Rebuild Lakeshore

A volunteer crew from Oklahoma started setting the pilings for another house this week. If I counted correctly, this makes number 27 from the ground up as we rebuild Lakeshore to the glory of God. We were able to use our new Skid steer auger attachment for the first time. It worked very well. Up until now we have been renting a less powerful auger to drill the 24″ holes to set the 8X8 posts. The new equipment investment will save us in rental fees, make your contributions to the efforts go further, and increase efficiency of volunteer time.

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I love it when teams come to Lakeshore with the “whatever it takes to get the job done” attitude. God has graciously gifted some guys to think outside the box, to show innovative determination, and see a task through to completion with a mixture of brute force, strategic planning, and cooperation at its best. Once such group, our friends from the Limestone Baptist Association of Alabama demonstrate these characteristics on a regular basis as they continue to come and work in Lakeshore to the glory of God.

The above series of images shows the crew hoisting an air conditioner unit up to a 9 foot platform for one of the homes volunteers have constructed. Local building codes require for the air conditioner unit to sit above the flood plain and equal to the height of the sub floor of the house. Come south Mississippi August heat - the Cox family will be high, dry, and cool.

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In an article posted to reformation21, Phil Ryken observed that “Some theologians do not see how vital mercy is to the credibility of the gospel. And some mercy ministers do not take the time to go very deep in their theology.” I pray that Lakeshore Baptist Church, and those that come work with us would avoid both of these pitfalls. As I’ve often said, I believe that the deep biblical roots of sound theology will produce the life giving fruit of mercy to others. For those of us who have been ill-deserving recipients of God’s sovereign grace, how can we not overflow with mercy to those in need? The grace that flows from the cross of Christ drives Rebuild Lakeshore forward for the good of our community and the glory of God.

In his short article, “A Reformed Theology for Mercy Ministry,” Ryken flies through the doctrines of God, creation, man, sin, the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection, and the ascension. He touches on the doctrine of election, and the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. He looks at adoption, the doctrine of sanctification, and the theology of the final judgment. In the quick overview of each topic, he insists that from beginning to end, a gospel saturated Biblical understanding of the theology we profess requires a bold mercy outworking in our lives.

Ryken concludes, “it is not just part of our theology that calls us to mercy ministry; it is everything in our entire theology. We must never forget that every doctrine that is taught in every part of Scripture from creation to the final judgment compels us to show the mercy of God to lost sinners, in the gospel of His Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit.” May we in Lakeshore strive for sound doctrine and to embody the gospel of Jesus Christ in tangible acts of mercy to our community in both word and deed, for the glory of God.

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Another month flew by with the following churches and groups represented with volunteer teams here in Lakeshore:

• Blessed Hope Community Church – Westville Grove, NJ
• Cedar Creek Baptist Church – Aiken, SC
• Central Baptist Church – Corbin, KY
• Church of the Nazarene – Augusta, GA
• Cornerstone Christian Fellowship – Chandler, AZ
• Crabapple Baptist Church – Alpharetta, GA
• Damascus Baptist Church – Appling, GA
• Decatur Baptist Church – Decatur, AL
• East Highland Baptist Church – Hartselle, AL
• Emanuel Baptist Church – Athens, AL
• Faith Baptist Church – Athens, AL
• First Baptist Church – Hartselle, AL
• Fleeming Baptist Church – Augusta, GA
• Jersey Baptist Church – Pataskala, OH
• Limestone Baptist Association – Athens, AL
• National Hills Baptist – Augusta, GA
• New Market Baptist Church – New Market, AL
• North Park Baptist Church – Trusville, AL
• Pittsgrove Baptist Church of Daretown, NJ
• Quinton Baptist Church – Quinton, NJ
• Rocky Bayou Baptist Church – Niceville, FL
• Seneca United Methodist Church – Seneca, PA
• Silver Run Baptist Church – Harlem, GA
• The Lighthouse of Cape May Court House, NJ
• Whitesburg Baptist Church – Huntsville, AL
• Winslow Baptist Church – Sicklerville, NJ
• Wooley Springs Baptist Church – Athens, AL

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After two and a half years, I’m still meeting people who fell through the cracks getting help cleaning their property and demolishing their destroyed homes. This past week I met one such disabled man in Lakeshore who has been living in a camper after returning to the area. Every day he walks out of his camper door to see the flooded remains of his previous home.

I spent some time with him yesterday and it looks like we have the ball rolling to get the old house removed and begin constructing a new home from the ground up on his property. I look forward to replacing the “Keep Out - Hazard” message on his existing house with a “WELCOME” mat in front of his new home for the glory of God.

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As we make plans to continue increasing our sleeping capacity for volunteers, we have run out of room on our own property. Our neighbors have graciously given us permission to creep onto their land with temporary facilities for the duration of the relief, recovery, and rebuilding efforts. We would like to build some more bunk houses on this property, but in order to do this, they will need to be small and potentially portable.

I’ve designed a rough draft of a 8 X 12 bunk house (the same size as many of our sheds) that would sleep 4 people. We could hoist this size structure onto a trailer if the need arose. I used the free Google Sketchup application to render a 3D model of something like I’m thinking about. You can download my 8 X 12 Bunk House Cabin from the 3D Warehouse. The model shows store bought bunk-beds, but we would probably want to build our own out of lumber. Let me know what you think. I’m open to suggestions.

Once we solidify the plans and get a material list together for these, I’ll post an update and perhaps we can have folks adopt a bunk house to fund the micro-projects.

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After the storm hit, we erected two Quonset huts on our church property. You can see a picture from October 22, 2005. At that time we had no other choice than to clear a spot the best we could and lay them out on a dead plot of grass in the middle of our cemetery. Since then we have established a camp site around them where literally thousands of volunteers have come to stay, work, and minister to our storm ravaged community. We have used the huts for church services, sleeping volunteers, a makeshift office, storing donations, sorting contributions, basing the Christmas gift operations, housing the distribution center and all sorts of other things.

After 28 months of continual rugged use, the floors have begun to give way. Over the past few weeks volunteers built, and painted new floor sections. Last week we removed the old floor out of the one on the right and replaced it with the new floor. this time we were able to set the hut on concrete blocks to keep it out of the moisture. Lord willing, this set up will suffice for the foreseeable future. In the next few weeks we plan to do the same with the hut on the left.

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March 14-20, our friends from the Northwest Baptist Association of Oklahoma will make a return mission trip to Lakeshore. You can check out our video archive for other great videos made by this group from last year’s trip along with videos shot by other teams.

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