First Workshop Day

Today was a great day. Well, it started off interesting since our host, Pastor Riccardo, was about an hour and a half after the scheduled pickup time to get us due to two flat tires on the vehicle. Life in Haiti.
 
Once we had breakfast, we were able to head over to the church building where we would present the church planting workshop. We had 27 pastors or church leaders present and we started right off with worship together and then introductions. Many of the pastors lead churches from relatively close distances. However, some are from quite a distance away (one is coming from Mole St-Nicolas (about as close to Cuba as possible while still in Haiti and about a 6 hour drive from our location) and another is from Jean-rabel. [I had originally thought one was from Jacmel in the far South.]
 
We were able to start by identifying the five gifts God has given to the church (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers--Eph. 4:11) and that these are represented in each congregation that God is seeking to establish. We (re)defined what a church is (a collection of believers who are meeting together who have Jesus' authority and who promote growth of disciples) and then split the participants up into little "churches" and took Communion together.
 
We had good discussion and questions the rest of the day as well, including who has authority to lead in the church (pastors only or others whom they also commission to serve the body?). As in many places, pastors need to mentor and disciple others so that all people are served well. Imagine, this is an issue in more places than America! :)

Two more days of conversation and teaching. Please continue to pray for receptive hearts and that our team will communicate what the Holy Spirit wants us to communicate to His people. I also want to thank those of you who have been praying for this trip so far and those who have also contributed financially to this trip. You are partnering in the development of churches and the spread of the Gospel here in this great country.

Reid