Over the years, our four core pillars have been the guiding principles. We are biblically focused, church centric, invested in compassionate relationships, and rooted in indigenous ministry. There’s a simple reason for that. The challenge in ministry is that if you take too broad of an approach, you end up exhausting your resources quickly and reaching less people as a result.

We have seen many organizations come into Haiti and do just that. While they’ve been incredibly responsive to need, doing it without guiding principles means you spend your resources rather than investing them. It’s impossible to feed everyone or deal with all the areas of hurt and need in a third-world country. You need a framework that tells you where to begin and where to stop.

We think of our four pillars as rails that give us the boundaries of our organization. They allow us to say, “This is what we’re going to deal with” without running our resources dry trying to do everything. For us, that means we will work with as many churches as we can work with personally. We’re not interested in anonymity, because accountability is the way to build a lasting and trusted presence in a community. Those churches then respond to needs in their communities, and we support them by providing food, money, and intangible support.

Originally, we started with fifty churches, and it became evident that model was too broad. We ended up with our twelve Mercy Network churches after assessing which churches were consistently acting on the practical mandate of the Great Commission in their communities. These men were quick responders to local need, and that testimony has continued as the Lord works through them to this day.

Next, we had each of those pastors pick one or two people to bring under them and then teach them the same principles we were sharing. So our guiding priorities have helped establish a network of discipleship, which has worked well in the country of Haiti. Haitians are used to community; that’s their culture. The whole process of living life alongside other believers and responding to need in a collective way is at the heart of our four core values, and our goal has been to allow that spirit of unity to drive everything we do within our practical parameters.

Our core values give us the structure to exercise incredible creativity and freedom as we try to be the hands and feet of Jesus in Haiti. Praise God for His guiding hand.

To learn how you can be praying with us for the ministry in Haiti, visit Prayer Requests.