LOOKING BACK WHILE LOOKING FORWARD

Kay Bennett On Ministry In New Orleans

By Marilyn Stewart

hen Kay Bennett looks back on the ministry she has devoted her life to, one moment stands out above others. It was the moment she told God, “I can’t do this.”

Bennett (MDIV ’89, DMIN ’08), a Send Relief missionary and director of the Baptist Friendship House (BFH) for 25 years, retires this spring after more than three decades of service in New Orleans.

As a student at NOBTS, Bennett fell in love with compassion ministry through her work at the Brantley Center, the former six-story, Southern Baptist rescue center on Magazine Street. The center provided overnight housing for the homeless and a four-month treatment program for those dealing with substance abuse. Bennett joined in, and never looked back.

“I tell people that I found my home with the homeless,” Bennett said.

But one night on the women’s unit, a little girl talking to Bennett fingered a screwdriver lying nearby and then asked her a disturbing question, “Why did my daddy hurt me?” The question sent Bennett to her knees with the realization that the ministry was more than she could handle. “I can’t do this,” she prayed. God’s answer came, though, “as if it were an audible voice,” Bennett said.

“‘You’re right, Kay,’” Bennett recounted as God’s answer. “‘You cannot, but I can. I can do it through you.’”

That night, Bennett learned a lesson that reshaped her thinking and molded her thoughts on ministry.

“I change nobody. It’s God who changes them,” Bennett said. “I’m not there to rescue someone, but to give them tools to move forward in life. Jesus is the person who gives them strength and the courage to do it.”

‘ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME’

As the need to provide greater care for women in New Orleans became clear, the Home Mission Board (today the North American Mission Board) repurposed the now almost-80year-old ministry of Baptist Friendship House. With a move to the edge of the French Quarter, BFH became a sanctuary for women and children in transition providing basic job and computer skills, and help in securing a job and a home.

One day, an Uber driver who arrived at BFH to pick up his hire told Bennett he had lived there as a child. The man told Bennett, “I just don’t know if I’d be here if Friendship House hadn’t been there,” Bennett recounted. On a different day, another man rang the doorbell. Now an engineer, the man told his story of living at BFH as a child. “It saved my life,” he told Bennett.

Bennett has answered the doorbell countless times and seen as many lives changed.

After losing his entire family in a house fire, a man called T. J. bitterly told Bennett that “God is dog spelled backward.”

Over time, as Bennett and other ministry workers patiently showed him God’s love, T. J.’s heart softened and he came to faith in Christ.

T. J. lived his final years in a nursing home a state away. When he died, the nursing home staff sought out Bennett to tell her that T. J. had often shared that Bennett and her co-workers had been like family to him.

The patience and endurance to love others comes from learning years ago that only God can change a heart, Bennett explained.

“I can tell tons and tons of stories for the 35 years I’ve been in New Orleans of how God has worked in people’s lives to change them,” Bennett said. “It’s been the most fulfilling thing I could ever have done. It’s been the adventure of a lifetime.”

Though Bennett never “went looking for” the Brantley Center or BFH, God used her years as a student in New Orleans to clarify His will and prepare her for a ministry she loved.

‘JUST WALK WITH JESUS’

While Bennett is retiring to care for her aging mother, she will continue to stay involved on a limited basis.

“When God calls you, He never uncalls you,” Bennett said. “I don’t feel uncalled. I feel like it’s a new season in life. It’s bittersweet, and it’s exciting. It’s just a journey with Jesus.”

Bennett points to Henry Blackaby’s charge to “Find where God is working and join Him” to describe BFH’s ministry to women, the unhoused, and more recently, its work with the FBI to help those escaping human trafficking.

“If you know you’re called and you come here, and if you get out in one of the ministry centers in our city, it helps you get experience. It helps you discover what God’s calling you to do,” Bennett said.

For students, ministry opportunities are abundant in New Orleans, from chaplaincy, ministry to internationals, counseling and compassion ministries, as well as service through churches and church plants, Bennett pointed out.

“Whatever doors He opens, you walk through,” she urges young believers. “He always knows everything before it happens. Just walk with Jesus.

New Orleans has everything, they say. They’re right. That is, if you are answering God’s call to the ministry.

In this city, you find people who have never heard the gospel. Some who no longer respect the Christian faith. Others who dabble in strange ideas.

And, you find an open door.

Jesus showed grace and mercy to others regardless of circumstances. We are called to do the same. As we serve in this wonderfully unique city, we see hearts warm to the gospel. We see God changing lives.