Pentecost Perspective

Pastor Jacky receives a token of his ordination (which was done completely in French): a Haitian Kreyol Bible. 



Pastor Jacky blesses the congregation for the first time as an ordained pastor in the Union of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Haiti

In Acts 2, we read about the appearance of the "tongues of fire" which descended on the Apostles in the Upper Room in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost Day.  The immediate result of this miracle was the Apostles began to preaching in the languages they did not know, the languages of the nations surrounding Israel.  The Jewish pilgrims who had gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks (or Pentecost as it was known in Greek) heard these uneducated and unsophisticated Jewish men preaching in the languages of the diaspora nations (Arabic, Greek, Ethiopic, etc.) from which they came.  The sign of languages and the power of the preaching brought about a tremendous transformation.  On that day three thousand Jews responded to Gospel and the Jerusalem Church grew by leaps and bounds.  On Pentecost Day, 2013, we celebrated by attending the ordination service of Pastor Jacky Chery.  Pastor Jacky was our Kreyol teacher when we first came to Haiti in January of 2006.  Six-and-a-half years later, after graduating from the local Baptist Seminary, he became the National Coordinator of Perspectives Reformees in Haiti (PRIHA), our French and Kreyol-language media ministry.  A year after starting his ministry with PRIHA, on May 19, 2013, Jacky was ordained as a pastor by his denomination, the Union of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Haiti (UEBH), a denomination which we also partner with for several programs.  We give God thanks for Pastor Jacky.  His passion and gifts for ministry are an encouragement to us all.  And perhaps Jacky's ordination is a great example of what the Holy Spirit did on the first Pentecost Day.  On that day, the Jewish faith held by a few of Jesus' disciples became a universal faith accessible to people from all nations.  Today God is raising up apostles from all nations, including Haiti and our friend and colleague, Jacky Chery.