Churches Helping Churches

It’s Sunday in Delmas, Haiti. Pastor Blanc wakes up at 4:00 am. He rushes over to a tent city halfway across the town east of the capital.

He arrives to a small, makeshift shelter that can comfortably seat 25 people. People begin to arrive with their own chairs as the sun is rising. The small tent is filled within minutes. Pastor Blanc shakes hands and hugs old ladies. He knows some of them very well. They’ve been his church members for years.

Today, he is especially happy to see a few folks. Last night, 34 people gave their lives to Jesus Christ, and they are returning for their first Sunday service. A small generator powers up and a keyboard fades in. The drums join in, the people soon follow with clapping and cheerful singing. By the time the music stops, the shelter is overflowing, and many stand around the tent. They can’t see, but they can hear. Pastor Blanc preaches a heartfelt message to a struggling people. When service is over, he individually greets them with a smile.

He dashes over to the other side of town. He arrives at Elise Brebis de Jesus Christ, his church of many years. It’s 8:15 am, just in time for service. He wipes the pouring sweat from his forehead and looks at a badly damaged building. He’s not quite sure how or when he’s going to repair it. He rethinks the decision he made: to build a structure in the tent city rather than repair his church building. He nods, deciding all over again that it’s the right thing to do. The singing begins as he heads into another service.

*

This is a snapshot of Pastor Maxi Blanc’s morning. He is man of character, constantly making the difficult decisions as he listen to God’s voice. Many of his church members moved to a tent city after their buildings were destroyed. His regular visits to pray for them turned into a church service. Now, many have to know Christ, and the church is growing.

Tent city management has recognized him as an important figure for this new community, and they have issued Pastor Blanc a piece of land to build a larger temporary structure for their meetings.

CHC is funding this shelter, scheduled to start building in one week, on Tuesday, Sept. 14. Please pray for Pastor Maxi Blanc and both of his congregations. He’s planted a new church, and he doesn’t even know it yet.

For more on how you can support pastors like Pastor Blanc, please visit our giving page, or contact information [at] churcheshelpingchurches [dot] com.

In this video, Pastor Mike talks about how he responded to that question, and how the Holy Spirit intercedes in the deep suffering we don’t even know how to identify.

In this clip, Pastor Mike Wilkerson of Mars Hill Church in Seattle talks about how the team prepared to minister and teach Haitian pastors, despite very real language and life experience barriers. Haitian men, especially pastors, are expected to be strong and are not often allowed to be vulnerable; this retreat was one of the first times these men were able to let themselves be ministered to, as Pastor Mike saw.

Pastor Mike, who oversees the Biblical Living department at Mars Hill’s Ballard campus, was one of four biblical counseling experts CHC brought down for the first Churches Helping Pastors retreat in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in May 2010. The goal of the retreat was to support and renew the pastors as they personally recover from the earthquake, and also to build them up as they go back into their communities and support the people in their churches.

CHC Haiti partner Pastor Jacques Louis is featured in the summer issue of Neue magazine. Here is an excerpt from the story, found on pp. 46-48:

What kind of messages are you preaching now?

At first, people were thinking, “This is the end of the world.” You have to tell them the earthquake is a natural disaster; it’s not the end of times. … But right now, we’re preaching that God is involved, that God can take care of you and that it’s OK to grieve. God can comfort you because he’s powerful enough.”

Incidentally, CHC co-founder Pastor Mark Driscoll is featured on the cover of this issue, which is just the third issue of the new magazine. Neue is published by the same team that puts out Relevant magazine, but with a specific focus on “Church leaders and innovators.”

In this video, Daniel Ulysse, a Haitian chaplain from Brooklyn, interviews a group of pastors who attended our Churches Helping Pastors retreat in May in Port-au-Prince about their churches, how the earthquake affected them and their communities, and their vision and prayers for the future.

Stay tuned over coming weeks for more videos from Haiti from pastors from this conference and others we’ve held or sponsored in other cities around the country.

Emmanuel Jules, 30, has been the youth pastor for ten years at Eglise de la Bonne Nouvelle (the Good News Church) in Mais Gate, right near the airport on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. This year, as the lead pastor heads to Texas to attend seminary, he will take over as lead pastor of Bonne Nouvelle. Jules, an incorrigibly gracious man with a soft-spoken demeanor, was one of the 150+ attendees at our Churches Helping Pastors retreat last month in the capital.

THE QUAKE AND ITS WAKE

La Bonne Nouvelle’s building was destroyed in the 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12. Thankfully, the one man who was in the church at the time was able to get out, but five members of their church died elsewhere in the cataclysmic magnitude-7.0 temblor that cost upwards of 200,000 lives in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. The church’s 300 attendees–100 more than were coming before the quake–currently meet in the lead pastor’s house. About 50 to 70 parishioners are living in the sprawling tent cities.

It wasn’t until February that they saw the first, and only relief group that was able to help their church: an evangelical group “of friends” from Brazil. Jules is grateful for the help from the group, who was also helping other churches. At the same time, “given all the people we have, it didn’t cover everybody we have to care for,” he says with a shrug. He’s not bitter; it’s just the reality of the needs vis-à-vis the resources that are actually available.

Without any USAID, UN, or other aid agencies in sight, the pastors at Bonne Nouvelle stepped up.

“After the earthquake, there were children who lost their parents, their mother, their father,” says Jules. To help these children, they created an orphanage, called “Orphans Vulnerable Children,” or OVC. “We put the name in English, strategically,” explains Emmanuel, as a way to gain more ready recognition from foreign groups.

The orphanage represents an integrated task. “We try to integrate the children [with the others] because otherwise, they can get made fun of,” explains Emmanuel. “The other kids say, ‘There they are! There are the orphans!’ and make fun of them.”

As Emmanuel observed the other churches, ones who were receiving aid, he says, “I saw the responsibility there is within the [global] church. If I could only have this help. For example, if two other organizations would help us, that would be such a relief. We have the other churches to help, the children to take care of, our own church to help. We said, if God sent an organization to help us, that would help us a lot. Because we have the church to build. We’re meeting at the pastor’s house. It’s too much. We lack the means.”

“There was a Haiti we had in another time, it was a green Haiti, that was a nice life, really special, paradise. But, after January 12, everything changed. The earthquake has left a legacy. We’re going to find the way to get out, but it’ll be with a lot of difficulty. In Haiti, we are completely shattered, stripped of everything.”

EMMANUEL ON THE GLOBAL BROTHERHOOD

Jules, along with many, many of the other pastors at the retreat, has a remarkably deep view of the global fellowship of believers. “We are really a big family. We see when each other is in pain, and have needs.”

Here, he talks about the significance of groups from abroad who have come, are there now, and will come:

“But people came to encourage us, through the losses, the valley of pain. It gives us a faith in the land, in our brothers in the faith. You see, really, how it could help to carry us financially, physically. Because we don’t have churches; the people don’t have food, they don’t have anything.”

“The presence of foreigners in our church, in all the churches of Haiti, is really welcome. Once the people see have seen you in your situation, you’re encouraged, it gives you comforting words. It’s already what we’re waiting for: kingdom and his justice.”

“The first thing is to share in our weaknesses, in our needs, to help us cross the valley of the shadow of death, like Churches Helping Churches is doing: coming to give us advice, counsel, helping us understanding the undertaking of our every day.”

“So, when foreigners come, it’s to share in the problem that we’re facing, to give us hope, to tell us that we can rebuild our country, so that we can know that we are blessed, that we’re not the only country in this world that’s poor, that even still, we’re here, we’re Christians, we’re still living, and that we have the faith to rebuild our country.”

“Because we all have the same destination, even though we live in different conditions. We are bound together in the most difficult and vulnerable moments like the one which we’re in right now. It’s a chaotic and difficult situation that we’re in now. But tell [the foreigners that] we are a people who’s strong and sure, a force that can surmount the problems.”

EMMANUEL ON HAITI AS JERUSALEM

“I think a lot about the prophet Nehemiah. He was living this nice life in a foreign king’s palace when he learned that invaders had destroyed the wall in his native Jerusalem. So, Nehemiah went back to the king and demanded, ‘Let me go back to reconstruct the wall of my country. My people are suffering, so I can’t stay here, so I’m going to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall.’”

“Once he got there, he lifted the people’s morale by saying, ‘We can’t stand here with our arms crossed looking at this broken wall. We’ve got to rebuild Jerusalem.’”

“So now, in that sense, that’s where we are now in Haiti: We’re going to rebuild the wall.”

“This is the first moment when we’ve realized that we’re not alone in our corner of the world, that somewhere our brothers and sisters are coming to see us to help us and travel to us. Someone is thinking of us! In our moment, God sends our brothers and sisters who come from other countries, and they help us. It’s really amazing.”

“In that sense, there’s more hope now than before the earthquake.”

Stay tuned for more from our talk with Emmanuel as he talks about the situation of the youth in his church, as well as suggestions and encouragements for churches who are considering sending mission groups to Haiti to help in the rebuilding. Also, in case you were noticing any odd phraseology, Emmanuel spoke with us in French, the second language of most Haitian professionals after Creole.