Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 04:1 (Spring 2007)
Article: Bringing Light To A City Of Darkness: A Pastoral Perspective On Urban Transformation
Author: David Crosby

JBTM 4:1 (Spring 2007) p. 64

Bringing Light To A City Of Darkness:
A Pastoral Perspective On Urban Transformation

David Crosby

Pastor, First Baptist Church
New Orleans, Louisiana

I have visited in many houses as a pastor in New Orleans. I have peered into the darkness of a home with no electricity and all the broken windows covered by plywood. I have seen the pallets on bare concrete where little children slept without heat or air conditioning. I have seen the stairwells of apartment buildings choked with debris where trash pickup as a city service seemed to have been abandoned.

I knew in my heart what a difference it would make if those children could grow up in a house that was safe and bright, warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

First Baptist Church of New Orleans operated a Kid’s Club for 14 years in the Florida Housing Community in the Upper Ninth Ward. Every Saturday a group of volunteers went to the community center playground, played games with the children, taught Bible lessons, sang songs, and fed them lunch. Sometimes rudimentary medical care was provided by medical residents and nurses. Clothing and Christmas gifts were distributed to children and adults alike.

We started that ministry the year 17 people were murdered in that one housing community and New Orleans became the homicide capital of America. We helped families bury their teenagers shot dead in the streets. We comforted little children who tracked through the blood of murders outside their doors. We brought them to church, took them to camp by the hundreds, and placed some of them in the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home.

The Upper Ninth Ward, like most areas of high crime and poverty, was largely populated by single mothers and their children. The husbands and fathers were almost universally absent. One deacon at First Baptist New Orleans invested thousands of hours as a volunteer helping these families in every imaginable way, including showing up in jail and in court when they were in need. He gave more of himself in more practical ways to the poor in our city than any volunteer I knew. In conversation one day he told me that he never entered a home in the Florida housing area in which a married couple lived together with their biological children. He visited personally in dozens of homes.

The Florida Housing Community went through demolition and rebuilding before Hurricane Katrina. For a long time social stratification in the area was determined by whether one lived in the “brick” or the “paint.” The old buildings were brick and badly in need of demolition. The new and beautiful buildings were painted in pastel colors and were

JBTM 4:1 (Spring 2007) p. 65

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