In spite of the political turmoil and high poverty that has stricken Haiti for years, the Seventh-day Adventist Church continues to grow and meet the challenges it faces there.
In spite of the political turmoil and high poverty that has stricken Haiti for years, the Seventh-day Adventist Church continues to grow and meet the challenges it faces there. Seeking to pause and focus on issues facing the church in Haiti, 200 leaders, including all of Haiti’s district pastors, traveled hundreds of miles to the Dominican Republic for a July 2 to 6 retreat. This was the first time this large of a group of Haitian church leaders has met.
Pastors and their spouses united their efforts in dealing with a fast-growing membership. They learned how to be better equipped to deal with issues facing members today, and how to keep their families spiritually and physically healthy, says Dr. Elie Henry, vice president for the church in Inter-America.
“It was wonderful to see how happy and excited the pastors and their spouses were to attend this retreat for the first time,” says Henry.
“Even though we are a small country, we have four different missions there, and with the growth of the church in all four missions, we have people coming in with all different backgrounds [at the same time that] we were losing a lot of our experienced pastors,” who could shepherd those members in the Adventist lifestyle, he told ANN in an interview.
“The new members are a great blessing, but what is happening when you have new members coming in is their lifestyle is so different from what they used to have. There is a lot of syncretism in Haiti,” Henry explained, creating a need for theological unity and nurturing of members.
Henry said the conference, which encouraged the pastors, left each with new goals.
He said the church in Haiti must “try to find a way to help our brethren and understand the lifestyle and really live what we are preaching. What we envision is having more meetings and visits with the brethren. We have a lot of members per pastor, so we will try to build the [visitation] teams to help the pastors so they can visit and nurture the church over there.”
Pastor Ivan Omaña, director of the Ministerial Association for the church in Inter-America, says that part of the event included a continuing education program for pastors, a plan that is being held throughout the Inter-American church territory. This plan included a group activity where pastors were given the opportunity to discuss some of the issues and problems affecting their congregations. They then shared solutions to those problems.
Perhaps the largest challenge facing the church in Haiti is the disproportionate ratio of pastor to church members. According to Omaña, there are only 134 pastors ministering to 360 congregations, totaling almost 280,000 church members.
“Many of our pastors have several districts that they are in charge of,” says Omaña. “I can think of one pastor there who heads a 5,000 member church and it’s a lot of work. But it was wonderful to see how no one complained about how overworked they felt. Pastors in Haiti were so willing to help each other as they work together for the same cause,” he explains.
Other retreat activities included an ordination service of four pastors. Dr. Elie Honore, Health Ministries director for the church in Inter-America, spoke on ways to keep the pastors’ family spiritually and physically healthy. Also, Mrs. Evelyn Omaña, regional Shepherdess director, a pastoral wives’ ministry, spoke to the women on how to grow spiritually and professionally as a pastor’s wife.
Omaña says the group has committed to meeting periodically in their region. In 2004, he will go to Haiti to visit each of its four territories to meet with pastors individually and hear their concerns and challenges.
