It had been started 75 years ago. He'd led it for two. When a sprawling, new brick building was finished in 1994, it had even boasted a stage for the four-piece band. But the water wiped out God's houses along with all the rest. Waves pitched pews into pulpits, spit sheets of mud over stained-glass windows, washed away altars.
Many churches are mere skeletons now, green mold spreading over their broken wooden bones.
So the faithful follow their preachers each Sabbath, some to chapels 40 miles outside Princeville. They don't bring hymnals or Bibles or offering envelopes. Those, too, drowned with the town. They bring their voices to praise and their pleas to pray. And St. Luke's deacons pass out photocopied announcements, because they haven't been able to print programs.