September (Web-only) 2005

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As relief and recovery efforts continue along the Gulf Coast, religious leaders are scrambling—sometimes from afar—to find their clergy and determine whether the buildings where they worshipped are still standing.

Assessments of damage from Hurricane Katrina on faith-related institutions are hard to come by and people are dispersed so widely that some pastors have no clue how their congregants are doing. With communication breakdowns, official counts on deaths and damage often are not yet available, denominational leaders say.

Gwen Green, communications coordinator for United Methodist churches in Mississippi, said efforts to contact pastors and churches are continuing. "Communication is very difficult because phone service has been out, so we're doing a lot of word of mouth, who's seen who," she said.

In yet another dilemma surfacing in the hurricane's aftermath, not only are biological families separated but church families are, too. "That's one of the toughest things," said Pastor Fred Luter, leader of the now flooded-Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, a New Orleans megachurch. "It's not the building. I have no idea where our members are."

The Southern Baptist minister spoke in a phone interview from Dallas, where he managed to fulfill a long-scheduled speaking engagement, but he and his wife are staying with their daughter in Birmingham, Ala., while they wait for the waters to recede.

Some congregations are not able to meet at all while others are gathering without the buildings where they long have worshipped. At the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Biloxi, Miss., the pews were splinters, the brick bell tower a pile of rubble.

But on the first Sunday after the hurricane, congregants came to give thanks for their ...