I’m Going to Haiti

On Tuesday, May 25, I fly to Miami, where I’ll overnight before heading to Port-au-Prince on Wednesday the 26th. I’m going with a team of church leaders, church bloggers, and radio voices. We’re going to connect with pastors and work out more details in the Adventures in Missions, Church Partnership Program, called the “Isaiah 58 project”, which will pair up Haitian churches with American churches, and churches from anywhere in the world, for prayer, encouragement, community development and rebuilding, and possibly more trips to bring helping hands. I’ll be blogging more about this in the coming days.

It’s an intreating group I’m going with. I’m looking forward to hanging out with them. I’ve heard of most of them and spoken with a few online. It’ll be great to meet face to face. Here they are:

– Mark Oestreicher: Mark, a youth ministry consultant, is the one who initially contacted me to go on this trip. We’ve known each other online now for a couple of years, but it will be great to finally meet and hang out together.

– Doug Pagitt: Doug is the pastor of Solomon’s Porch, in Minneapolis, MN., an author, and a voice in the American church. Doug also hosts a Sunday morning religious talk show on a local Minneapolis talk radio station, and podcasts those shows to a wider audience. I’ve read a couple of his books, and I’m looking forward to meeting him face to face.

– Ed Noble: Ed is the teaching pastor of Journey Community Church in La Mesa, CA.. Ed is coming to consider a church partnership for his church with a Haitian church.

– Tash McGill: Tash is coming from New Zealand! She is a youth ministry blogger, entrepreneur, programmer, and radio show host. She’ll be broadcasting stuff about the trip back to listeners in New Zealand.

– Seth Barnes: Seth is the founder and executive director of Adventures in Missions.

– Bruce Dawson is on staff with AIM, and will be giving leadership to the new church partnership program. He’s concerned about how to get American churches engaged in this unique approach to rebuilding Haiti.

– There’s one more guy coming (Paul Young), but I don’t know anything about him yet (AIM is bringing him).

– And me!

In the days before I leave, I expect to blog at least a couple more times about the trip. We’ll be launching a giving project connected to this trip also, with a focus on raising funds for the salaries of a few Haitian leaders who will run the Haitian side of the church partnership program. One hundred percent of the money raised goes to Haiti. We’ll all be blogging from Haiti, so stay tuned. I personally love this model as it is based on community and relationship, rather than untouched donors giving to a distant “cause”.
Here’s some things you can do:

– Join the team facebook group ChurchtoChurch. If you’re on facebook, go to this link and “like” it. That will bring updates from the team, as well as aggregated blog posts about the trip, to your facebook news feed. if you’re not on facebook, you can still bookmark that page and peek in as often as you’d like.

– If you twitter, here’s the churchtochurch group. Someone will be watching all our blogs and tweets and retweeting them on this page.

– Long-term, sustainable, non-dependent, restorative relationships with churches are to be created, built on trust and a belief that both churches have something to offer to the other. What is learned on this trip will be key to launching this program. So focus on this please.

– As each one decides in his or her heart to give, think about giving to support the salaries of the Haitian staff who will oversee the church partnership program (and watch for my blog post about that).

If you wish to donate, go here.