What Can I Do?

Rev. Randy Outland

Over the past several years God has been dealing with me regarding world poverty.  I have learned that the average North American enjoys a standard of living that has been unimaginable for most of human history.  As North American Christians, we are the wealthiest Christians in the history of the Church.  Our society’s vast wealth presents us with an enormous responsibility, for throughout the Scriptures God’s people are commanded to show compassion to the poor.  In fact, doing do is simply part of our job description as followers of Jesus Christ (Matthew 25:31-46).

Thinking about such important issues as these have led me to read and study many books, attend seminars, talk to people, and lead our church in new areas.  The Hole in Our Gospel book was one such book that has influenced me greatly.  Now Karen and I, and others in our church, are sponsoring children in Uganda, east Africa, through World Vision.

God continues to work on my heart and mind.  What about generational poverty here in the US, specifically here in my town of Kinston?  What can I, what can we do about it, if anything?  What is our calling as followers of Jesus Christ in this matter?  I have no easy answers, just lots of questions.

Like world poverty, we can’t do everything; but we can do one thing.  What can we do to help alleviate generational poverty here in our country?  A number of us in the Spilman faith family and in our Kinston community have been reading the book Toxic Charity – How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It).  Our conversations about the book have been stimulating.

Pray with me and talk with me about what one thing we can do.  I have many thoughts.  What are your thoughts?  Let the conversation continue.  God is at work here in our community.  God wants to use you and me to further the Kingdom in North Carolina and around the world.

Randy Outland is the pastor of Spilman Baptist Church in Kinston, NC. This article originally appeared in their church newsletter, The Tie.

Shift Happens (Or It Should)

by Rev. Dr. Larry Hovis

Most of us in North Carolina realize that a significant shift has been taking place in recent years, a shift in the relationship between the church and the culture. Earlier in my life and ministry, the church sat at the center of the culture. A majority of people went to church, or at least understood the nature and purpose of the church. The culture supported, rather than competed with the church.  The church enjoyed a privileged place in most of our communities.

That is no longer the case. The place of the church has shifted from the center of the culture to the margins of the culture. Not only do most persons not attend church, but they don't even feel guilty about it! Some have no direct knowledge of the beliefs and practices of the church and don't see how it is relevant for their lives.

This is a relatively new phenomenon for most of our churches in North Carolina, but it has been going on in Canada for a long time. On a trip to Canada during last summer’s sabbatical, I met with Baptists who share our core beliefs and practices and learned how they have been dealing with shift for several decades. As I visited with Marc and Kim Wyatt (CBF Global Missions field personnel from North Carolina), congregational leaders, regional denominational leaders, a seminary professor and the leaders of Canadian Baptist Ministries (a global missions agency), I learned of shifts they are making that are enabling Canadian Baptists to deal faithfully and effectively with the larger cultural shifts that have now reached the Tarheel State.

From Church-As-Community Institution to Church-As-Mission Outpost

In our heyday, churches were viewed as significant community institutions. People understood what churches offered and came to churches to receive religious goods and services (programs and ministries) in much the same way they went to other community institutions to receive the goods and services they provided. Church leaders worked to provide the best programs and ministries possible in order to attract people to the church, who, for the most part, understood what the church was trying to do.

Churches in Canada no longer pretend that the culture "gets" the church. Instead of thinking like marketers or managers or even chaplains, they are learning to think like missionaries. When missionaries move to a new place of service, they don't assume that those they are trying to reach understand what they are doing. They don't begin by creating programs to attract persons to the church. They first learn the language and customs of the community. They build relationships with people to discern their felt and real needs. Then they begin to translate the Gospel of Jesus Christ into tangible need-meeting ministries that connect with people where they live and where they hurt. Bible studies and worship services grow organically out of tangible expressions of the Kingdom of God, not vice-versa. In the future, in order to deal with the changes in our culture, we church leaders in North Carolina will need to think more like missionaries and less like program managers or chaplains.

From Fearing the Stranger to Welcoming the Stranger

Because of an open-door immigration policy, Canada has become a haven for people all around the world who have immigrated there to flee persecution or to seek a better way of life.  The city of Toronto is the most multi-cultural city in the world, and much of the rest of Canada has become very culturally diverse.

I imagine it was difficult, in the early days of a high level of immigration, for traditional Canadian Baptist churches to embrace the newcomers to their communities. The changes in their communities caused most of them to decline significantly in terms of traditional measurements (attendance and money). But in time, some of them began to discover ways to welcome the newcomers to their communities who came to Canada from other countries. And the congregations that have learned to make this shift are growing again.

For example, I was given the opportunity to preach at Bromley Rd. Baptist Church in Ottawa. It's a church that in many ways is very much like North Carolina CBF churches - architecturally, programmatically, and liturgically. But this traditionally Anglo church has reached out to newcomers in the community, particularly immigrants from Haiti and Karen people. They have reversed the decline in membership and attendance, they have more children in their Sunday School, and most importantly, they more faithfully reflect the Kingdom of God.

In North Carolina, our churches haven't always been welcoming to newcomers. Sometimes, often out of fear, we have shut the doors of our churches and our lives to them. A key task facing us is to make the shift from fearing these "strangers" to welcoming them as brothers and sisters in Christ.

From Mission Trips to Global Discipleship

How can we make these two shifts? Canadian Baptists have developed a powerful tool to equip Christians and churches to move in this direction. Like us, the Canadians have been sending church members on mission trips for three decades. But they discovered, as many of us know intuitively, that these trips often have as great an impact on those making the trips than on those we are seeking to serve. So, they have developed very intentional processes to utilize short-term mission experiences as vehicles for missional formation and discipleship development.

By leading mission trip participants through a pre-trip preparation phase that lasts several months, guiding them in focused reflection during the trip, and helping them apply what God taught them on the trip after they return home, church members who take mission trips not only grow more deeply in their faith, but they are better equipped to serve as missionaries in their communities when they return home.

In the coming years and months, CBFNC will be working to develop processes that will help congregations who participate in our mission efforts to make this shift. Not only will it enable us to be better stewards of the significant resources we pour into mission trips, but it may be a vital avenue of spiritual renewal for our churches and Kingdom-transformation for our state.

The church in North Carolina, like the church throughout North America, is undergoing drastic shifts. We may not like it, but we can’t stop it. Thankfully, like-minded and like-hearted Baptists in Canada have more experience in dealing with these shifts than we do. By learning from them and following their lead, we can make our own shifts that will enable us to be faithful to God’s mission in our time and place.

Larry Hovis is the Executive Director of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina. 

Going Into All the World...On the Corner

By Dr. Dennis Herman

As missionaries for fourteen years, my wife and I lived and worked in three different countries. We took pretty literally the great commission, "...Going into all the world, make disciples and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit..."

On a recent walk around the block at our home in Raleigh, I passed the school bus stop. A quick glance revealed at least three and maybe four continents of the world represented by the students awaiting the Wake County bus. As I walked farther and entered the supermarket on the corner of Creedmoor and Stonehenge, I saw employees and shoppers from other lands, and heard accents and even languages I did not recognize. I felt at home when I finally heard someone speaking Spanish! I can sometimes understand Spanish better than heavily accented English.

My walk reminded me that not always do we have to go anywhere beyond our own neighborhoods to encounter the world. I often wonder what those folks from other countries think when I try to strike up a conversation with them, or even when I don't try to strike up a conversation with them. I wonder what difference a smile and a nod make, or if these strangers in our midst are used to being ignored and seen through as if they did not exist.

Common courtesy nudges me to be friendly and acknowledge those I see and associate with ever so casually. And the Great Commission reminds me that "in my going," to the corner of my neighborhood or the corners of the earth, I am to be about the work of discipleship. That first step may be just a smile, a greeting, or an invitation to conversation. That's how “mission work" begins, a simple greeting and acknowledgment of the God made creation we call a "person." Maybe our courteous gestures may lead to a conversation or a friendship. It’s worth the effort!

Dennis Herman is the interim pastor at Oxford Baptist Church in Oxford, NC. This article originally appeared in their church newsletter, The Forecaster.

Jesus, Bible and Missions, Not Politics

By Rev. Dr. Larry Hovis

“Aren’t you concerned that critics might accuse CBFNC of being too political?” my friend asked, as we stood in the sanctuary of FBC Sylva following a Monday evening worship service last October. The service was part of a collaborative effort of CBFNC and the Western North Carolina Baptist Fellowship (WNCBF) to conduct a joint Fellowship on the Move and WNCBF fall gathering.

WNCBF leaders had requested that I enlist Rev. Hector Villeneuva to serve as the preacher for the service. The inquirer was a pastor, who had been out of circulation for much of the year and therefore was not aware of the events surrounding Hector’s arrest, attempted deportation, and eventual (Praise God!) release back to his family and congregation.

“Don’t get me wrong,” my colleague continued. “I’m in favor of CBFNC’s involvement in the immigration issue. Hector’s story is amazing. But it does concern me that some folks might see it in a more negative light, and might accuse us of violating the separation of church and state.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” I explained to my friend. “CBFNC still adheres firmly to church-state separation. It’s one of our bedrock principles. We’re not engaging in partisan politics. We didn’t even set out to get involved in the immigration discussion. But we did feel called by God to pursue missions with the growing Hispanic population in our state. And we discovered that when you reach out to people with the love of Jesus, when you truly try to be the presence of Christ with them, their issues become your issues.”

CBFNC is, above all, a missions organization. Our missiology is based on our reading of the Bible. By taking Scripture seriously, we are led to be a missionary people. By taking God’s call to mission seriously, we are led down paths that, on our own, we might not choose to go. But as the old hymn has us sing, “Wherever He leads, I’ll go.” And our Bible-based, Spirit-led, mission-focused life together is taking us down some new paths.

Because Jesus, echoing a repeated Old Testament refrain states, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35), as missionary Baptists we are led to welcome the Hispanic immigrants who have come into our state.

Because Paul explains, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14), and “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28), as missionary Baptists we are led to seek reconciliation with brothers and sisters of other races.

Because repeatedly in the Old Testament God’s people are urged, “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern” (Proverbs 29:7), and Jesus himself described as his personal mission “to proclaim good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18), as missionary Baptists we are led to engage in ministries that address issues of wealth and poverty in our state and world.

These are some of the new ministry paths the Spirit is leading us to take. I can’t say for sure where we’ll be called to go next. But I know one thing for sure. We have no interest in pursuing anybody’s political agenda. Our only agenda is to study God’s Word, listen to the Spirit’s call, and faithfully pursue that call consistent with our heritage as missionary Baptists.

Larry Hovis is the Executive Coordinator of CBF of North Carolina.

Discipleship, Stewardship and Missions: A Perspective from Haiti

by Rev. Dr. Larry Hovis

At the CBFNC General Assembly in March at FBC Asheville, the mission offering we collected was designated for the newly formed Haiti Housing Network (HHN). CBF is one of the principal partners in this network, which has the ambitious goal of building one thousand homes in the Grand Goave community over the next three years. At the assembly, we asked Dr. Steve Bissette, a family physician and member of Ardmore Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, to issue the challenge and prayer for the offering. Dr. Bissette, husband of CBFNC moderator Donna Bissette, had taken a group of college students to Haiti to perform medical and construction work the previous summer. During his appeal, Dr. Bissette told the large group of worshippers that if they contributed enough money to build a house (then estimated to be $3,000, it has since been revised to $4,000), he would “personally guarantee that Larry Hovis would go on the trip and help build the house!” At the end of that service, in the euphoria of the moment, I upped the ante and challenged the assembly to contribute enough funds to build two houses, and publicly promised that I would, indeed, make the trip.

The trip was scheduled for the following August, right before the students were return to school. It was the hottest time of the year to visit one of the hottest places I’ve ever been. Prior to undertaking this journey, my daughter, Lauren, a college student for whom this was her third mission trip of 2011, encouraged me to read, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself. I found the book to be extremely thought-provoking and it caused me to question, filter and analyze our mission trip (and all mission work) from a whole new perspective.

Our experience included meeting and worshipping with Haitian Baptists, meeting and learning from CBF global missions field personnel and partners, administering basic medical treatment (Dr. Bissette and a portion of our group for half the week), and working alongside Haitians in building a rubble house. Space limitations don’t permit me to describe the fascinating process of rubble house construction, so I encourage you to visit the following website for more information: http://www.haitihousingnetwork.com/. I emerged from this week hot, tired, and sore, but also spiritually renewed. After processing this experience, I’ve drawn three conclusions and want to issue a challenge.

CBF is Doing Missions Right

While the situation in Haiti is very discouraging in many ways, including the dysfunctional government and the ineffectiveness of much of the relief effort there, CBF and our primary partner, Conscience International, are functioning with good missiology and a wholistic, sustainable, Christ-centered approach. The field personnel whom we encountered (Mike and Brenda Harwood and Jenny Jenkins) are dedicated, smart individuals who would pass the muster of When Helping Hurts. Our CBF efforts are done with the Haitians, not for them, empowering them ultimately to provide for themselves, rather than perpetuating a culture of dependency.

Benefits of Short-term Mission Engagement

While our team, no doubt, rendered some genuine service to the Haitians we encountered, we were the primary beneficiaries of our trip. As we traveled together, experienced a new culture, prayed together, met and worshipped with Christian brothers and sisters who are materially poor but spiritually rich, and interacted with our CBF missions field personnel who have sacrificed greatly to live and serve in a hard place, our faith was challenged, strengthened and renewed. If we are honest, then we have to admit that in terms of impact, it was more of a discipleship development experience for our group of American Christians than direct ministry to needy Haitians.

Field Personnel More Important, Not Less

It’s been customary, after thirty years of the short-term volunteer missions movement, to pat ourselves on the back for taking a week or two of our lives every year for a mission trip, and call ourselves missionaries. Some Christians and churches have questioned the need for vocational, field-based, full-time missionaries, and their support of such personnel has declined as they devote more and more resources to supporting their members in short-term projects and trips. But I came back from Haiti more convinced than ever of the necessity of “professional” missionaries. Mike, Brenda, Jenny and others built the relationships and prepared the way for us to have a meaningful experience. They remain in place long after we are gone. They get to know the people and the culture and ensure that our brief work is done in a way that helps rather than hurts those we purport to serve. Ironically, the more volunteers we send on short-term mission trips, the more vital our field personnel become.

A Modest (or is it Radical?) Proposal

Because God’s mission to the most neglected and least evangelized people in the world along with the discipleship development of short-term missions volunteers is dependent on the presence, effectiveness and faithfulness of vocational missions field personnel, I propose that CBF Christians and churches make the following pledge: for every dollar we spend to send a team on a short-term mission trip we raise another dollar for the support of the field personnel with whom they work and their colleagues around the globe. For example, I estimate that the Ardmore group spent around $15,000 to send eleven persons to Haiti, not including the $6,000 CBFNC gave to the Haiti Housing Network. This money came from a combination of church funds and the personal funds of team members. Under this proposal, we would raise an additional $15,000 to support our CBF field personnel. If every CBF short-term mission team followed this practice, we would be able to increase the number of our career missionaries and significantly strengthen our mission efforts around the globe.

There was a time in which we outsourced mission engagement to professionals and assumed ordinary Christians had no responsibility for global missions, other than supporting vocational missionaries. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. But has the pendulum swung too far in the other direction? In our time, have we assumed (by our stewardship, if not our words), that because we can travel all over the world we no longer need vocational missionaries? It’s not either/or, but both/and. Our recent trip to Haiti made that very clear – at least to me.

Larry Hovis is the Executive Coordinator of CBF of North Carolina.

Compassion: “Always Ask the Turtle”

By Rev. Gerald Thomas

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed... – Jesus the Christ, Luke 4:18

A part of preparing to travel to Guatemala with our North Carolina mission team has been to consider the implications of compassion, that well worn admonition to “live in another person’s skin.” I keep hearing the words of an aboriginal Australian woman, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” These words from another continent pursue me on the way to Central America, making me hope that it can be true, that there will indeed be those who will offer to our group the gracious gift of working alongside. Then perhaps faith will be made to increase, together.

“Together” reminds me of a story from the life of Gloria Steinem, who relates an incident from her days as a geology student:

On a field trip, while everyone else was off looking at the meandering Connecticut River, I was paying no attention whatsoever. Instead, I had found a giant turtle that had climbed out of the river, crawled up a dirt road, and was in the mud on the embankment of another road, seemingly about to be squashed by a car. So I tugged and pushed and pulled until I managed to carry this heavy, angry turtle off the embankment and down the road. I was just putting it back into the river when my geology professor arrived and said, ‘You know, that little turtle probably spent a month crawling up that dirt road to lay its eggs in the mud beside the road, and you just put him back in the river.’ I felt terrible. But in later years, I realized this was a most important lesson: Always ask the turtle.

Knowing little of Guatemala, I look forward to asking a lot of questions and being helped by those whose lives are, in ways I am yet to understand, bound up with us all in our daily move toward liberation. Then I may know if I am ready for the “implications of compassion.”

Gerald Thomas is the pastor of Lamberth Memorial Baptist Church in Roxboro, North Carolina (http://lamberthmbc.tripod.com/) . This article originally appeared in their newsletter, Lamberth Lantern.

When the Last Laugh Is Not Yours

by Dr. Greg Rogers

Editor’s Note: Oakmont Baptist Church voted to purchase a neighboring apartment complex in order to be on mission in the community. Since then, they have been engaged in and continually discerning how best to use this property for the good of the community and Kingdom of God.

Since we purchased Oakmont Square Apartments in August 2007, I have heard countless people make the same statement and then ask the same question, almost in the same breath: “I know we didn’t buy those apartments to be in the ‘apartment business,' but I really do think God wanted us to have them for some purpose. So what’s the purpose for our owning them?"

If you had been a fly on the wall during our first Oakmont Square Apartment (OSA) Vision Team meeting on February 6, you might have reached the same conclusion that this team is reaching: perhaps God’s ultimate purpose for our owning them is already being seen in how we are using them now.

This Vision Team idea was birthed during our last coaching session on January 9 with CBFNC Church and Clergy Coach Eddie Hammett as a way of continuing the conversation on future next steps for our church to build more “go to” structures into our community. It is composed of 11 lay persons and three ministers, who either volunteered or were suggested by other people to serve on this team following our January 23 church-wide prayer meeting.

Our coaching sessions with Eddie led us to identify three target groups – at risk families, college students, and senior adults – for whom we might seek to address their educational, vocational, medical, and spiritual needs. The Vision Team dreamed about what is already happening and what could happen when we viewed the apartments as a “hub” of missions and ministry into our local community. Here are just a few of the possibilities the Vision Team considered:

• medical clinics staffed by Oakmonters skilled in the healing of the body.
• creating an Intentional College Community where a college intern (divinity school student) would work with college students, and develop them into leaders focused on spiritual growth and missional service to the community and world.
• after-school tutoring for children, a ministry that is already occurring at the apartments under the capable leadership of a gifted team of Oakmont members.
• providing affordable housing for at-risk families and/or senior adults.
• a host of programs to grow a person spiritually as a follower of Jesus.

An interesting thought occurred to us all as we envisioned the possibilities: being in the “apartment business” may accomplish some or all of the above possibilities, placing us exactly where God wants us after all. If that’s the case just slightly, then God has a funny sense of humor and may have the last laugh on us before it’s all over.

Greg Rogers is the pastor of Oakmont Baptist Church in Greenville, NC. This article originally appeared in their church newsletter, “Connections.”

When Helping Hurts - A Review

by Rev. Laura Barclay
When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert is a fantastic resource for ministers and lay leaders who are both beginners and experienced veterans of community and mission work. The theologically conservative writers begin with a strong case for evangelicals to engage in community work. For moderates, this can be a helpful resource for communicating with conservatives on justice issues. The authors distinguish between old models of charity-based work versus new methods of promoting leadership and empowerment in poor communities through asset-based community development (ABCD). This holistic method of approach allows for a thoroughly coherent and helpful guidebook that people of all theological backgrounds should be inspired to use.
The authors start with a biblical basis for justice. In short, Jesus declared that the kingdom is both now on earth and in heaven. If Jesus is Lord, we should take his commands and lessons on the treatment of the poor seriously. Because the Church is supposed to follow the mission of Christ on earth, engaging our communities should be central to our narrative. Many times, the Church is sidetracked with personal piety issues (much like the Pharisees) and are distracted from its real mission. Fikkert, the main writer, quotes Scripture after Scripture on the poor and oppressed, and uses wealth and poverty statistics to bolster his point:

“Economic historians have found that for most of human history there was little economic growth and relatively low economic inequality…by the year 1820…the average income per person in the richest countries was only about four times higher than the average income per person in the poorest countries. Then the Industrial Revolution hit, causing unprecedented economic growth in a handful of countries but leaving the rest of the world behind…while the average American lives on more than ninety dollars per day, approximately one billion people live on less than one dollar per day and 2.6 billion—40% of the world’s population—live on less than two dollars per day. If God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments were to have a concern for the poor during eras of relative economic equality, what are we to conclude about God’s desire for the North American church today? (page 42)"

He cites the divide in the church between liberals and conservatives in the early 20th century for why evangelicals focused more on salvation than justice, and criticizes some government methods that have actually kept people in poverty. He condemns the old system of welfare for punishing those trying to work and affirms welfare reform.
Most practically, Fikkert tell stories about his own personal failings and long path toward realizing the best methods of community engagement. Fikkert talks about the difference between asset-based and needs-based approaches. The needs-based approach can enforce negative cultural assumptions that people who are both white and economically advantaged should be in charge. White, affluent outsiders tend to approach a situation by stating what a community, family, or person doesn’t have and what they need to obtain. This approach fails to encourage empowerment and leadership development. The asset-based approach starts by finding out what assets and skills a community has and builds on this information. He states that you should "not do things for people that they can do for themselves (pg 115).” Many times, a neighborhood can organize to find solutions that outsiders try to find for them.
He encourages churches to work with microfinance professionals who lend money, time, and business training to poor individuals to help them start businesses. He also encourages the “Business as Mission” model where small business can be used for ministry (see CBF’s work with Ben Newell and Delta Jewels, a mission where women earn their own college tuition while learning business skills). He gives less ambitious suggestions as well, including helping with job training and financial education.
Fikkert affirms the need to give immediately in crisis situations. For instance, when Hurricane Katrina hit, people needed rescue, medical care, debris clean-up, and more. Years later, he shares the example of a mission team that visits and paints houses while the owners sit back and watch. This approach reinforces the idea that outsiders are the only ones who can help, when the reality is that organizers could use empowerment to encourage leadership from within that community. Outsiders in these situations should plug-in only as secondary helpers to internal community leaders.
Fikkert’s approach is innovative and one that more churches and mission leaders should be willing to engage and discuss. Fikkert questions whether some missions work is really effective in the long run or only makes us feel good for getting something done quickly. His ideas of people-development over task-oriented missions have the potential for long-range, effective, and sustainable ministry. I urge you to read this book and have a discussion with your friends and church members!
Find out more about “When Helping Hurts” and related materials at this website: http://www.whenhelpinghurts.org/

The Bribing of Converts

by Rev. Laura Barclay

As relief pours into Haiti from a variety of religious groups and the transition to long term aid begins, fundamentalists from a variety of backgrounds are clashing over beliefs. CNN reports some Christians are throwing stones at Vodou (also called Voodoo, a syncretic religion borne out of West African religions and Catholicism) practitioners during their ceremonies and defacing their altars. It’s very disconcerting that followers of Christ would turn to violence and disrespect in the name of God. I recently heard a pastor make the statement that when Paul went to Athens and was discouraged at the presence of local religious practices, he learned Athenian wisdom and culture from the Epicureans and Stoics and then debated the issue in front of the Areopagus, as the locals would (Acts 17). Paul respected the traditions of the Athenians and learned their ways, meeting them on equal terms as a show of deference.

The CNN article alludes to the fact that those throwing stones are Christian Haitians. It would be easy to say that violence and aggression are by-products of poverty and tragedy. But when you peel back the layers of this story, a disturbing trend begins to emerge. One pastor from Miami states:

“We would give food to the needy in the short term but if they refuse to give up Voodoo, I’m not sure we would continue to support them in the long term because we wouldn’t want to perpetuate that practice. We equate it with witchcraft, which is contrary to the gospel.”

This pastor is offering food for conversion, a manipulative prospect. Instead of witnessing the boundless hospitality of Christ, converts from external missions are learning to devalue the culture out of which they came to the point that they are ready to stone their neighbors who have not become Christians. This dangle-the-carrot type of missions is abhorrent, and is leading to conflict in this already ravaged nation.

In a previous post, I highlighted the work of ABC/CBF field personnel Steve and Nancy James for their diligent work as followers of Christ, providing medical attention and needed services. They were in Haiti before this tragedy occurred, and they will be there after, providing physical and spiritual healing without a time limit or a threat to deny aid. That is the example of Jesus—working for justice and exhibiting love and healing in the name of God. Wouldn’t the best way of sharing your experience with God be to love God and your neighbor unconditionally as God loves us?


Interested in continued support for Haiti in this time of great need? Read about the James' work in Haiti, learn about volunteering, or donate.