We have had a very busy but fruitful summer of ministry. By the time you read this, Keesha and I will have had three mission teams come work alongside our ministry, and three interns from the U.S. come and live with us for several weeks. In addition to that, we have eleven Haitian young men that live with us that I disciple on a regular basis. I also train a group of men and women every Thursday, and another group of pastors every Saturday. We have also been traveling to other area churches to do one-day discipleship trainings for their people. It has been so exciting to see the Holy Spirit working. He is reconciling many Haitians to himself and sending them back out to be his ambassadors.
Our desire is to train and mobilize as many gospel seed sowers as we can, who will be faithful to obey their Christ-given command to make disciples who make disciples. We are training them to use several different tools to effectively make disciples and form new churches. One of the tools we use is known as the House of Peace search. It is a church-planting strategy taken from Luke 10. As Jesus was sending out seventy-two of his disciples, he instructs them to find a “person of peace” in each community.
“When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him. If not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house” (Luke 10:5-7).
This was Jesus’ church-planting strategy. He specifically instructed them to visit various families until they had found a “man of peace.” Then they were to concentrate their friendship on this one household. We believe that finding this “person of peace” is essential to a healthy church-planting process because it forms churches where community already exists. Paul followed this model throughout his missionary journeys. I wonder where he learned it?
As we prayer walk through different communities, we are looking for the place where the Holy Spirit is already working and has already prepared someone to hear the gospel. So who exactly is a person of peace? We characterize them as someone who receives the messenger, receives the message, and receives the mission. When they become believers, we train them to share their faith confidently with their networks of friendships (oikos) and start new home-based churches. Using the person of peace approach, we do not pull new believers out of their world and away from their networks of relationships. Instead we encourage them to stay in those networks and with training, nurture, and support can quickly lead friends to Christ and disciple them.
It’s through this approach that the Lord has allowed us to plant dozens of churches all across Haiti this year. And now many of them are reproducing more churches who do the same thing. God is so good. Thank you for praying for us and thank you for your continued support. Keesha and I are praying for you. Maybe you could do your own House of Peace search?
– Jacob
