Onwards and Upwards
 
My father used to tell me that the world was full of opportunities, but most of them arrived disguised as hard work! The last year has taught me he was right!!
Whilst the 'Grand Project' of restoring New Orleans' Metropolitan Community Church back to health has gone wonderfully so far, its success has exposed a host of great opportunities, all of which are artfully disguised as very hard work indeed. Theodore Roosevelt used to say (lots of quotes today I am afraid) that we should never pity anyone who works hard at something worthwhile, it was only the idle who should be pitied, whether they considered themselves paupers or aristocrats. Well, church has become a hive of busy bees - with forty people signing on to volunteer for a host of projects ranging from our audio-visual ministry, to our HIV/AIDS outreach to what I hope will become our MCC prison ministry; and of course, creating and facilitating these ministries means a lot of hard satisfying work for our leadership team. The reason I am using this column to shamelessly plug our churches progress is because I am very disturbed by some stories I have read in the Picayune of late - stories telling us in New Orleans to be 'realistic' and to plan for a small, under performing city in the future! Poppycock!!
If I had listened to the voices of wisdom I would never have come to New Orleans, never have taken on a church that had been failing, and would not now be planning for the development of a large church with a major outreach and ministry program! Aspiration leads reality, not the other way around. There is no reason whatsoever why New Orleans cannot compete and win with competition around the country and around the world - competition for jobs, residents, talent and resources! As an Englishman I can assure you that New Orleans has an international reputation that only two or three American cities can compete with - it has a very high profile, and needs re marketing to the world as somewhere open for business, and providing a quality of life centered on it's cultural and historic inheritance, and a beautiful and unequalled housing stock. There are opportunities all over New Orleans, almost all of them dressed up as hard work. In the 1970's the British government had become very good at managing decline, and it was accepted wisdom that the country would 'fizzle' until it became a quaint backwater. Then Margaret Thatcher appeared on the horizon and shook everything up. Britain went from a terminally sick economic patient to be richer than France, Germany or Japan, and the City of London reclaimed its position  as the capitol of Europe and the one of only two financial pivots on which all commerce turns (the other being New York). Now, I couldn't stand Margaret Thatcher because of her social conservatism, but my point is that she dared to aspire to something everyone told her was impossible - genuine revival! I firmly believe that New Orleans needs someone with the same energy, the same enthusiasm and richness of vision to bring New Orleans leapfrogging its competition to take its place in the sun.
We are approaching a new year, and a new set of opportunities disguised as hard work. With optimism, enthusiasm and talent those opportunities can lead New Orleans into a very bright future indeed - it is the doom mongers and the cynics that share just as much responsibility for this city's condition as any hurricane. It is poverty of aspiration that leeches the life out of a community, it is people saying again and again that things cannot get any better so that they will not be judged when they fail to make anything any better - it is the attempt to dress up failure as inevitable that leads to broken dreams and broken lives. God calls us to an almost childlike optimism, and the seeing the next opportunity even after a major slip-up! It is the spirit that is summed up in the scripture 'all things work together for good for them that love God'.
Lets face 2009 with unrealistic optimism and a taste for hard work!