Bringing “Living Water” To The River Region
Celebration Church of New Orleans is a multi-cultural church that began in late 1988 with a group of six people meeting in a home to pray for revival and to seek the Lord’s direction in finding or forming a church. The group continued to meet for prayer, eventually having to move to two larger homes in order to facilitate the growing numbers of people that were attending. In September of 1989 a church was formed, and in November of 1989 Dennis Watson was called to be the church’s pastor. The church was worshipping at that time in the gymnasium of John Curtis Christian School in River Ridge, Louisiana, and adopted the name Celebration Church in December of 1989. In January of 1990, the church chose to affiliate with Southern Baptists in order to support their world-wide missions ministry. In addition Celebration supports missionaries and mission ministries from various other denominational and non-denominational backgrounds.
Celebration Church grew from an attendance of 89 people to over 200 people in their first months of existence. Needing additional worship and educational space, the church moved in March of 1990 to 2001 Transcontinental Drive in Metairie, initially leasing the worship/ministry facility. In April of 1991, Celebration Church purchased the property and facility at 2001 Transcontinental and continued to grow spiritually and numerically.
In October of 1996, the Celebration Congregation relocated to 2001 Airline Drive in Metairie. The new acquisition included 11.7 acres with 900 parking spaces, 68,000 square feet of worship and ministry space (including a 2200 seat worship center) and 130,000 square feet of shopping center space. After renaming the shopping center, Celebration Center, the church began the process of renovating the church facility and making plans to eventually transform the entire shopping center into “need-meeting” ministries. Until 2005 Celebration Church was able to develop an Outpatient Addictions Recovery Center, a Christian Elementary School, a Christian Coffee-shop & Bookstore, and a Missions housing facility that was utilized to for incoming mission teams and provide a weekly ministry to the homeless of New Orleans.
In August of 2005 the Pastor and Elders of Celebration Church led us to merge congregations & schools with the Crescent City Baptist Church & School which was located at 2701 Transcontinental Dr. The vote to merge these congregations were unanimous by both and the first united worship service was held on Wednesday night August 17th. The first Sunday for Celebration Church to hold worship services at the new Transcontinental Campus was scheduled to be on August 28th, 2006. But then Something Happened.
All Sunday worship services were cancelled due to the threat of Hurricane Katrina. On Monday, August 29th the category 5 winds and floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina struck on the eastern side of New Orleans and forever changed the landscape of lives and ministry for the people of this city. Katrina claimed the lives of over 1800 people and was responsible for more than $81 billion in damage. Part of that damage was over 6 feet of flooding to our Airline Dr. Campus, and 18 inches of flooding to the newly acquired Transcontinental Campus.
On September 5, 2005, Celebration Church began a relief effort to help the people of Greater New Orleans impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In partnership with PRC Compassion, Celebration Church quickly began developing partnerships with other churches and ministries around the country. Emergency food, water, ice and provisions were acquired and distributed from the Transcontinental Campus. As volunteers began arriving a network of ongoing support from ministries began to emerge. Initially, the needs were assessed and determined to include the need to provide hot meals, medical assistance, relief supply distribution, tree cutting, covering roofs with blue tarps, and clothing distribution. This relief aid continued to be provided from the Transcontinental Campus until October 11th when the Crescent City Christian School was reopened.
While the volunteer housing remained on Transcontinental Dr., the hot meal and supply distribution components of the relief efforts were moved to 2001 Airline Dr. Through a partnership forged between Celebration Church, Christ in Action Ministries and Mariner’s Church in Orange County, California the Celebration Relief Center was born. The impact of that partnership has been significant. From September 5, 2005 through August 31, 2006:
• Over 350,000 hot meals were distributed to the people of Greater New Orleans,
• Over 130,000 visits were made to the Relief center where people were provided with ice, water, non-perishable food, cleaning products, hygiene products, baby supplies and non-prescription medications.
• More than 300 homes were gutted and over 100 other homes were helped in various ways including tree cutting, debris removal, furnishings removal
• 500 Homes had blue tarps installed on their roofs
• Thousands were prayed with and ministered to.
• Several hundreds prayed to receive Jesus Christ and were saved.
• 42 were Baptized at the Airline Campus
• Hundreds were helped to find jobs and places to live
• Hundreds were helped through the process of successfully filing with FEMA for assistance through the Neighbor Helping Neighbor program
• Over 9700 volunteers have been housed and feed
• Over 378,000 man hours have been invested by these volunteers
Celebration Church has continued to be involved in the recovery of our community and has re-established itself as a group of people interested in making a difference in the City of New Orleans for the cause of Jesus Christ. In 2007 Celebration Church has plans to launch 2 additional Church Campuses in Laplace and St. Bernard Parish, and will continue to rebuild the Airline campus with plans to resume worship services at that location in the fall. Despite the fact that over 50% of or regular attendees have relocated since the storm, Celebration Church is seeing growth, salvations, and people surrendering their lives to the transforming work of the Lord on a daily basis.