Hurricane Gustav

The fear was that Hurricane Gustav would tear apart New Orleans again. New Orleans still hasn't recovered from Katrina. But New Orleans did well. It looks like they got minimal damage and flooding. They got 95% of the city to evacuate. That's awesome. What's great is that it totally shows that we learned our lesson from Katrina.

For now.

I bet next time they make a mandatory evacuation order, they get fewer than 90% of the city to evacuate. And the next time it will be less than that. Until eventually they either won't make a mandatory evacuation order, or under 25% of the city will leave. That can't really be our concern, though. We just need to do it right every time. Set up shelters, provide transit out of the city, provide emergency relief assistance, etc. The temptation will be to stop doing that as time goes on. To slack off on it because it doesn't get used. Or we feel like it's not needed, or a waste of time.

That's how we are. In ministry there is this temptation to slack off if we don't have big numbers. I see it all the time when I go to an event and they didn't get the number of people that they wanted. They slack off on the program. You can tell their disappointed. That they don't care as much.

But the thing is God gave them the people that are there. They're there for a reason, and they deserve the best that we can do. I hear people talk all the time about how it's okay for them not to focus on quality because they only have 12 kids or whatever. I think that makes God mad. Don't those kids deserve God's best. I could easily look at other ministries and be like, oh well, we only have 75 here today. Let's just get this over with. Or I could thank God for giving me the kids that are there and pray that he would use the event to impact their lives. Sorry this is so long. JM