Stop, Collaborate and Listen!

The Haitian and Dominican delegations developed partnership plans to assist each other in the shared challenges of ministry in their respective countries and communities.  We hope to put these plans into our annual ministry and budget plans to be submitted this fall to our home offices!

Jean-Marc Cassamajor, an employee of our office, discusses what we can learn from a herb used by the Haitian people in homeopathic medicine.   The Haitian and Dominican delegation visited the National Botanical Gardens of the Dominican Republic together in order to get to know each other personally and learn about each other's cultures.

One of the most difficult habits to develop in Christian ministry is that of collaboration.  Despite the fact that our Lord prayed in the Gospel of John (chapter 18) before his arrest, "They may all be one as we are one," it is very difficult to put pastors and church leaders together.  Human nature is such that we often look out for our own interests instead of seeing how those interests dovetail with the interests of others and those of God.  In October, our team stopped everything to travel to the Dominican Republic and discuss opportunities for collaboration with our Dominican colleagues over three days.  The possibilities for collaboration were natural because the majority of the ministry of the CRC in the Dominican Republic is for Haitian expatriates who form an "underclass" in Dominican society.  These Haitians, many of whom are undocumented and unrecognized by the Dominican state, struggle against overt discrimination. (In fact, currently the Dominican government will not give birth certificates to children of Haitians born in the Dominican Republic).  During our discussions, it became clear that we share many of the same challenges and goals in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  For example, Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a common challenge in the explosion of Haitian young people coming of age.  We developed a plan to teach young people the biblical principles of servant leadership so that they take their place in the churches on both sides of the boarder.  Please pray that the Spirit of collaboration would be present in the our lives and ministries and those of our ministry partners.