Remembering Hurricane Katrina 20 Years Later

I’m always surprised by how quickly the emotions roar back to the surface, how talking about that traumatic time can still cause my voice to quiver and my eyes to tear up even 2 decades later. But this week there’s no escaping it: August 29 marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast region. It’s a date I’ll never forget.

In 2005 I was serving as the Executive Director of the UCC-related Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, Mississippi. I was among those whose life was forever changed by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Every day that followed that bitter day of such unfathomable devastation was about picking up the pieces and somehow putting them back together, for endless years afterward.

Back Bay Mission lost nearly every building on its campus to that vicious storm. We had to figure out how to faithfully serve the community that had relied on us for 7 decades at that point and help it recover from losses too massive for words, while at the same time navigating our own organizational recovery. It was a time of immense grief and daily uncertainty. And yes, the memory of it all now still brings tears to my eyes.

But I am also reminded of some lessons from that time that I still count as blessings. The first of them is this: never underestimate the capacity of the United Church of Christ to do amazing things. In the first days and weeks after Hurricane Katrina I sometimes doubted whether Back Bay Mission — a beloved and historic UCC organization — would ever be able to fully recover. But then the United Church of Christ showed up. The national setting’s disaster ministries came alongside us and granted financial and moral support. Congregations and volunteers arrived in unprecedented numbers, helping us rebuild the community even as we slowly recouped our own devastated facilities. Financial gifts poured in from across the country. And your unending prayers surrounded and upheld us. Susan Sanders, a UCC national staff member at that time, reassured me in the first days after the disaster that “the United Church of Christ would love Back Bay Mission back to life”, and she was exactly right. I will never forget it or fail to give thanks for it as long as I live.

A second lesson was this: God can wrestle new life out of even the biggest messes. Though it did take years (and to some extent remains an ongoing process), the absolute ruin that Katrina left us with did painstakingly give way over time to recovery and renewal. Back Bay Mission re-imagined its ministry and rebuilt its campus in a way that allowed us to eventually serve the community with even greater impact. Scarred and flattened landscapes in neighborhoods and cities slowly showed signs of new life. Traumatized individuals and communities healed bit by tiny bit. Resurrection happened on a daily basis right before our weary eyes. God was steadfastly at our side through every painful step of that very long journey.

I hold tight to these lessons of Katrina now, as so much around us today seems to unravel. Mass gun violence takes the lives of precious children praying in a church. War and famine hold nations around the world in a tight grip. Our democracy here at home appears perilously at risk. The immigrant and stranger is given no safe harbor.

When all of that threatens to fill me with doubt and cynicism, I remember what I learned 20 years ago. We have the capacity as the Church to breathe fresh possibility into even the most desperate and overwhelming of circumstances if we just keep showing up with passion and generosity and faith. And God’s resurrecting power never stops its mighty and healing work.

The Reverend Shari Prestemon began her service with the national ministries of the United Church of Christ in January 2024 and was formally elected by General Synod as Associate General Minister in July 2025. As the Associate General Minister & Co-Executive for Global Ministries she has the privilege of overseeing several teams: Global Ministries, Global H.O.P.E., Public Policy & Advocacy Team (Washington, D.C.), and our staff representative to the United Nations. She previously served as pastor to local UCC congregations in Illinois and Wisconsin; the Executive Director at the UCC’s Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, Mississippi; and as Conference Minister in Minnesota.