Faithful commitment to prayer

It is very easy for the Haitians to lose hope and become fearful in such situations, but your prayers for them are effective in battling these feelings that are coaxed by the enemy. Joy and I know that the unbelievable level of perseverance and hope that we hear occurring within our Christian communities in Haiti are in large part due to your faithful commitment to pray for them—so thank you!

Furthermore, your financial giving has greatly enabled the ministry to truly come to the aid of those who are suffering extreme physical circumstances which include food shortages, sickness, insufficient shelter, and unemployment. We have been able to purchase food and medicine for the hungry and sick, and we have been able to send our Haitian brothers who are skilled in construction to repair the homes and leaky roofs of our most impoverished brothers and sisters in Christ. We have also been able to buy a variety of different materials to give the unemployed small businesses to sustain themselves!

I really hope that all of you appreciate and know that Joy and I absolutely could not perform this ministry in an effective way without all of you! Your generosity and Christ-like love for the Haitian people is the literal fuel line of this ministry. Your prayers and giving arm us with effective weapons on the field against vodou and poverty respectively, so please realize your great worth to Kingdom work.

Working in the poorest and hungriest country in our Hemisphere is not easy—but with all of you working with us, and God overseeing this ministry, there is nothing that cannot be accomplished, as Haiti’s kingdom of darkness will be replaced with a kingdom of Light—Gospel Light! So again, THANK YOU!

Let’s all continue in our commitment to win Haiti for Christ, and together we will witness the greatest defeat of Satan that has been seen in recent history. Satan believes that Haiti is his—continue with us in our commitment to show our adversary that Haiti and its people aren’t his to claim, and God has sent ALL of us to show him what obedience to the great commission, and the power of the gospel, can do! Over this last year we have witnessed God saving more people than we ever have in previous years, and we have you to thank! God has put together an awesome team and we look forward to going into 2020 with all of you as a unified, armed front for Christ!

God’s mercy and power

As Joy and I look back over 2019 to assess and evaluate all that has occurred, we have been amazed by God’s mercy and power that has been displayed in Haiti through this ministry. What has blessed us the most is the unity in which this ministry functions, and this unity is worthy of a discussion. Charis is an interdenominational ministry, which is just a fancy way of saying that we are not affiliated with any one denomination. While this is considered by many to be a non-traditional way to perform missions, I strongly believe that being interdenominational is one of the greatest strengths of Charis. The decision to not partner with a single denomination was not made flippantly or rebelliously but was reached after Joy and I sought counsel from God following our frustrations with the missionary ‘sending’ process.

When God called us into full time service in Haiti, Joy and I immediately went and sat with our local church and several Christian mission organizations, seeking to be sent to the mission field under one of their authoritative coverings. As we sat with these organizations, the discussions were centered around mission forms that had to be filled out, our family size, funding that would be required considering our family size, our personal debt, etc. The thing that struck me was the complete absence of prayer. When someone comes claiming that God has called them into missions, rather than forms and financial concerns, shouldn’t the first priority of any Christian sending group be focused prayer that seeks to discern whether God has truly called them to the mission field or not? Isn’t this what we see in Scripture:

“Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” – Acts 13:1-3

The Biblically recorded response of the Christian leaders at Antioch to God calling Paul and Barnabas to be full-time missionaries was fasting and prayer! No forms, no financial considerations, and no debt assessments—only fasting and prayer! Allowing the Bible to assess this situation for me, this worldly sending methodology was found to be entirely void of Biblical support. Therefore, Joy and I prayed, and we both heard God telling us to go as independent missionaries with no denominational affiliation. We obeyed and went forth, and our obedience to God’s instruction allowed Charis to become a God-led, rather than an organization-led, ministry.

Heroes of faith

Before we arrived in Haiti, we had prayed asking God to show us the specific village in which He wanted us to work. In gracious response to our prayers God provided a home for us to live in based on the area in which He wanted His ministry to be performed, (the securing of our first home is too long of a story to tell here, but it was one of the ways God affirmed that He was indeed calling us to Haiti). So, going to Haiti based only on God’s calling, having no familiarity with the village in which we were living, and not having a plan once we arrived appears to be foolish, but is it? Not only is it not foolish, but it is what God absolutely expects when He calls His sons and daughters (and ALL Christians are called into a ministry that God prepared for each of us before the foundations of the world were laid. -see Ephesians 2:10). In Hebrews, chapter 11, we have an entire chapter devoted to the Old Testament’s heroes of faith. Let us consider a few verses to help us determine how these men were found to be worthy of such an honor:

“By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household..” – Hebrews 11:7a
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” – Hebrews 11:8
“By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking for the reward.” – Hebrews 11:24-26

Noah, Abraham, and Moses were heroes of faith not because they allowed the world’s ‘common sense’ to instruct them, but rather because they obeyed God’s instructions in spite of the glaring irrational nature of the Divine requests that were made of them. Noah had never seen rain before, and despite the colossal project that God was asking him to undertake, he was provided no help, encouragement, or support from those surrounding him. Despite these deterrents Noah worked tirelessly for 120 years to build an ark of mammoth size simply because he chose to believe and obey God rather than question or doubt Him.

Abraham was simply promised an inheritance of land and innumerable offspring. Even though God did not reveal to him the exact location of this land, Abraham gathered his entire family, all of his livestock and belongings and began to walk, not knowing where he was going. Why would anyone do something so irrational? Because the land inheritance was promised by God and that was enough for Abraham as he began to walk with no definitive destination driven only by his faith in the One who had called him.

Moses was raised in the palace of Pharaoh, the most powerful man on the entire earth at that time, which would surely be anyone’s dream. But God had called Moses to lead his people—the Jews. This would require Moses to leave the wealthiest, most glamorous, most secure, and most powerful household in the world, and willingly stoop down to join and lead the most despised and physically weak people in the world at that time. Why would he do this? Was Moses in his right mind? Moses was not only in his right mind, but in fact his mind had ascended to a much higher place in which he knew God and knew that suffering for a Divine kingdom was infinitely better than enjoying fleeting pleasures.

All of these men, through their counterintuitive decisions and actions, showed the world that God would be obeyed above worldly rational thinking and human scoffing, and they were rewarded for this as they found favor with their Creator. The end of Hebrews 11 tells us that these heroes of faith lived lives that proved the “world was not worthy” of them. In other words, the world, in its fallen and sinful state, received something through these men that it did not deserve.

Faith, not foolishness

Our decision to obey God and go to Haiti with no sending church or sending organization was far from foolish—it was faithful; and I believe that we are following set Biblical precedents of surrendered, unquestioning obedience that has been found to be an inseparable character trait held by God-fearing individuals throughout history. Not knowing what to do when we arrived in Haiti was exactly what God wanted because now He, and He alone, would dictate the ministry, determine its direction, and place us in the exact locations at the exact moments with the exact people that He desired.

Through prayer and continual daily inquiry, Charis has become the ministry that you see and are a part of today. Joy and I had, and have, nothing to do with the decisions and successes of the Charis ministry, so NEVER praise us—it is all God as He looks to all of you and Joy and I to simply do three things: 1) Inquire of Him through prayer, 2) wait for His answer, and 3) act in obedience that is void of doubt. In this way, God’s will for both Haiti and our walk with Him will be enacted on Earth, which creates a greater clarity and understanding of the words found in the Lord’s prayer:

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”– Mathew 6:9-10

A unified church family

What encouragement I receive from this, and it is my prayer that you do too! Let us now return to the subject that began our discussion, and this is the subject of unity. I hope that you share the absolute bond that we feel with all of you through our joining of spiritual hands to perform this mission work in Haiti. I begin every newsletter by addressing all of you as our “Charis Family” because that is honestly the intimacy that Joy and I feel with all of you.

In the world, the word ‘family’ is biologically confined. But in the Bible the word ‘family’ transcends the world’s biological constraints and is elevated to a spiritual term that references both our relationship with God and our relationships with our redeemed brothers and sisters in this world who collectively make up the Church! Just as there are differences in our biological family relationships, the same is true from a spiritual perspective.

To use a personal illustration, while it may be true that my father and my distant cousin who lives in Sweden are both members of my family; the relationship I have with each of them is very different. The relationship that I have with my dad is one of daily, intimate, conversational interaction, while I’ve never even met or spoken to my cousin in Sweden. While we are alive on this earth, my family example is analogous to the relationship we each have with the global Church.

While we have many Christian brothers and sisters that we are spiritually related to on this earth, it is the ones we join hands within a specific God ordained ministry (in our case Charis), that I truly feel akin to! Thus, Joy and I consider all of you as part of our immediate spiritual family—brothers and sisters in Christ going together into battle against Satan in Haiti to free the people from spiritual bondage. Few words can describe the strength of the bond that forms between soldiers who fight together side by side in the physical wars of the world. Likewise, we are standing side by side engaged in a daily spiritual battle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers...against the spiritual forces of evil” in Haiti (quote taken from Ephesians 6:12).

The ministry of Charis is pleasing to God, not based on what any one of us is doing, but rather from what is being done collectively through all of us living in obedience to what we hear God telling us to do and our unity. The power of this ministry comes from our unity that rallies around love. This love manifests in our passion to get the gospel to the spiritually lost and our compassion to relieve the physical suffering of the poor in Haiti. As we do this, whether we are aware of it or not, we are aligning ourselves with Biblical instruction:

“...complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”– Philippians 2:2

Paul’s inspired instruction here is being expressed by Charis to Haiti through all of us—the servants of Christ! This is so uplifting and encouraging, and when we consider the hundreds of salvations occurring amongst vodou practitioners, along with the direct defeats daily being meted out against the demonic realm, we should stop and realize the absolute authority under which this ministry is functioning, and the resultant power that Charis is wielding in Haiti—and it is all secondary to our unity! “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9).

Now that we all know, have experienced, and have witnessed the power of unity in Christ, the question must be posed—why does this unity escape us in America? How can Charis operate through the unity of Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Nazarenes, Pentecostals, etc., while American churches remain segregated, choosing to operate within the confines of a denomination rather than the confines of the Bible and its clear instruction against division and denominational sectarianism?

“I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no division among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment…What I mean is that each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided?”– 1 Corinthians 1:10,12-13a

How greatly we have fallen into disobedience to this passage! We could write a contemporary version that would read something like this: “each one of you says, ‘I follow Luther,’ or ‘I follow Wesley’, or ‘I follow Calvin,’ or ‘I follow Parham.’ Is Christ divided?” How can we have such clear consciences with such clear division which is such clear deviation from what Christ and Paul strongly taught? When was the last time you saw a fundamental Baptist church join hands for local outreach projects with a Pentecostal church? It just doesn’t happen and because of the strength and power of our gospel witness falls into an abyss of inefficacy, division, and weakness.

Once again, just consider what is occurring in Haiti through the unity of a multiplicity of denominational representation. The reason for this is because our devotion to the gospel, Christ, and evangelistic commitment to the lost and unreached souls of this world MUST transcend above denominational alliances to such a great degree that the denominations we belong to become hardly visible when our commitment to the Great Commission in observed. This is the ONLY way we will change this world; this is the ONLY way Christ will be made attractive to the world; and this is the ONLY way God wants us to serve Him on this earth—joined only to Him and His Word, not to Him and your denomination—don’t be found guilty of serving two masters! “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24a). While this verse is particularly referencing money, money is just one example of many. Has your denomination become a master over you? For many, it unfortunately has.

We are strong when we are unified

I hope that this has encouraged all of us to commit ourselves to the unity we see in Acts chapter 2. We are strongest when we are unified as proven by the amazing grace and power that is being poured out upon Haiti—a country that many consider beyond saving secondary to the seemingly impenetrable spiritual darkness and poverty. But our unity in Christ can overcome the world, and thus I humbly ask all of you to consider this, examine yourself and pray that you are not allowed to fall into the divisions of denominationalism. Remember that being part of a denomination is not the problem; the problem arises when we segregate our local, national, and international mission efforts acting as if our denomination is the only one worthy of support because only our denomination is doing it right.

Reach across the denominational aisle and join hands with your brothers and sisters from other denominations and in doing so we will please God and change the world! We love you and thank you for your prayers and support. We look forward to going into 2020 spiritually armed and dangerous—the demons fear this ministry, and with this in mind let us not be deterred from this great work–let us continue to wage war for our great General who commissioned us, empowers us, equips us, instructs us, guides us, and never leaves us!

“The evangelization of the world waits not on the readiness of God but on the obedience of Christians.” – Bill M. Sullivan

ACTS 26:18 MINISTRY

What follows is a list of former vodouists that have chosen to follow Jesus Christ. When a Haitian leaves vodou, it often means losing their primary income and means of survival. Charis is beginning a recovery ministry to help our new brothers and sisters in Christ become self-sustaining. A special thank you to Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran church in Austin, TX for their support in helping us jump start this recovery ministry. Anyone who would like to give towards this program, please mark “ACTS 26:18 MINISTRY” on your on-line donation or on the memo line on your check.

Make checks payable to “CHARIS” and mail to: CHARIS, 3015 E. New York Street, A2-295, Aurora, IL 60504