If you have been to any conference, you know that the best connections happen outside of the formal  conference  activities.  The spontaneous meals, prayers in the hallways, and late night talks with old friends and new are the richness of the Christian Community Development Association.  Yesterday morning Mark Charles pointed out that “the American Church has bought into the false notion that relationships can be between organizations.  Organizations do not develop relationships, people do.”

There were several opportunities this week to remember that and perhaps my favorite moment was a “dinner party” that started with my friend Kevin from New Orleans saying, “let’s get together!” and me replying, “I’ll bring my team.”  Next thing I knew we each had invited about five people who then invited a couple more.  When we finally got everyone in the same place at the same time we noticed a few individuals standing around seemingly with no dinner plans so we roped them in too. 

A few months after Hurricane Katrina, I was walking the streets of New Orleans with friends who were committed to helping in the rebuilding effort. We drove past the Superdome, walked in empty neighborhoods racked with garbage, debris, and broken down homes, previously flooded by activity and people. Hundreds of thousands of people left the city in search of something new.

The prophet Jeremiah, instructs us in both his self-titled book as well as his book of Lamentations that we should care for the city. He puts it clearly in two distinctly related phrases: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare,” (Jeremiah 29:7). Later in Lamentations 1, we read these words:  “How lonely sits the city that was full of people.”  And so images of New Orleans come to mind, both in its beauty and potential as well as in its dealing with its own current loneliness that was once ‘full of people.”