At Converge MidAmerica | Southeast | Caribbean, we believe that the best way to fulfill the Great Commission is by making disciples who make disciples and planting churches that plant churches.
Converge Caribbean recently partnered with The Timothy Initiative (TTI) in training local leaders in Haiti and the Dominican Republic so they can equip Christians with the necessary tools, resources, and strategies to reach their country for Christ.
The TTI training consists of eight “Training of Trainers” (TOT) sessions conducted quarterly over a two-year period. The first session was held from June 1-4 for over 100 Haitian pastors and leaders. This training is a shift from a pastor/church building-centered focus to a disciple/community-centered focus. The pastor then trains his “Timothys” and sends them out to make disciples who then make disciples of their neighbors, colleagues, and other people within their community.
One group of pastors from Santiago traveled to Haiti for TOT 1. Tom Frakes trained Pastor Amos for over a year and during that time other pastors heard about the training and then began to train their believers to make disciples who make disciples.
This past March Converge MidAmerica’s Missions Director, Steven Storkel, had the privilege of going to Haiti twice and the Dominican Republic once. He shares, “These trips were both very good and enjoyable, where I spent time meeting with groups of pastors, doing training, and answering questions. Most of my time was spent training these pastors in The Timothy Initiative material. These pastors are committed to a new way of doing ministry. This new paradigm of ministry is one with a focus on discipleship and teaching believers to be disciples who make disciples. There are four groups that I met with in Northern Haiti and one group in the Dominican Republic; all are Haitian pastors and congregations. Converge’s ministry in Cap-Haitian has been meeting for the past year and is the largest with about 25 pastors who are meeting and discipling 170 people. These 170 people have then gone on to lead 479 people to Christ with 225 of them being baptized and 338 of them being discipled by the person who led them to Christ!”
It is beautiful to see the fulfillment of Jesus’s words to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19) before our eyes in Haiti and the Dominican Republic!