Discipleship, Restoration, and Leadership Development in Haiti from Baltimore Meetings

Discipleship: (Dr. Dorlus)

Identified 2 things- not that separate in real life

Look at from

1.      Worldview

2.      Obedience

Haiti now mostly geared toward memorization not obedience.  Not, how are you going to apply this?  This is their way of regular education.  Everything is rote learning and then practice.  They have done church the same way.

Worldview: Address all of the Gospel issues in context and transfer in a way Haitians can understand and are thinking.  They have different basic definitions for words because of their worldview.

Missions:  They are just now understanding that it is not just local, but crossing cultural barriers.

Progress: Still studying worldview.  Dr. Dorlus stated he is finding things we did not address, but the Bible did.  We did not ask the questions.  We were not cognizant of that.

Dr. Dorlus explained that this past week at the number one radio station in the country, they talked about Haitian mentality.  They talked about positive and negative things we do that are attached to the way we think.  After the presentation, the phones were overloaded on this live call in show with people calling with questions.  You can tell there is a strong interest on this end.  Who are we?  Why is it we do what we do? Can it be changed?  Most of the questions that went through had to do with how we engage society.  They asked, “How does that relate to politics?”  Just take the word conversion.  What we evangelicals mean by that is not the same as what locals mean by that.  What locals mean is that you walk in front of the altar.  You ask, “Have you been converted to Christianity.”  They may answer, “Oh, I’ve done that 6 times already.”  Basic words need to be defined.  There is a link between this and leadership development.  (Pray for Jean Dorlus.  Satan has been fighting this worldview research because of the difference it will make.)

Dr. Dorlus spoke with a voodoo priest on the street and asked him for his definition of death.  Death is crossing to go somewhere else.  Technically, after one year and one day they believe you can talk to that person.  They can tell you just about anything.  The priest said that even your Bible says you can do that.  He used the story of the witch of Endor.  The average Haitian thinks he can talk to dead parents.  This is just one example of the difference worldview makes.

Restoration:

 Initiatives (focus areas)- Ag, health, Education, Evangelism, Global Fingerprints

All have leadership development that leads to Gospel transformation.  We want to develop teams for each of these.

Community Housing Evangelism- doing at STEP, bringing housing back in to people who lost their homes (security, dignity)

Principles are transferable from one initiative to another.  We need to identify teams and team leaders, or have more partner conversation.

STEP- Mobile Medical Unit- Pilot projects that we need to replicate or spread.  The initial relationship was with one partner.

In Leadership Development

·         Main one is obedience based discipleship

·         Servant leader

·         Ministry skills

·         Ethics- personal, family life in ministry

·         Doctrine

Dave Hyatt pointed out that there is a great overlap between worldview and leadership development.  People’s worldview is so messed up.  It is great that we realize in Haiti that people don’t necessarily understand conversion and basic steps of Christianity without more explanation and need a period of teaching.  They continue to lead a pagan life otherwise.   Americans suffer from thinking they are Christian enough, but there is so much syncretism going on.  “The rocks we hit in leadership development are the same rocks we hit in normal discipleship.”

STEP is huge in their training, their ministry network, current students, and faculty influence.  Almost every organization we have been involved with has asked for help in leadership development in some way.   So that is a huge area.

When the Haitians self-analyzed, Dr. Dorlus said, “Guys, we are the problem.  We are the ones training the leaders, and we need to train our whole approach to training.”  How do we even teach?  We need to do more.  Steve said, “We think we are starting from zero, but we are starting from negative because of worldview issues.”  Mark talked about the Yoda quote from Star Wars, “You must unlearn what you have learned.”  We still have not figured out what has to be unlearned.  This involves not only material and content, but also method.  Dave said what he has seen work is people building into their lives who have come alongside them.  He spoke of a profound statement from Ginger Muchmore from 1 Thessalonians 1:9 about turning to God from worthless idols.  She stated that so much of conversion in Haiti is turning to God but not turning from worthless idols.   The discipleship process says, “What are you leaving behind? What are you unlearning?”   It is not going to be a book or radio broadcast that changes them.   It is life on life.  It is the obedience piece- becoming self- feeding, and learning by observation instead of memorization.  55-60% of Haitians are functionally illiterate, so you can’t just tell them to read the book of Galatians.  Bruce McMartin pointed out that in their mindset, their favorite teacher will be someone at the high school who stutters and has trouble getting things out.  They feel he has so much in his head that he can’t get it out.  “We are trying to put the cookies on the lower shelf, and yet this is the guy they are holding up as the intellectual who has all this knowledge.… We will not get any respect to get a hearing.”  Dr. Dorlus said, “It is a different value system.”