KATRINA: The Storm's Devastation, the Faithful's Determination

Five years have passed since Hurricane Katrina hurtled its way across southeastern Louisiana and the rest of the central Gulf Coast.

More than 1,800 deaths were recorded. Thousands upon thousands of people were displaced; in New Orleans, the U.S. Census Bureau reported a 53.9 percent drop in population between April 2000 and July 2006. (The city's 485,000 population recorded by the Census Bureau in 2000 was estimated at 352,000 by the mayor's office in mid-2009.) More than $81 billion in property damage makes Katrina the most costly ever of American disasters.

The emotional toll of the storm on area residents also remains high.

"I talked with a friend in Florida after Katrina who had gone through Andrew in 1992," said Lonnie Wascom, director of missions for the three North Shore Baptist associations that plan to merge later this year, largely because of Katrina. "He told me it would be 10 years before most people really would get over it, and looking at it from the five-year mark, I'd say he was right on the money."

Dennis Watson, pastor of what now is the multi-campus Celebration Church headquartered in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie on the east bank of the Mississippi River, noted a tangible effect of the stress still hovering over greater New Orleans.

"Prior to Katrina we had a small counseling ministry in our church," Watson said. "Following Katrina, however, we became convinced that more than anything else -- besides a relationship with Jesus -- people needed trauma counseling. We re-launched the Celebration Hope Center which now has more than 25 counselors on staff and ministers to hundreds of people on a weekly basis."

Two weeks before Katrina, the church, located in what had been an oversized strip mall on busy Airline Drive, had acquired a second location on Transcontinental Drive in Metairie by merging with the former Crescent City Baptist Church. Celebration's main campus received more than six feet of water in the storm, while the new site received 18 inches. So after repairing the Transcontinental site, the congregation moved there.

The new acquisition, intended at the time to be a satellite congregation, was a God-sent way Celebration managed to hold its devastated congregation together as well as minister throughout the community, Watson said.

The Airline Drive parking lot was in a great location for Celebration to mount its massive disaster relief effort. The church estimated it served 140,000 families in post-Katrina outreach, providing such necessities as food, water, clothing and baby supplies, while also gutting and rebuilding homes. 

The church lost 60 percent of its members due to displacement to other cities, yet "we are much larger than we were pre-Katrina," Watson said, particularly noting "people who have been won to Christ" through the church's ministries.

Celebration finally moved back to its Airline Drive location in June.