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| Haiti Summit in Constance Free Church |
Connecting with Haitian brothers through the Haiti
Consortium has encouraged growth in churches in the U.S. and in Haiti. Dave Hyatt, Pastor for Local and Global
Outreach at Hershey Free Church shared, “Their honesty about the Haitian church
and how they haven’t done a great job of making disciples has allowed me to be
a little more honest, to look at things.
Their candor, their humility to admit they want to do a better job, and they
want to raise up disciples….It was convicting to me on one level. They are asking us for help at something I
don’t think we are doing great at. In
order to feel that we had anything to say, it pushed me back to the
Scriptures. It is a bit of a mirror for
me saying, “How are we doing? Are we raising
up Christians who are really impacting our own society, who make a difference
in their community, who are looking to reproduce their lives?” Discipleship is a concept that spans all
cultures. Our goals are the same as the
goals of Christians in other nations.
Dr. Jean Dorlus has been studying the worldview of
Haiti. He feels leaders are responsible
to see that the worldview of the Bible is adopted. He gave an example using the Haitian proverb
that says, “What a person does to another, God laughs at it.” This means that God is not interested in
human affairs. “He is far away. Someone
who shared this worldview and becomes a believer has a problem understanding
that God is interested in every detail in life.
It is not an issue of God being powerful, but does God care, and does He
care for me. He is an indifferent
God. He has other things to do.” This affects ethics as well, because they
believe God does not care about justice.
“The Law of the Strong wins.”
Every country has its own worldview, and none are the
Biblical worldview. We need to examine
our culture to see what we have adopted into our worldview that comes from
society and not the Bible. We need to be
careful when we go into another country that we do not try to teach principles
that are part of our tradition but are not taught by the Bible.
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| Haiti Consortium in Haiti |
Senior Pastor George Davis of Hershey Free Church has come
to a deeper relationship with Haitian brothers through a commitment of slowing
down and spending time with them. In
this he has learned, “Well, here are some challenges that they are facing that
are the same challenges that we are facing.
We have talked about how to do ministry in a culture in a way that does
not foster dependence. When you start
wrestling with that question, you have to wrestle with- in our own context- how
do we do ministry in a way that doesn’t foster consumerism. Because, really, they are the same issues but
in a different socio-economic environment.”
What problems do you see in the American church? What have we adopted into our worldview that
is not Biblical? I challenge you to come
up with a worldview based solely on what the Bible teaches. Know what you should believe and why, and
make that a part of your life. Then,
pass it on to others.
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