Ok well here goes and hang on....
As many of you know I am a Pastor in the Dallas-Ft Worth area. Due to the crisis in New Orleans a flood gate broke today. We, the local population, have found out we will have somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 displaced residents from LA, 25,000 of those will be refugees.
A note, a refugee is someone who did not leave NO, but had to be evacutated and are living in shelters in the area. There are an incredible number of people living in hotels at the moment. It is only a matter of time until money runs out and they have no where to stay.
If you think about this for a moment, this is an incredible undertaking. Local school districts, services, feeding of these people and such. It is massive in scope and unbeleivable difficult. But, it is also an opportunity.
Today at 2pm central a large number of Pastors and ministers are gathering to discuss what we as the church can do to help.
I have called a church meeting for tomorrow at 9am for our local body to talk about what we can do as well.
The needs appear to be massive. We already have about 5,000 people in local shelters and 15,000 coming to Dallas and 5,000 coming to Fort Worth.
There are three levels we are looking at right now-
1. Immediate- these people have no clothes or food
2. Intermediate- getting them longer term stay and getting kids registered for school and finding jobs for able bodied people. Meeting the daily needs of this group for 2 to 3 months.
3. Long term- putting teams together to rebuild NO and the Gulf Coast
Please pray for the local churches in the surrounding areas as we attempt to be an Acts 2 church. I will keep you updated.
Needless to say, Sunday's sermon will be very different from what I had orginally planned.
As many of you know I am a Pastor in the Dallas-Ft Worth area. Due to the crisis in New Orleans a flood gate broke today. We, the local population, have found out we will have somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 displaced residents from LA, 25,000 of those will be refugees.
A note, a refugee is someone who did not leave NO, but had to be evacutated and are living in shelters in the area. There are an incredible number of people living in hotels at the moment. It is only a matter of time until money runs out and they have no where to stay.
If you think about this for a moment, this is an incredible undertaking. Local school districts, services, feeding of these people and such. It is massive in scope and unbeleivable difficult. But, it is also an opportunity.
Today at 2pm central a large number of Pastors and ministers are gathering to discuss what we as the church can do to help.
I have called a church meeting for tomorrow at 9am for our local body to talk about what we can do as well.
The needs appear to be massive. We already have about 5,000 people in local shelters and 15,000 coming to Dallas and 5,000 coming to Fort Worth.
There are three levels we are looking at right now-
1. Immediate- these people have no clothes or food
2. Intermediate- getting them longer term stay and getting kids registered for school and finding jobs for able bodied people. Meeting the daily needs of this group for 2 to 3 months.
3. Long term- putting teams together to rebuild NO and the Gulf Coast
Please pray for the local churches in the surrounding areas as we attempt to be an Acts 2 church. I will keep you updated.
Needless to say, Sunday's sermon will be very different from what I had orginally planned.