By Daily Press staff
As a result of Hurricane Katrina, Bethany United Methodist Church in New Orleans sat for three weeks in more than 10 feet of polluted water.
And a local congregation is determined to help rebuild the 50-year-old house of worship.
The Rev. Larry Young, associate pastor at First United Methodist Church of Santa Monica (FUMCSM), will be leading a 15-person volunteer team to the Gulf Coast this week to assist in a “a hands-on recovery effort.”
Jim Krause — one of the volunteers who specializes in planning for nonprofit organizations — said the first goal of the volunteer team will be to “assess the full scope of what Bethany Church needs, and to perform some stopgap work on the perimeter metal fencing around the church, crushed by falling trees.”
In addition, the volunteer team will begin devising a landscape plan, which the pastor there seeks.
Two other volunteers, both partners in a Santa Monica architectural firm, did some advance work for the church while in New Orleans in early March. Sherry and Todd Erlandson both attended school at Tulane University and returned to Santa Monica, having been visiting professors there, just days before Katrina struck.
In January, Sherry Erlandson proposed the fund-raising idea of holding red beans and rice dinners on Monday nights, a Louisiana tradition.
While most volunteers are paying their own way to New Orleans, the Santa Monica church has held three Monday night fund-raising dinners, raising nearly $20,000 to date.
“It’s what I call the three Rs of Gulf Coast partnerships: recovery, rebuilding and renewal,” Krause said. “After six frustrating months, the recovery period for Bethany United Methodist Church is over, and the rebuilding period has begun.”
Senior pastor at Santa Monica FUMCSM, Patricia Farris knows the church located on 11th Street, between California and Washington avenues, has the means to aid those whose lives in the Gulf Coast have been decimated. FUMCSM had a record response to emergency relief appeals last fall, aided in large part by a standing-room-only “Songs of Strength” concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in their sanctuary, featuring k.d. lang, Jackson Browne and a host of other artists.
“It is only right that our churches help other churches in need,” she said. “Willingly and joyously, in order that these strong Southern churches can declare their triumphant return, as Bethany UMC proclaimed its certain rebirth last week, ‘blessed, bigger, better.’”
The rebuilding period has begun. “This is a neighborhood in New Orleans that definitely will be rebuilt,” Krause said. “So the faster we can help this vital community get back on its feet, the faster will be the pace of their ability to help other sections of the Ninth Ward recover, rebuild and renew their own neighborhoods.
“The psychological impact we leave with our sister church is more important to their recovery from post-storm traumatic stress than the money we raise and spend restoring the lawn and shrubs around their beloved house of worship.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 5, 2006. Read the original PDF.