A Report on the 2011 Stateside Sister Church Ingathering
By Steve DeLisle
These days you can communicate in a lot of different ways. You can post it on your web site or on face book. You can pick up a phone and call or text the person. You can go online and Skype them or IM them. One could even sit down and write a letter. Heart to Honduras spends a lot of time trying to communicate with our supporters and ministry partners using all of these formats. But nothing is quite as good as sitting down together and talking face to face.
Monday and Tuesday September 12-13 over 40 pastors and leaders from 21 different North American churches gathered to learn and share about the Sister Church program. Honduras was represented by North American Teams Coordinator German Pinell, Pastor Fredy Martinez from La Concepción and Pastor Alfredo Reconco from Tegucigalpa. José Reyes even joined us via Skype the first morning for a time of sharing. Luis Cano, one of our former SOD students who now lives in the US cooked all the meals for the conference, serving various dishes one gets on a trip to Canchias. It was a good time to make new friends, reconnect with old friends, discuss what we had tried, what we have learned and explore where God was taking Heart to Honduras and the Sister Church Program. But what made it most special was the ability to be together. There was lots of talking, laughing, praying, discussing and learning.
Updates and Reports from Honduras
Monday morning was focused on updates and reports on the current status of the Heart to Honduras ministry and new things that are going on. President Gordon Garrett opened the conference with a report on the current state of the ministry. José Reyes then brought greetings from Honduras via Skype. Pastor Alfredo, German and Pastor Fredy all shared about the exciting things going on in Honduras. It was exciting to hear of the good progress the ministry has made in the last year.
When Helping Hurts
After lunch Gordon Garrett led the group in a discussion of the book, When Helping Hurts. This book has reshaped our thinking about helping the poor. We want to continue to minister to the poor, but we want to do that in a way that helps them build themselves up instead of creating dependency. This book is a challenging read that points out that we all are poor in some area and that we need to work together to let God bring healing to our poverty through mutual support. Instead of being paternalistic in our approach to helping others, we need to be collaborative in working together to do what is desired by the local people. The ministry strongly encourages all of its supporters and volunteers to read this book and wrestle with what it presents.
This book has encouraged us to look at ways to help Brazos Abiertos congregations become self sustaining. This goal has led us to look at ways we can help the leadership and congregation take on a growing responsibility for pastoral salaries and operating costs. This also means creating new ways to train our pastors and church leaders so that they can take on that responsibility. Pastor Alfredo, Pastor Fredy and Gordon all talked about some of the new plans for making this a possibility. We don’t have a final timeline or plan in place yet to make this happen. However we are trying to work in this direction as we feel it will be the most healthy way we can enable the churches in Honduras.
Project Manual
Another thing that has come out of the study of When Helping Hurts is the new Project Manual. This manual is being developed in Honduras by Pastor Fredy and others. It is designed to help villages, churches and North American congregations consider the priorities, goals and vision that each community has. We want each Sister Church to develop a plan with the local congregation that reflects the goals and desires of the people. Then the two can work together to see how each one can help make that vision a reality. The Manual gives guidelines for community development, project planning, execution and financing. This new tool will help us better track all these steps and better update people on projects that need to be supported and report on how they are accomplished. The best thing is that it is being developed by the Honduran leadership. This is just one example of the initiative they have taken in the last year to improve the ministry.
Orphanages
Jenny Kast joined us from Phoenix Arizona in the afternoon to share about the ministry she is conducting in several orphanages in Honduras. Her ministry works along side Heart to Honduras to minister to the children that are in several government and private orphanages. Many of our teams have started to make visits to the orphanage a regular part of their trips. Jenny also leads several trips each year that just work in the orphanages. This is a good way to quite literally touch someone’s life.
Community Development Plans
After supper Brad Doudican and Matt Garrett led a discussion of the new Community Development plans. Brad is an engineer who has been helping HTH in a variety of ways this past year. He, and Matt from the stateside office, are heading up the Community Development Program. In the past HTH has worked on creating the Model Village. The idea of the Model Village was to create a community that had what was needed to make it a good choice for the young people to stay in. The problem was that often we started with what we thought were the important things they should have in their village. We didn’t always start with what their priorities were. Instead we started with what we saw as their need.
When Helping Hurts strongly suggests that you approach development not by looking at what is wrong or needs fixed, but rather by looking at what is good and what strengths the community brings. This approach is at the center of our new community development program. We can offer ideas and help with the planning and development, but we want to always make sure we are doing what they see as a priority, not just what we think they need. This obviously takes time to build a strong relationship and learn to trust each other. It is our desire to work through the local church in the communities that we are assisting. That will take time and will be easier for Sister churches to do since they already have started the relationship building.
La Ceibita and Southwood Lutheran
Day two opened with devotions from Pastor Fredy. After breakfast Todd Stark shared extensively about how Southwood Lutheran of Lincoln, NE and La Ceibita had partnered over the years. He discussed their process of vision and planning that led to developing a long term plan for the church and the community. Southwood has been very active in working with both Pastor Oscar Manolo, and the local leaders. These efforts have created a strong relationship between Southwood and the people of La Ceibita. This past year they began a major water project that will bring purified water to every house in La Ceibita. This project is a joint effort between Southwood Lutheran, Water Missions and the people of La Ceibita.
La Concepción and Bayside & Exeter
Pastor Fredy then shared how his church had started a major ag project to help feed the children in his Compassion International program. La Concepcion and its sister churches, Bayside Church of God in Florida and Exeter Church of God in California, have worked together to create a large garden and a chicken egg operation. The 249 chickens provide eggs for 4 local schools and the children of the Compassion program. The garden’s produce is used to augment the simple meal that the children receive on the days they come to the church for the Compassion program. This program is an example of the pastor and his Sister Church sharing a vision and commitment to make a tangible difference in the community.
Sister Church Relationship Building
The next session focused on planning and visioning with your Sister Church. It is the desire of the ministry that each Sister Church pairing spend time together building a relationship. Out of this relationship will come the trust and friendship to plan for the future. The Sister Churches that have already made this a part of their yearly trips have reaped tremendous rewards. Too often we go to Honduras to “do” something. We get so busy “doing” what is needed that day, that we never spend real time talking about where God might be leading us. A 3 or 4 day vision trip can be a powerful way to build your relationships and look towards the future. Prayer, visioning, planning and developing a unified approach to ministry for the local congregation and community is important to reaching the full potential of the relationship. We also encourage churches and pastors to reach out beyond the church to the community. It is important to involve non church members, the local leaders and businesses in working together towards community development.
Short Term Trips
The afternoon was spent talking about how all these new ideas and approaches could be assimilated into the Sister Church and Ministry Team planning. We discussed communication, planning of trips and how to involve more people. We spent time discussing how important it was to train and educate the people traveling on a Short Term Mission trip. Helping them not only know what to expect, but to know how to be open to God working in their lives. One of the things we need to focus on is how to help our team members understand that they need God to work in their lives as much as the Hondurans need us to help them. We are all spiritually poor and a mission trip is a wonderful way to let God begin to work in our lives as well.
New Friends
There was a lot of information covered in the meetings. There were incredible interchanges of ideas and experiences that enriched the experience. It was a time of sharing that happens best face to face. I think most of the people that were a part of the conference for any length of time came away feeling that not only did they know more about how to be a Sister Church, but they came away with new friends - friends that can be valuable resources as we all work together to expand the Kingdom of God.
Website Links
Our web site will soon have links to the power points and hopefully the videos we took of the conference. New Team Training material is being developed for use next year. We are continuing to work on the new project manual and other community development pieces. But most importantly we need to continue to build our relationships as we look to work together.
Looking Ahead to the 2012 Ingathering
Begin to plan now for the 2012 Sister Church Ingathering which will be in Honduras next September or October. It will coincide with the Annual Brazos Abiertos’ Convention. This Ingathering is being planned by the Honduran leadership. More information will follow later this year.
