BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — The missionaries gathered in a former hot-tub warehouse, ready to rebuild lives and save souls in this city devastated two years ago by Hurricane Katrina.

The group — 47 men, women and children from Chesterfield Presbyterian Church — were told where to brush their teeth, how to get their work assignments and when dinner would be served. Over the next three days in early August, they would paint eaves, sand drywall, frame windows and insulate floors in the relentless Mississippi heat — part of the vast contribution faith groups have made over the past two years along the ruined Gulf Coast.

The scope and scale of the devastation brought by Katrina, which crashed ashore Aug. 29, 2005, underscored the crucial role religious groups play in emergency response and recovery.

The National Council of Churches estimates that church-sponsored volunteers have produced $600 billion worth of labor for the Gulf Coast. In contrast, the total amount of federal funds spent on Katrina aid as of March was $53 billion.

"There were so many things we learned," said John Kim Cook, director of the Department of Homeland Security's Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. "The framework for responding to a disaster is being revised to be more inclusive of faith-based organizations to make sure (the partnership) is improved upon and enhanced for the future."

The challenge for local, state and federal agencies will be finding a way to better coordinate and support faith groups, while not breaching church and state separations and not interfering with Christian volunteers who seek to evangelize.

Melissa Loaney, who joined her husband, the Rev. Jeff Loaney, in leading the Chesterfield group to Mississippi, said the spiritual mission was an integral part of what made church volunteers so effective.

"We want to build houses and fix things, but it's not just about that," she said. "We care about people and their hearts and their emotional devastation. For us, Christ can begin to heal that and restore their lives."

Lagniappe Presbyterian Church, where the Chesterfield group bunked down in Bay St. Louis, serves as a base camp for volunteers and spearheads construction efforts throughout the area. Like many evangelicals, Lagniappe's pastor, the Rev. Jean Larroux, is skeptical that churches can accept government support at any level.

Church and state, he said, have different callings.

"The government would want us to detach the declaration from the demonstration, and we won't do that," he said. "We won't do this just to be nice. If you seek to sterilize the message, you eliminate the motivation for most Christians."

SHOWING, TELLING

Two years after Katrina, the Gulf Coast is still in shambles. In New Orleans entire neighborhoods sit empty still. In Mississippi, Katrina flattened 30 miles of coastline, damaging or destroying 13,000 homes. The stretch that once hosted restaurants, homes and shops is now sand and weeds.

During their three days in Bay St. Louis, a spirit of gentle evangelization guided the families from Chesterfield Presbyterian.

They prayed with the homeowners, both individually and in large groups. They talked with them about Jesus and grace and redemption. They made it clear that the God that brought Katrina ashore in Bay St. Louis was the same God who had brought this group from Missouri to help them rebuild what was broken.

During the group's orientation, they heard from Lynne Sabin, who, along with her husband, John, helps to run Lagniappe. The church, which can house 350 volunteers and charges them $20 per night, has more than 800 open work orders from Bay St. Louis and nearby Waveland. Nearly all those orders will be completed by Christians.

"We're building houses in the name of Jesus, but we don't beat people over the head with the gospel," Sabin instructed the group. "Don't over-evangelize them, just love 'em."

There are many methods of evangelization, and some Christians feel that in disaster relief, showing is better than telling. National Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster, an umbrella group of denominational relief agencies that works closely with the government, discourages outright evangelism during disaster response.

"Do No Harm: Never evangelize, proselytize or exploit persons in vulnerable need," the organization advises.

But that's just a suggestion, not a rule. For Christians such as Roy Handlang, 46, a member of the Chesterfield team and a student at the Presbyterian Church in America's Covenant Theological Seminary in Creve Coeur, the group's suggestions are about as effective as an umbrella was during Katrina.

"My purpose in coming down here is to share the love Christ has shared with me," Handlang said. "That's what we're called to do as Christians."

After three long days of painting Brenda and Rich Bacon's house, one of the teams from Chesterfield Presbyterian packed up to leave. Before they did, the group gathered together with the Bacons to pray.

The Bacons' house is five miles from the nearest beach and 17 feet above sea level, but the surge from Katrina made it into the first floor of their house anyway. The hurricane had ripped much of the roof off the night before the surge, so rain and salt water combined to ruin most of the house.

"Everything that was familiar before was now unfamiliar," Brenda said of the months after the storm. "It felt like the world had stopped. For weeks there was no noise — no children, no birds. Just silence."

When the team was ready to leave, they gathered in a circle with the Bacons to pray.

"Thank you, Lord, for being a God of compassion," said Jeff Loaney. "Thank you for the privilege of seeing the good work here in the lives of Rich and Brenda and their family. We pray that they will ever grow in the depth of your love for them. We pray they'll grow closer to you."

DOLLAR VALUE

Immediately after churning the waters of the Gulf Coast, Katrina began muddying the waters between church and state. Small moments when religious groups and government join hands may be useful for the greater good, or even necessities, but they also may be problematic when money is involved.

In Hancock County, for example, the work of religious volunteers has counted toward the local government's debt to FEMA.

Lagniappe volunteers fill out worksheets detailing the kind of work they do — electrical, roofing, landscaping, plumbing — and how long they work each day. Hancock County translates that work into a dollar value, which FEMA then credits against the county's outstanding five percent contribution to the total recovery debt. (In July, FEMA began covering 100 percent of recovery costs.)

Robert Tuttle, a professor at George Washington University who has studied how the government integrates faith-based groups during disaster response, said faith-based volunteers working off the county's debt should not raise Constitutional worries.

"The church is not the beneficiary of the money," he said. "That's when the establishment clause comes into play."

Others say the lines aren't nearly so clear.

"If the county is getting credit for volunteering when there's proselytizing being done, that's certainly a bit of an unsavory mixture," said Tony Pipa, author of a report for the Aspen Institute called, "Weathering the Storm: the Role of Local Nonprofits in the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort."

Mike Womack, director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said that volunteers can't proselytize during a work break, for instance, and then count that time on the worksheet. But any proselytizing that goes on as volunteers work alongside residents is fine, he added.

"The volunteers have the right to talk to anyone they want about anything they want," Womack said. "Nobody's forcing anyone else to listen."

But Greg DiNapoli, deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security's faith-based center, said the government's position was clear.

"You can't preach on Uncle Sam's dime, and that is something we take very seriously," he said. "If you're out there on government funds praying or talking to someone about your faith, that's a problem."

FUNDING FAITH

The federal government's response to Katrina is considered one of the major failures of the presidency of George W. Bush, critics say.

Internecine battles among government agencies left Gulf Coast residents stranded for days after the storm, and help came slowly when it finally did. Complaints of too much red tape and other bureaucratic failings have continued. The most recent: a FEMA warning to Katrina victims that tens of thousands of the government-issued trailers may be contaminated with formaldehyde.

Faith-based groups "succeeded in their missions, mitigated suffering and helped victims survive mostly in spite of, not because of, the government," said Frances Fragos Townsend, assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, in a report on the federal response to Katrina.

Critics of the administration point out that the government's very ineptitude in the wake of the storm substantiated Bush's emphasis on better access to federal funding for faith-based groups.

"Katrina (allowed) the Bush administration to say, 'We told you faith-based communities are better at this,'" said Kim Baldwin, public policy director for the Interfaith Alliance, an ecumenical group critical of the White House's faith-based efforts. "The president hid his incompetence under the cloak of the faith community."

Bush officials, however, say the volunteer work validated the president's contention that religious groups work more effectively than the government in social service and humanitarian aid.

"It speaks to the ability of faith and community groups to provide holistic care, which doesn't correspond as well to the transactional nature of government," said Jay Hein, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Bush issued an executive order establishing the faith-based center at the Department of Homeland Security seven months after Katrina. John Kim Cook, the center's director, said the Department of Homeland Security would work to integrate faith-based groups in disaster preparation.

And, for the first time in U.S. history, the federal government reimbursed faith-based groups — $66 million — for their disaster relief efforts in the wake of Katrina. Some lawmakers have broached the idea of government funding of faith-based relief groups before disasters happen, or at least guaranteeing them reimbursement after they act.

"You need to start thinking of these things," Pipa said. "How might small organizations be able to receive money (from the government) more quickly, or know they'll be able to access funds later?"

The debate extends beyond the Gulf Coast and Washington. Missouri state senator Robert Mayer, a Republican from Dexter, sponsored the Faith-Based Organizations Liaison Act, which Governor Matt Blunt signed last month. Mayer said that better emergency preparedness coordination between church and state was necessary and that funding faith-based organizations ahead of time might be part of that coordination.

"I'd be open to trying it in Missouri," he said.

A HIGHER PURPOSE

As the work on the Bacons' house went on behind him, Jeff Loaney surveyed his wife, his children, his friends, his flock up on ladders, paint in their hair, sweating in the midday Mississippi sun.

His missionaries had come to help a group of broken American neighbors get back into their homes. For that, Loaney knew, his government and his fellow citizens would be thankful. But, he added, there was a more important reason Chesterfield Presbyterian Church had come to Bay St. Louis.

It would be great, Loaney said, "If all the people here would say, 'Oh, wow. What an amazing God you serve. That's the kind of God I want to know better.'"

ttownsend@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8221