Hearing God In The Midst Of The Storm -- By: Scott Drumm

Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 04:1 (Spring 2007)
Article: Hearing God In The Midst Of The Storm
Author: Scott Drumm


Hearing God In The Midst Of The Storm

Scott Drumm

Associate Professor of Theological and Historical Studies Associate Dean of Leavell College

Introduction

The New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is one of the world’s leading providers of quality theological education, training over 3,000 students annually. With a focus upon training students for practical ministry, the institution offers a number of courses designed to prepare students to minister within some of life’s toughest situations. Theology courses challenge students to wrestle with tough issues like the problem of evil-how a loving, just God can allow suffering to occur. In pastoral ministry courses, students are exposed to troubling situations that can severely damage a church, and address issues related to ministering to families in crisis or who are suffering the loss of a loved one. Through courses on counseling, students learn how to help people deal with some of life’s most difficult circumstances. These practical emphases enable the seminary to produce highly skilled and qualified ministers—men and women who are ready and able to face any difficult ministerial situation that may confront them.

With all the faculty and resources of one of the largest accredited seminaries in North America, it might seem that the seminary’s students should be prepared for any situation or challenge in which they might find themselves. However, that was before the storm. When Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge crumpled New Orleans’ levee protection system on August 29, 2005, the seminary campus, the homes of many students, faculty, and staff, and ultimately 80 percent of the city of New Orleans were inundated with water. This cataclysmic disaster confronted the seminary and its faculty with a difficult situation, the likes of which no seminary course had provided adequate preparation. Indeed, the faculty members who had been instructing students in how to maneuver through and provide leadership in the midst of life’s trying circumstances found themselves in what would prove to be perhaps the most difficult situation they themselves had ever faced.

As God so often does, He used the difficult circumstances of life to teach the various members of the seminary community important lessons—some of which were more personal or individual, while others concerned all the members of the seminary family and the entire Gulf region. Many of these were lessons the participants knew in an intellectual sense, but God used the circumstances of the storm to teach them in such a deep way as to become more real and more clearly understood than never before. These lessons became more than just spiritual platitudes or pietistic slogans. What follows are the simple stories of three seminary faculty membe...

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