Today has to be the coldest day of the year in mid-Michigan – 10 below zero when I got up this morning.  Rena and I will venture out for a walk later this afternoon (the Fitbits must be fed). Besides that we’re staying indoors!

What do we do on days like this? We prepare! Making the decision to postpone our February training in Gonaives was hard. We had to rewind a lot of reservations and preparations. And, honestly, it was like being thrown off a horse when I was a kid. I had to get up, wipe away some tears, dust myself off, and get ready to mount up again. Read more in my PREVIOUS POST

So now we’re in preparation mode. The prophet’s call rings in my ears:

Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! ⁴ Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places. ⁵ Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. The Lord has spoken!” (Isaiah 40:3-5)

Clear the way! Make a straight highway! Fill in, straighten, smooth out! Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. John the Baptizer used these words to announce the coming of Jesus, but they also apply to our own preparations for the Lord.

What can you do this winter to prepare for the Lord to work? What preparations do you need to make? Let’s make the most of our time and invest for eternity!

Here’s what’s on the PPI “To Do List” between now and the two upcoming training conferences in July:

• Work out an acceptable, reliable solution to the new CDC international travel guidelines. I tried the first COVID-19 home test we could get with unsatisfactory results. Please pray about this!
• Plan and build out the PPI office/workroom. We’re using a room in our house for this space. More details on this project to come in my next post.
• Contact and follow up with potential financial partners. I will preach and present PPI at Gateway Church in Port Huron on Feb 28.
• Finish writing the workbook for PPI Course 2 – Our Powerful Gospel. We plan to offer this course in Cap Haitien in July, Lord willing. Like all our training courses, Course 2 will be keyed to the Thompson Chain Reference Bible (French version) and translated into Creole.
• Finish editing, formatting, translating and printing the book God-Pleasing Worship. I have a rough draft of this resource completed and, Lord willing, plan to have it ready for printing in English and in Creole by May 1. Check out a SAMPLE of the book here

I’m so grateful to the Lord that I have the privilege of being neck-deep in projects that are life-giving to church leaders in Haiti and other developing countries! I’m so thankful that God chooses to use our preparations, done in faith and love, to reveal His glory. That warms my soul on a cold Michigan day. I hope it warms your soul, too. Give to PPI HERE

Courageous Kingdom Decisions – that was the title of my message two Sundays ago from Acts 11. I didn’t realize then that the Lord intended to use that Scripture to push PPI to a next step that week!

I focused on Acts 11:19-26, and explained that God used opposition and difficulty to move the church out of Jerusalem and into Judea, Samaria and ultimately the ends of the earth. I said:

The Apostles stayed in Jerusalem, proclaiming the good news of Jesus, teaching and caring for those who trusted in Christ. And the Jerusalem church continued to grow. Some estimate the number of believers in the Jerusalem church at 20,000 people. Jewish people. In many ways, the first generation of the church was a Jewish revival – just what Jesus’ first disciples had envisioned. 

But Jesus had given them a mission to all nations. He had commanded them to expand the message and ministry of the church from Jerusalem and Judea (Jewish people) to the hated Samaritans and all the pagan Gentiles (Acts 1:8). That was and is the mission Jesus gave His church. It wasn’t easy for the Jewish church in Jerusalem to look out its windows at the rest of the world. It’s not easy for us.

So God used persecution to move the church beyond Jerusalem. Opposition and difficulty created opportunity for the spread of the gospel. Watch the sermon HERE

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) caused the “opposition and difficulty” that pushed us take an important next step now rather than later – preparing national pastors to lead PPI training conferences.

On January 12, the CDC issued an order requiring all travelers entering the United States by air to show proof of a negative viral/antigen COVID-19 test 1-3 days before their flight to the United States.  These requirements went into effect yesterday (January 26).

That means each person on our U.S. mission team would need to take and pass a viral/antigen test for coronavirus in Haiti and get documented results back within 3 days of flying back home.

I have worked long and hard on a solution to this latest hurdle to our February conference. Over the past 10 days, I have scoured the internet for reliable information. I talked with the CDC, American Airlines, local and state health departments, friends in Haiti, medical professionals, and four pharmaceutical companies.

Everyone is working hard on solutions, but no reliable solution will be available in time for our mission trip in February.  So last week, the PPI board and I made the painful decision to cancel our February mission trip and postpone the pastors training in Gonaives. 

I communicated this difficult decision to Pastor Esaii and Pastor Jasmin, our two key ministry partners in Haiti. We walked through a plan for them to travel to Gonaives to meet with church leaders there to let them know that we had to postpone the conference, to tell them we plan to come there as soon as the Lord allows, and to encourage and pray with them.

We are disappointed – especially the new and “alumni” Haitian pastors anticipating this training. Yet as our board discussed what to do, God began to make it clear to us that we needed to move equipping national trainers to the front burner this year. 

Preparing national trainers has been part of our vision for Partnership of Pastors International from the beginning. And we have taken some good first steps in that area. But with all the time demands of a new mission ministry and “tent-making” as an interim pastor, I had moved the intentional training of trainers to the back burner. God used the “opposition and difficulty” of COVID=19 to move me out of Jerusalem. I’m so thankful!

Last week and this week, I’ve had fruitful conversations about equipping national trainers with my friends and mentors – Chuck Ballard with African Pastors Training and John Jauchen with Help for Christian Nationals. They described their criteria and process for preparing national trainers. They also put me in touch with key ministry partners on the front lines of their equipping of indigenous trainers – David Stevens in Africa and Hector Burke in Central/South America.

I’ll share more as this unfolds. For now we’re working toward going to Haiti in July to lead two back-to-back pastors conferences. And – because God used this opposition and difficulty to push us out of Jerusalem – we are committed to defining a “train the trainer” process and implementing it in Haiti beginning in July.

Please pray for these multiplication efforts!

Give to PPI HERE

I kept this under wraps until we knew one way or the other: We almost had to cancel our next pastors conference in Haiti because we couldn’t get Thompson Chain Reference Bibles! 

Main Training Tool

We work hard to offer our conferences with excellence. We do this to honor the Lord first and foremost. We also do it to honor church leaders in developing countries and raise their expectations of the eternal value of this training. So we pay attention to details – Bibles, course workbooks, registration forms, nametags, lanyards, pens, audio, lunches, etc. 

If we had to, we could do without many of these things and still encourage, train and resource pastors. But we CANNOT do without Thompson Chain Reference Bibles! This Bible is our main training tool, and the Bible to which our course workbooks are keyed. No Thompson Bibles, no training. Give toward Thompson Bibles HERE

Winding Path to Haiti

Our Thompson Bibles in French take a winding path to Haiti. We purchase these Bibles through Multilanguage Media (MLM), an international Christian literature distributor based in Philadelphia. MLM buys the French Thompson Bibles from Vida Publishing, based in Paris (yes, France), which then ships the Bibles to a French bookstore in Montreal (yes, Canada) called Diffusion Vie. Diffusion Vie ships our Bibles to Missionary Flights International (MFI) in Florida. MFI then puts our Bibles on a plane to Cap Haitien where our pastor partners pick  them up and carry them overland to the next location of our PPI pastors conference, in this case Gonaives, Haiti. Make your head spin? Mine, too!

COVID-19 Delays and Then . . . 

I ordered 104 Thompson Bibles four (4) months ago to account for COVID-19 delays. When I called MLM just before Christmas to check on our shipment, the good people at MLM assured me that they would track down our 13 cases of Thompson Bibles. Not to worry.

After New Year’s, I began to be concerned. Where are our Thompson Bibles? I asked some of you to pray and worked with MLM to locate the shipment. Last Thursday morning, MLM called me. Good news! Diffusion Vie (the bookstore in Montreal) had received the Bibles from France and would ship them to MFI in Florida the next day. Relief and praise!

MLM called again the next day. Bad news! Diffusion Vie believes that Vida Publishing shipped the wrong Thompson Bibles. The ISBN differs from our usual Thompson Bible. The covers are different.  Is the content different? That was the make-or-break question. Our course workbooks are keyed to a certain French language Thompson Bible – version, page numbers, topic numbers, everything. We could live with different covers, but all the content of the Bible – every detail – had to match the burgundy hardcover Thompson Bibles we always use for our training. 

Otherwise . . . Otherwise we would have to cancel the February training in Gonaives and reschedule it for another time when we had the right Bibles.

Problem Solved!

We continued to pray earnestly. Tim at MLM and I began to work the problem. Let’s get the shipment to MFI (Florida), have them open a box and see if the cover is indeed different from our regular Thompson Bible. Then we’ll know.

The cover was different – brown imitation leather instead of burgundy hard cover. Okay, let’s have MFI overnight a Bible to me from Florida so that I can compare the content in detail with my burgundy cover Thompson Bible. 

The package arrived Tuesday evening from Florida, and Rena and I compared detail after detail of the Bible with the Thompson Bible I use to lead our training. We worked through our Course 1 workbook and compared page numbers, topic numbers and wording. 

Everything matches! The content of the “mistaken” Thompson Bibles is exactly the same as our “regular” Thompson Bibles. I was in tears. I shouted! We thanked the Lord! I took some pictures to share with you so you can give thanks to the Lord, too.

Many Obstacles, Much Fruit

We have faced many obstacles to offering this pastors conference in Gonaives, Haiti in February. I shared one significant obstacle here, but I could share others. (And another significant obstacle arose later that night.) It is clear to me that the Evil One is doing all he can to stop us from encouraging, training and resourcing church leaders in Gonaives. But our risen and exalted Savior has promised to be with us as we make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:20). He promised the power of His Spirit as we bear witness to His truth (Acts 1:8). The devil is no match for the Lord. With one word, Jesus will send him packing!

Charles Spurgeon once said that he had learned to welcome hardship and obstacles to his ministry because they foreshadow the Holy Spirit giving much fruit. That’s what we pray for in Gonaives in February! That’s what we work for through the grace of God given to us. Help us provide Thompson Bibles to pastors HERE

Please Pray

Please pray for this conference. Ask the Lord to help us work through the obstacles. Ask the Lord to protect our U.S. team and the church leaders who come to the training. Ask the Lord to fill us with His Spirit – with courage and joy and love – as we encourage and train these dear pastors in Haiti. Ask the Lord to give the fruit of understanding, heart commitment, and ministry skills as a result of this week of training. Soli Deo gloria – for God’s glory alone.

Happy New Year, everyone! Rena and I stayed up last night to greet the new year. We don’t always do that, but we wanted to make sure that 2020 really left the building. We wanted to lock the door behind it then look out the windows to make sure the old year wasn’t hiding in the bushes trying to get back in. “I’m back!”

Like you, we’re looking forward to this new year! Yes, the pandemic is still with us. Yes, churches and businesses still struggle. Yes, hordes of cicadas likely will invade the United States this summer. (Have you heard about Brood X?!) But we have good news. God the Son visited our planet to reconcile all things to himself (Colossians 1:19-20). He gave His own life to make that happen, then rose again to demonstrate His absolute power over all the effects of the Fall – including pandemics, economic downturn, and nature gone wacko.

Most importantly, Jesus died and rose again to rescue and restore you and me, who apart from Christ’s saving work would live without God and without hope. He now leads His church in the world to do all that He began to do and teach (Acts 1:1). He sent the Holy Spirit to reside within us and empower us to live out His mission. He is coming again to take us Home to live with him forever. Now that’s good news!

Our forgiveness, our joy, our hope are found in Christ alone. Martin Luther, who faced his fair share of upheaval in life, wrote:

Though this world, with devils filled, 
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.

God hath willed His truth to triumph through us. And in us. The truth of the gospel, the good news.

Let’s focus on the good news of Jesus in 2021. There’s enough bad news around to frighten and frustrate us every day. Hear me: In light of eternity, it’s background noise. We can’t let bad news distract or discourage us. We have a higher calling – to live out and shout out the good news of forgiveness and hope in the only Savior Jesus Christ. That’s the calling of every Christian. It’s your calling and my calling. 

And it’s our joy! God continues to grow Partnership of Pastors International and to give us opportunities to encourage and train pastors in the good news of Jesus. Through your prayers and generous giving, the Lord gave us an amazing first year of ministry. And we anticipate even more Kingdom fruit and greater impact for eternity in 2021!

We are convinced that the good news of Jesus, well lived and rightly proclaimed by godly church leaders, is the real hope of Haiti. The gospel of Jesus brings about heart change, which leads to life change then family change then neighborhood change then city change then nation change. That’s the hope of Haiti – and the hope of the United States. That’s why we do what we do as Partnership of Pastors International.

Thank you for standing with us! We invite you to continue to invest with us in 2021 as we encourage, train and resource church leaders in the good news of Jesus Christ. 

Invest with us HERE.

A Typical American Pastor

I’m a typical American pastor. In an average week, I pray, study the Bible and write a sermon for Sunday. I meet and work with church leaders and members. I get together with a few guys or with a group of young adults. I respond to questions by email and phone. I may ZOOM with an engaged couple or lead a funeral.

And I use A LOT of ministry resources – study Bibles, lexicons, commentaries, websites, Bible apps, Google Drive and wireless printers. The typical American pastor has all these resources at his fingertips. I can’t imagine trying to pastor effectively without them. Could you do your job well without good resources?

Lack of Training and Few Resources

The typical Haitian pastor faces very different circumstances. Church leaders in Haiti and other developing  nations suffer from two serious deprivations. They lack access to ministry training, and they lack good resources. We are committed to doing something about that!

Our ministry, Partnership of Pastors International, provides ministry resources, and – importantly – we train church leaders to use them well. The Thompson Chain Reference Bible (in French) is the foundational resource we train to and provide to every church leader completing our courses. At each training conference, we also provide Creole Bibles, church/theology books, gospel tracts and other ministry tools, such as the Evangicube. Your giving helps us provide Bibles and other ministry resources to church leaders in Haiti. DONATE HERE

God-Pleasing Worship Book

I’m excited about a new resource that we will give to over 300 Haitian pastors in 2021. The book, God-Pleasing Worship, is based on my friend, Joe Talone’s, excellent sermon series. Joe gave me permission to edit this message series for print not long before he unexpectedly went home to Heaven last May. Joe loved Haiti and served there many times with his church. This resource will continue Joe’s legacy of building up the church in Haiti.

Next Conference in February

In February, Lord willing, we will train 110 church leaders in a new city in Haiti. Gonaives is a city of over 300,000 people, situated on the west coast of the country. We are working hard on the details of this conference. Will you pray for us as we prepare for this next training conference?

His Greatest Gift

Rena and I look forward to celebrating our Savior’s birth with our kids in Memphis this year. We pray for His joy and peace to fill your hearts and holidays, too. Let’s thank our Father for His greatest gift – the gift of His Son. We are thankful for each of you!