Checking Up

Sous Espwa Team with World Missions and World Renew Latin America Leaders

Reflection in progress!

Human nature being what it is, one of the biggest challenges those in ministry face is working joyfully and effectively with fellow Christians.  For this reason Jesus spends a good portion of his final night praying that his followers "may be one" just as the Father and Son are one (e.g., John 17:11).  At the core of our ministry in Haiti is the collaboration (called "Sous Espwa") between Christian Reformed World Missions (our sending agency), World Renew and Back to God Ministries International.  These are three different organizations, each with different goals and a different organizational culture all working under the same roof and the same organizational recognition in the eyes of the Haitian government.  As if this weren't challenging enough, our staff members are Haitians, Americans and Canadians.  While the cultural distance between the U.S. and Canada isn't terribly broad, the cultural distance between Haiti and North America is quite vast.  And, what is perhaps the most challenging of all, there has been a large amount of transition on our team as long-time staff members and families have left and new ones have been recruited. That is why this December Zach flew back to Haiti to participate in an evaluation of Sous Espwa as an organization.   The exercise of evaluation was challenging and tiring, but also it was very exciting to see a new team (we're calling it "Sous Espwa 2.0") emerge.  We learned that there are several areas where our collaboration is not bearing the expected fruit.  We also rejoiced in the effectiveness of our "holistic ministry" strategy, as we empower Haitian churches and communities to meet the spiritual and material challenges that they face.  Some of the learnings were more lighthearted.  Our Haitian team confessed that maybe they could get up out of their desks and approach other team members instead of yelling across the entire office (this is a behavior of familiarity in Haitian villages) to communicate with them.  Our North American team members learned to be less vocal in staff meetings to give Haitian staff members space to consider ideas (the "flat" view of authority in North American culture is not shared in hierarchical Haitian culture where an authority figure's discourse ends discussion).  We give thanks for this great opportunity to learn, share and make our collaboration more effective.