Haiti: The Culture and Mission Organizations Essay

Submitted By baseballteen06
Words: 1744
Pages: 7

Ricky M.
11/26/13
Senior Seminar
Dr. Johnson
Ministry Team Paper

When going into ministry you are faced with many different obstacles. Here specifically talking about the mission field there are a wide range of things that can, and will, happen when you are pursuing to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people. Most of the time we think of harmful things that will destroy our ministry and set us back of things from this word such as no people group not responding to the Gospel or coming down with an illness that will hinder you from moving forward or even people creating horrible rumors about you that are not true and trying to slander your name so that your good deeds for Christ are not what people will focus on rather the bad things said about you but a lot of times what we forget is that much strife and conflict that can be detrimental to our ministry is usually internal. Many times what happens is we fall under the illusion of Christian ministry is all perfect since we are all part of the body of Christ and nothing bad will happen because we are all Christians but that is totally wrong. Numerous times Paul and John had to write to different churches because there was trouble and strife that was breaking them apart. From the three mission agencies I learned some valuable lessons on how they deal with conflict. Cadence, World Team, and Chrsitar were the mission organizations that I interviewed and asked about how they deal with conflict in their ministry. When I talked to the mission organizations about conflict they all had pretty much the same reaction to it, they all looked at me with a little bit of a shock and then had a little smile like they quickly shot back to a specific time when conflict arose in their ministry. Conflict is the same when you really look at it as a whole. It is when two or more people hold to a different opinion and they are in a close relationship with each other. When I asked them how they handled it they all had about the same kind of answer, they first tried to resolve it there quickly. It is not a god idea to let the problem fester and eventually grow into something bigger than it should be. Resolving it immediately is the best option you can do. If it is something that goes beyond that then usually someone higher up will step in and go through counseling with them, again it all depends on the conflict that arose since conflict is such a broad statement. Conflict could range from two people struggling over who is in charge, to how they should look at the use of spiritual gifts. A big conflict that I heard about was money embezzling. I talked to Joyce from World Team about this and when I brought up the subject of conflict and what was one of the things I should prepare myself if I am going to go into ministry she told me the biggest thing is that Haiti is a shame culture. She told me of a story that happened when she was in Haiti as a full-time missionary. There was a Haitian man that was in charge of the finances of the organization. One day they noticed that the money was not adding up so they went to the guy who was in charge of it and he fessed up to the fact that he took money out of the funds so that he could help some of his family that were having car troubles. This is a conflict that has to specifically do with cultures clashing. So how they resolved this was first they told him that he had to pay it all back immediately and not on his own kind of payment plan, second they had to dismiss him from his job because they could not trust him with the money anymore so they had to let him go from there but they did not just throw him on the street, they had a redemption side to it as well. There always has to be a process that will lead to restoration because that is what we are called to have go along with punishment. Another story that they told me was in the Philippines they also have a shame culture so one time they noticed that the pastor’s wife was not going to church on