house.
We need large chainsaws with extra blades.  We will need portable showers
and after my experience in New Orleans yesterday, we may need a water
filtration system.  Portable..

EL: Where do you want people to send this?

CJ: We would prefer that they call here [the St. James office],
225-387-5141, and ask for our disaster relief office. They will tell
exactly where to send things and how.

We need teams of right now, self sufficient teams that can come and help.
But they need to be self-sufficient. For the longer term, we are going
to need cots, and some bedding. I hope we can make the second floor of
the Cathedral offices a dormitory. It is obvious that the Glimmer Inn
is not going to be sufficient for all of the needs that we have. And
that?s where we could use some portable showers as well.

EL: What about jobs? with all those that have been lost?

CJ: Well, we don?t know. You can see the strain. Baton Rouge is living
beyond its capacity. It?s the largest city in Louisiana and we do not
know the answer to that question yet. If our experience resembles that of
9/11, then we will have a wonderful renaissance and a great rebuilding.
I?m trying to help raise the vision of our business and civic and
industrial leaders about how that could be?

EL: Are you having any success?

CJ: Not yet. The entire region depends on New Orleans. The North Shore and
so many communities around ? people drive into the city to work. All
those businesses are gone. If they are going to come back remains to
be seen.  They are trying to jump start the Port of New Orleans. That?s
an important industry, the chemical and petrochemical industry along the
river is very important to us. My fear is that we are going to try to
do a great deal with gambling ? and not that I am necessarily opposed
to gambling, but we know it has certain ills. [Building] casinos would
produce a great deal of capital in the city immediately ? a lot of
jobs, but those jobs have low ceilings. I hope we can look for jobs that
require skills beyond that ? low ceiling. I am going to try to be at
the table as soon as I can get back to New Orleans, try to be  with some
of the mayor?s groups and try to raise that up.

Part of what we saw in the aftermath of Katrina, laid bare, was the horror
of the racism and the economic injustice. I would suggest that if the
same kind of thing happened in other cities you would see it there as
well. I repent of my complicity in it in New Orleans, but I think the
church has a prophetic role in the rebuilding of the city.

I do not know what the future of that city is going to be. I intend to
be there. I hope to be part of it... and a voice of prophecy ? as long
as God calls me to be there.

EL: What have you learned about disaster and being prepared that the
rest of our church needs to know ?

CJ: We certainly have learned what it means to live on the generosity
of others. We have all done that. We have learned that it is the role
of the church not only to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless and
tend to the sick, but that we have a role that no one else can do and
that is to respect the dignity and hold up the dignity of every human
being. I think only the church can do that.

What I would say to other dioceses is to have an emergency plan and
don?t have the emergency plan contingent on two or three people as
ours was.  The two or three people upon whom the plan was contingent
were not in New Orleans and could not get there.

I would say to other dioceses to keep careful records and back up their
computer systems. Keep those in different places. I would say to other
dioceses to maybe keep a duplicate set of vital records -- such as
congregational records -- and keep that in a different place.

I would say to congregations, to bishops, to drill into clergy the
importance of checking in wherever the bishop and the bishop?s staff
are going to be.

I would suggest to every congregation and to every diocese that they
very carefully look at their insurance. I am surprised at the number
of our clergy who did not have flood insurance for their homes. Most of
our clergy did not have it.

EL: What are you going to be able to do for the clergy without insurance?

CJ: Well, we are pairing congregations up with congregations and I just
spoke with one this morning and they are going to try to help those
clergy out with rebuilding their lives.

EL: How many clergy is this affecting, who have to rebuild homes, lives?

CJ: I would say more than a couple dozen because you had a group that were
affected by the wind from Katrina. Then we had a group affected by the
flooding. That occurred the day after Katrina. We thought we had dodged
the bullet, then the levy broke.  We had a third group affected by Rita.
But every church in this diocese will be affected by the demographic
shifts in south Louisiana.

Louise and I just bought a little getaway home over on Lake Pontchatrain.
The water came through, knocked out the front, went out the back and
then came back through. We are dealing with that.

EL: What other lessons have you learned?

CJ: We learned what it means to live by grace. Grace is expressed through
the generosity of others. Chad?s [the Rev. Canon Chad Jones] family
is living in the nursery of Trinity Church. I am still in a friend?s
house. The Rev. Mark XXX is the only person who has his own home now
and he bought it since the hurricane.

I think there is a lesson for the whole church in this: that some of the
disagreements and arguments that we have and we enjoy  so well? they
take on their relative importance when you are dealing with issues of
life and death, sickness and health, food and shelter, housing and the
spiritual needs of the population that has been brought so low.

I would hope that we can apply that same formula of graciousness to one
another even when we are not brought low.  And look to find perhaps a
more creative and grace-filled ways of dealing with one another in our
time of disagreement.

In being so humbled and so vulnerable and suffering so much, we have
learned anew something of the life of Christ. The difference is we
didn?t choose it.  That?s an important difference but, theologically,
there is a realization of holiness here now that did not penetrate the
façade of Louisiana before.

EL: How is the rest of the church supporting you as you rebuild?

CJ: Bishop Peter Lee of Virginia has done something that I never would
have thought of. He is such a creative person. He has started a program
of loaned executives.  So that is how we had Sarah [Bartenstein, a
communications professional]. And then Anson Birch, a young man who is
in Durham N.C.  That has been a wonderful gift.

Our ministry and needs are not only in the short run but in the long run.
One of the things that was learned in 9/11 was that when the initial
energy begins to wane around a tragedy, that it is the church that
will stay and be present. And it is the church that will minister to
the needs of those that fall through the cracks. And it is the church
that will minister to the needs of the poor and the indigent.  We plan
to be here for the long haul.

EL: Episcopal Relief and Development is going to provide a chaplain
for ??

CJ: It is through Bishop Packard with ERD. The initial appointment. is
for 6 months with the option to renew. Bishop Packard and his people
have been so wonderful in coming in and helping us and they have been
rotating teams through. But what I want is a person, one person, one
face, so we will have a consistent presence. We have asked for a veteran
with some skills of self-sufficiency. But we know that we have not even
scratched the surface of the pastoral implications of this for our clergy,
for the bishop?s staff and for those in our parochial schools. So we
want a helper of helpers.

EL: How will you discern which congregations ought to be re-opened,
which closed, where clergy ought to be stationed?

CJ: We have put together a diocesan rebuilding committee. The committee
will be huge and have various working groups in it will include great
numbers of New Orleanians. Many of those decisions are not going to be
made by the Episcopal Church. Some are going to be made by FEMA. Some
are going to be made by EPA. And I think some are going to be made by
structural engineers.  Every little parish wants, and is trying hard,
to survive. I want enable that, congratulate that, hold that up, but
but at some point, where we had a city of 1 million, if we now have a
city of 200,000, we are going to have to take a hard look at how our
resources are deployed.  If, on the North Shore, where we had 200,000,
we suddenly have 750,000, we are going to need to move some resources.

At this point, the diocese is paying salaries of displaced clergy if
the congregations can not or will not. We are not telling anybody,
?Hey you?ve got to find another job in three months.? Thanks to
the generosity of others we are able to keep the faith and the hope
alive? even at the very basic level of salaries.

EL: How long will you be able to do that?

CJ: I don't know. But many dioceses have offered temporary placement for
clergy. And Canon Bill King in the Diocese of Alabama is coordinating
that on our behalf. Some clergy have already self-chosen out-placement.
As the reality of things becomes clearer, others may choose it.

EL: Anything else you want to tell the church?

CJ: Well, I hope you hear how grateful we are? and I hope you hear
how wonderful the Episcopal Church has been to us. We hope that our
experience here in Louisiana will be of value.

We realize that many have a need to minister. We realize our incapacity
to enable that. We are moving there. This is a different situation than a
normal disaster, where you don?t have standing water for example, and
chemical sludge. What we ask for from people is continuing patience...
and to join us in the long-term rebuilding.

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