New Orleans director of missions tells Texas DOMs to ‘Pray big’

EULESS?Joe McKeever, director of missions for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans, encouraged SBTC directors of missions to “pray big” at the 2006 Empower Evangelism Conference that took place at First Baptist Church in Euless.

McKeever, a minister for more than 40 years and an accomplished artist, has been on the forefront in helping rebuild churches and providing relief to residents in New Orleans and surrounding areas since Hurricane Katrina hit last fall.

Previously totaling 135 churches and missions in the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans, McKeever said the association has either temporarily or permanently lost almost half its churches since Katrina.

But in the rebuilding process, McKeever said God is doing great things in the city and it’s “a fun time to be a Southern Baptist in New Orleans.”

He shared with the Texas DOMs several things he’s discovered about New Orleans since the disaster occurred last fall: Every person was affected by Katrina, and everybody is tired of the subject, and God is using it to work amid the devastation.

McKeever said, “One of our pastors [working with the disaster relief] said, ‘We have led over 600 people to the Lord.’ Before Katrina, Baptists were known for what we are against. Since Katrina, we are known by what we are for.”

He concluded by encouraging the SBTC ministers to “pray big” that God would take New Orleans back, that he would do a new thing in the city, and that it whatever happens as a result would be a “God thing.”

“When it’s all over,” McKeever said, “let us be able to say, ‘God did this.'”