(Once again…coming to you LIVE from under my favorite mango trees in Haiti…!! Please exuse errors, as it\u00a0was\u00a0typed on my iPhone!)<\/p>\n
Global Pentecostalism. I have to be honest. The title in itself scared me. Images of the movie “Jesus Camp” are embedded into my brain. Pentecostalism evokes shouts in tongues and fires with snakes crawling over the floor. But after reading a few pages, this book was different. This book, through listening and telling personal stories found in the biggest of cities and the smallest of villages, redefined pentecostalism.<\/p>\n
“Theologians use labels such as the ‘integral gospel,’ or ‘holistic Christianity,’ to refer to churches that seek a balance between evangelism and social ministry.’ We have finally decided, however, to create a new term to define this movement, which is Progressive Pentecostalism.” (Yamamori & Miller, Loc. 32)<\/p>\n
Progressive Pentecostalism. This I can understand. It seems only appropriate to read this book as I am traveling to and around Haiti. Haiti, the Republic of NGO’s. Haiti, where all hope seems to be lost. Haiti, that has been slaughtered with corrupt leadership for centuries. But Haiti is a contradiction. It is also a country where relationships are valued. God is on the tip of every tongue, and the words “Mesi Jesus” are written on nearly every tap-tap (taxi). This is a country where you cannot travel more than two blocks without passing by a church. Locals worship God with their hands in the air, singing praises to the Lord, praying with passion, and pleading for mercy. And there is no other place where I see this Progressive Pentecostalism practiced more than anywhere else in the world.<\/p>\n
My family in Haiti is the monastic order, the Little Brothers of St. Therese. The leader of the monastery in Palmiste A Vin is Brother Olizard Pranius. He was born in Cap Haitien, Haiti, and though he served as a missionary in Jamaica for three years, he knew his calling was to serve amongst his own people in Haiti. As a Christian, he felt the call to serve. He joined the monastery to serve God by serving others. As our authors said, “It is impossible to separate their Christian commitment from their social engagement with the community. They want to be known by their love for others, rather than by their words.” (Loc. 465)<\/p>\n
After the 2010 earthquake, Olizard truly embodied his belief. The natural disaster leveled 100% of his village and surrounding area. He quickly surveyed the area on foot with his six brothers. Together they met with families, prayed for miracles, and buried the lost. He preached the Gospel to restore hope, and called upon the community to rise up and to use this event as a fresh start. The Swiss Red Cross took notice of his leadership and how the community responded to him. Over the next month, they gave him enough money to build 648 homes in the community. As the community removed the rubble by hand, the brothers came in and rebuilt their homes. This took nearly two years, but the brothers continued working, while the people joined in, and soon the community changed. The church pews filled each evening for mass. The rural mountain community were no longer strangers, but they were brothers and sisters. They were family who had seen each other thru a horrific event and come through to the otherside. They were transformed, not only with new buildings and structures, but with the Word of Christ.<\/p>\n
With Brother Olizard’s land, we built a chicken and goat farm. Over one thousand chickens produce an egg a day, and each day, his brothers distribute food to the poor. After the houses were finished, the German Red Cross gave him funds to build a school. Now hundreds of children from up to 20 km away are educated daily, not only in mathematics and science and languages, but also in the Word. They built a clinic just down the road from their house, which distributes clean water and a Haitian doctor sees patients for free on Wednesdays. When the brothers see a need, they meet it, and they do so because they have been called by God to live out the Word with their actions.<\/p>\n
Today, I am staying at the monastery in Palmiste A Vin, a place that I call home. As I brought this team who had never been to Haiti before, I pointed out the plywood, ten by ten homes, that peppered the mountainside and spoke of how Olizard and his Catholic brothers transformed the community. I took them buy the clinic, and we walked down to the school. Indeed, as our authors wrote of Progressive Pentecostals, “The task of the Christian, in their opinion, is to transform people holistically, ministering to their physical as well as spiritual needs. They believe their role is to be Christ’s agent in the world, following the example that he established during his ministry on earth.” (Loc. 465)<\/p>\n
Thinking back to many of my other blog posts, I realize that I write about a lot of people. Relationships with these great leaders, these great servants, these great Progressive Pentecostals have transformed me. Is it possible to be a Christian and to ride down the streets of Haiti without answering the call to live out your faith and serve? Can you divorce moral and spiritual needs from physical and economic needs? Brother Olizard would say no. I would say no.<\/p>\n
Yamamori, Tetsunao & Miller, Donald. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagment. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Once again…coming to you LIVE from under my favorite mango trees in Haiti…!! Please exuse errors, as it\u00a0was\u00a0typed on my iPhone!) Global Pentecostalism. I have to be honest. The title in itself scared me. Images of the movie “Jesus Camp” are embedded into my brain. Pentecostalism evokes shouts in tongues and fires with snakes crawling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2679,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678\/revisions\/2679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}