If you follow Christ everywhere he goes in the French Quarter, you end up in some places you might not have gone otherwise.
Several years ago, the church decided to reach out to the homeless community in the French Quarter in compassion, knowing that part of the Christian life is reaching out to the marginalized and forgotten in your community with the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection being able to make sinners, like us, whole. A decade or so ago, we started opening the church on Fridays to a few homeless people we had gotten to know around the neighborhood so they could take a shower and then eat lunch with us. Today, that ministry involves church and ministry partners from around Southeastern Louisiana coming together to provide a pathway to wholeness for our neighbors experiencing homelessness, addiction, or mental illness.
- Weekly, we and regional church partners meet the basic needs of about 120 people by providing a meal, clothes, showers, and haircuts. We do this out of compassion, but also to seek real relationships, share the gospel, share testimonies of life change, and provide avenues toward restoration.
- Together with Baptist Community Health Services, the church serves as a tele-med center for medicaid enrollment, primary care, trauma counseling, psychology, and psychiatry.
- Together with Unity, Traveller’s Aid, Odyssey House, and other community partners, we are part of a coordinated entry network to provide social services such as housing, food assistance, and detox.
- We’ve also initiated a work-as-ministry endeavor in order to provide a first job out of homelessness.
If you are experiencing homelessness, meet us at 7am at Armstrong park to receive a ticket to take part. Contact us to volunteer.
Together with First Baptist New Orleans and other churches from our denomination, some women of the church go into the strip clubs of the French Quarter and establish relationships with dancers and other female club workers. The aim in this is to meet felt needs, share the gospel, and provide ways of escape from a life that tends to draw people further and further into mental and physical forms of abuse. Contact us to volunteer.
If you’re willing to drink after people, alcohol is free in the French Quarter, so a lot of people we meet, and a lot of the people who are now part of the church, are in some stage of either addiction or recovery from alcoholism. For that reason, we see Ground Zero as an essential ministry of our church. Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, and no matter how out of control you feel, there is hope in Christ for you. We meet on Thursdays at 8pm at the church, 711 Dauphine St. Maybe today is the day you start toward recovery.
Through our denomination, the Great Commission Baptist Convention, we support and are involved with several other ministries meeting needs across our city:
- Baptist Community Health Services, providing medical care to the underserved
- Baptist Friendship House, addressing domestic abuse and human trafficking
- Crossroads NOLA, seeking families for children in foster care
- Bethel Colony, providing long-term transitional housing
And much, much more. Find out more on joinnoba.com.