CROSSOVER 2012

NEW ORLEANS—Jack Hunter, director of missions at New Orleans Baptist Association, says God has been at work in the Big Easy.

When Southern Baptists from other regions arrive for the pre-convention Crossover events in June, he expects that spiritual wave to continue to swell.

The churches there have been enthusiastic in preparing for Crossover—a evangelistic outreach held annually in the host city of the SBC annual meeting—with nearly year-long prayer and planning that will heavily involve New Orleanians reaching out to their unchurched neighbors through door-to-door evangelism, block parties, service projects and prayer-walking.

City Uprising, a church planting support effort, will also be a part of the Crossover effort, June 13-16, the week before the annual meeting.

“Our folks have really been focused on this for the better part of a year,” Hunter said. “We are expecting God to move in and to condescend to do it through us. We welcome brothers from all parts of Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas and all parts of the SBC to participate with us in the harvest.
“Our folks have been really looking for a mighty movement of God during the week of Crossover.”

POST-KATRINA
Hunter, who grew up in New Orleans and practiced law there before God moved his heart toward vocational ministry after several years working in the Florida housing project of the 9th Ward, said the city is not back completely, but it is showing new life, and the public school system, among the worst before Katrina, has made huge strides.

New Orleans’ composition is slightly different than before, but it is still a cultural mix where homes are built close together and people spend significant time on their front porches, sidewalks and in back yards. It is a city of communities where people decided long ago it was easier than not to get along, Hunter said.

“I would say the climate of New Orleans is receptive,” he added. “I really think that is a work of God as well.”

The DR response immediately after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the subsequent recovery work of hundreds of Southern Baptist volunteers through Operation NOAH Rebuild gave Southern Baptists a rapport with New Orleanians. But more than that, “it’s the faithfulness of God just opening hearts and making hearts receptive. We read about it in India and China and sub-Saharan Africa and Korea. We believe God is about to do a mighty work in New Orleans as well.”

Don Snipes, a former Big Spring pastor who coordinated the SBTC’s volunteer efforts during the NOAH Rebuild phase from early 2007 through 2009, said the people of New Orleans seized his heart while he was there. He’d do it again, given the opportunity, he said.

“There was a real change in the attitudes and the hearts of the people while we were there,” said Snipes, now a pastor in Arkansas. Skepticism had taken hold because many residents were taken by contractors who left town before finishing their work. When Southern Baptists arrived to assess needs and place residents on a project waiting list, they were wary but hopeful.

And when church groups would arrive with hammers and paint brushes, “they were at first shocked and then surprised—shocked and surprised that somebody would care and go to the trouble of doing that with nothing to gain materially from it,” Snipes said.

“When we came and assessed their property, we had a basis to say, ‘You have lost everything but you still have your life, which is a wide-open door for sharing the gospel.”

A CULTURE OF EVANGELISM
Keith Manuel, evangelism associate at the Louisiana Baptist Convention, has been working with the New Orleans Baptist Association and with the North American Mission Board to train churches there for the Crossover events.

Block parties are a staple event in most host cities, and more than 40 churches there have indicated they will host those.

“The association’s emphasis, though, is creating a culture of evangelism in their churches,” Manuel noted. “That’s the phrase they used. The emphasis is on door-to-door and personal evangelism” in addition to the block parties and surveys and compassion ministry. “Lots of prayer-walks going on before the events and some compassion ministry going on in the French Quarter,” Manuel added.

A study of New Orleanians’ spiritual receptivity commissioned by the state convention showed people are open to Southern Baptists and open to being invited to church.

“It’s a spiritually rich environment for sharing the gospel,” Manuel said. “The seeds have been sown. The fields are white unto harvest.”

And the soil composition could not be more interesting.

“Historically it’s a Roman Catholic culture. New Orleans is a melting pot of the world. There’s almost every culture there,” Manuel said. “You have French, Irish, Italians, Bohemians, pagans, an influence of voodoo. You’ve got just about every religion and people group. I think it would be great training ground for intentional evangelism.”

Manuel said one recent encounter he had with a young woman who was a self-described pagan exemplifies the openness to talk belief systems.

“I just said, ‘Are you open to the Bible, to the claims of Christ?’ She said she was” and would read the Bible if she had one.

“I marked the Gospel of John and gave her a Bible. She wouldn’t give me contact information to follow up, but she was very open,” Manuel said. “Ask people to give you their stories and I guarantee you they will. And they all have a story.”

Hunter, the DOM, added: “God is collecting and marshalling some really wonderful kingdom resources and we really believe something amazing is going to happen. I think the wave is beginning to swell.”
For more information on Crossover, visit joinnoba.com/crossover.

For information on the church planting events, visit citysurprising.com.