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Mike Hogg is pastor of Canal Street Presbyterian Church, located in New Orleans's Mid City neighborhood. Nearly everyone in the church fled the city before Hurricane Katrina hit last week, and now Hogg is pastoring his scattered church members over the telephone and the internet from Houston. Knowing that it may be a long time before they are able to return to what is left of their homes and church, Hogg is helping to arrange for his congregation's immediate needs while he and his family move temporarily to Arizona. Meanwhile, radio host Hugh Hewitt, popular blogging pastor Mark D. Roberts, and others have singled out Canal Street Presbyterian in their recommendations for giving.

Do you know what condition the church is in?

No, we haven't seen it. We have seen parts of the neighborhood, and the water levels seem to be different on some streets. We're thinking we had a lot of moving water for a long period of time. The worst, I think, is that it could be covering the first floor of church. It is an old brick church. It's been there 150 years. I think the building survived, but we could have water covering the first floor.

Most people haven't seen their houses. My wife and kids and I moved into the neighborhood, called Mid City, where the church is on Canal Street, and we haven't seen clear pictures. We don't even know if our house is there.

You left before the hurricane hit?

Yes, most people did. People are used to doing that. The weird part about this is everybody fled thinking This doesn't look very good, but we don't have time to do a whole lot. Katrina came off the Florida coast as a level one and developed off Florida quickly. They recommended 72 hours to get out of the city, but it was really only 48 hours before people realized it was a hurricane and it was coming here.

We even had a party Friday night for someone at church who had graduated college. There were 125 people there and part of the casual conversation was "Where are you going to go?" And that's the last time we saw each other.

You're staying with relatives in Houston now, right? So you're still in survival mode?

I guess. I've never been in survival mode before, so I'm not sure what that is. We had done some preparation matching people who don't have cars with those who do. We have older people, a handful of mentally ill and homeless people who worship with us regularly, and we're trying to touch base with them. In a sense we're prepared and our website has been phenomenal to stay in contact with people. I've been talking with another pastor who is a friend, and he doesn't have a functioning website. He doesn't know where anybody is. We don't know where everybody is, but we know where most are.

I'm trying to figure out where everybody is and get their information on the website so everybody else knows where they are. I'm also checking in with them to see what their needs are, particularly in the area of housing and finance. And I'm trying to call people, trying to do some of the pastoral stuff. We are thinking what our role is going to be as a church when they open the city back up.

We were involved in Pensacola with some of the recovery down there. Little did we know that was our schooling for what we're going through now.

Have you had difficulty connecting with anybody?

We're looking for a gal who is a pastoral counselor. She is not on staff at our church, but she attends it. She has an elderly mom who she lives with and she has a sister down on the Mississippi coast where she usually evacuates to. We know she went to Mississippi, but we don't know how long they stayed or if they got out in time. We have been frantically trying to figure out who knows her other extended family.

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September (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49