Why Haiti - Part II

Cover of NWHCM December newsletter (design and photograph by Andy Olsen)

I was in Haiti in November when the U.S. polls closed and the election results rolled in. The way Haitians were partying on the streets and in their homes, you would have thought it was THEIR president being elected.

And now, as I sit listening to live coverage of Barack Obama's inauguration, there is a similar sense of jubilation. Hordes of people are partying in Washington, DC, and the newsmedia are working overtime to cover all the minutiae (ad nauseam?) of the day.

Regardless of your political persuasion, I think we can all agree there is something more than just a sense of history at play. Obama represents a dramatic shift from politics as we've known them for nearly a decade. And welcoming a black president to the White House carries with it a feeling that we are pioneering something as a nation, that we are embarking on a whole new thing - perhaps something more in tune with our present-day identity as America.

It's exciting for me, not because I agree or disagree with Obama's policies, but because I love it when something comes along that makes us think differently (more critically?) about the world around us. For many, of course, it might also be a little scary. And that's OK.

Similarly, I believe today's church is being pushed to think differently about missions. The world has changed, or at least our understanding of it has. A pastor I greatly respect said recently that the church has historically been (rightfully) criticized for providing spiritual answers to practical problems. Today, we are learning how to provide practical answers to practical problems, and spiritual answers to spiritual problems.

Though they are closely tied, there is a distinction between the two. And we are beginning to get it.

In addition, I believe that many in today's Christian church are starting to make an important paradigm shift in missions. The prevailing attitude has been one of "us" and "them." We as Westerners respond to the Great Commission and go out to minister to "them." The only problem is, there is no expectation put on "them" to also participate in missions. If we believe the Bible was meant for all people in all times, then the call to missions is uniform for everyone. Missions is "us and them," in our communities and overseas.

This new way of thinking - really a partnership, if you will - has important ramifications for international missions. I believe it means missions in the 21st century will be far more relational, far more incarnational, and far more communal than it has been in the past. It will be a shift toward two-way ministry, with a view of the Western church and the national church as equals. And I believe it will be centered on a dual focus of long-term discipleship and evangelism, rather than only the latter.

In fact, I think it has to be this way. As missions become increasingly holistic (a good shift), we must be increasingly careful to focus on relational discipleship and community building, or there will be very little separating us from secular NGOs and relief organizations.

Erika and I are excited to be a part of Northwest Haiti Christian Mission because we feel they have the vision and the infrastructure in place to do this new paradigm really well. As an organization, NWHCM is still refining what this looks like in their particular setting, but they are well on their way and they have an open desire to continue fine-tuning their approach.

NWHCM also has a great vision for using media to not merely connect with supporters, but to create trans-national communities between American churches and Haitian churches. It's exciting to think that Haitians could view missionaries not merely as a source of handouts or spiritual wisdom, but more beautifully, as neighbors and close friends.

On my end, the mission has given me great leeway to incorporate photos, copy, audio, and video in a host of new ways (well, new for most missions orgs). It's a little daunting, to be honest, just how much I'm being encouraged to push the envelope, and it will no doubt take some time for me to get up to speed. But it's a position of great privilege (and responsibility) to be able to exert a lot of control over the specifics of how my photos, stories, etc. are used. It allows me to speak into the ways we communicate and ensure that my work is presented in the best possible ways. I can't think of any photojournalists who wouldn't dream of a similar situation.

Let me be clear: I don't mean that I deserve control, as if I'm someone special. Not at all. But in today's cash-strapped media market, photographers are generally told what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. As a result, they are finding it harder and harder to produce good work. And even worse, they are finding it harder to utilize appropriate, effective outlets for their work. Corporate media machines chop it up, minimize it, bury it, or manipulate it to suit their purposes. More than ever, it is so important to get your work in front of the right audiences and to package it in the best way. We are in an age when NGOs and ministries are able to do just that, without anyone telling them what to do.

It's a great feeling. Now, please pray that I don't mess it up too badly. :)

Why Haiti - Part I

As many of you know, Erika and I have been working for quite a while now with a Christian ministry called Northwest Haiti Christian Mission (NWHCM). Two weeks ago, we began working full-time with the organization. Our move to vocational ministry (I’ll use that term loosely for now and will unpack it later) is the result of a long and formative journey for us that began long before our marriage took shape.

Let me first state here, for any brides reading this, that we are still booking weddings on a limited basis. We would love to talk to you about your wedding date if you’re considering us as your photographers. We have always seen our wedding photography business as a partnership between documenting the beginning of new life (through marriage) in America, and giving someone in Haiti the hope of life itself. That has not changed.

If you are curious about this major (and exciting) vocation change for us, I’ll aim the rest of this at you. I’ll limit this post to the personal aspects of this transition, and will touch on the professional and photographic details in a later post.

FIRST, SOME BASICS
We will be based from our home office in Lexington, though we’ll travel to Haiti roughly four times a year for a few weeks each trip. My work at the mission will look much like is has for the past year, there will just be more hours of it – largely centered on documentary photography and multimedia storytelling. While in the States, I’ll direct marketing/public relations efforts for the mission to help it stay connected with its supporters/partners and reach out to new ones.

Erika will be the mission’s Community and Staff Development Coordinator. In a nutshell, she will be helping the mission invest more in the care and training of its American and national staff and missionaries. She’ll also be building the framework for a new community development pilot project the organization is launching this year – the idea being to create plans for making ministry as holistic and sustainable as possible over the long term.

With all that said, I’ll step back and explain a bit about how we got here and why. I will say that I fully believe God is with us and blessing our decision as we step into this new chapter, but I cannot write with certainty that this is His “calling” on our life. I only add that disclaimer because we in the evangelical church tend to ascribe absolute certainty and permanence to the concept of vocational calling, and I have never experienced either of those in any job I’ve ever had.

I’ll also give Erika the room to explain her own journey up to this point, if she chooses, on her own blog. For her part, Erika has an immensely genuine heart for empowering the powerless, marginalized and overlooked, and she is very gifted at it. That heart is at the core of just about everything on her resume, and I feel confident she will flourish in her role at NWHCM. Her Creole is also far better than mine, which is bound to come in handy (she’s kind to me in her help).

I am blessed and fortunate to have her at my side, to be able to lean on and be leaned on by her. I am one of the luckiest men on Earth.

MY STORY
Most of my formative years were spent in a small town whose raison d'être was vocational Christian ministry. A Christian college and seminary were the largest (almost the only) employers, and the very ebb and flow of daily life there seemed directed at sending eager young people out to win the world for Christ.

It was a highly educated and intellectual town, comfortably steeped in modern conservative evangelicalism (I don’t at all mean that pejoratively – I have a deep love for that place).

Only problem was, I never felt a leading into professional ministry. Try as I did – and I tried hard – I just could not make myself want to be a pastor, or a missionary, or an organist, or even the editor of a Christian magazine. To top it off, my father was a Christian chemist with a brilliant mind and a Ph.D. from a notoriously secular and “liberal” university. He taught me to listen thoughtfully, to welcome progressive thinking, and to allow my faith and reason to comfortably coexist.

I often felt I was swimming against the current, and over time this atmosphere led to a sense that I was not as valuable as those people who were moving with the current. I wondered if God was pleased with me or not, if I was missing something, if I was blind.

I went to school in that town, studied abroad in a few different countries, and had some prominent internships at newspapers across the United States. I wanted to become a journalist, and there was never much question about it. And not just any journalist, but a great one. I dreamed simply of doing excellent and meaningful work that would tell the story of the things of God’s heart to a world that wants little to do with God.

Unfortunately, the newspaper industry is tanking, and the jobs are fewer and fewer each day.

And unfortunately, the evangelical church is not renowned for its love of the mainstream media. As one of “them,” I believe this is largely a misguided and unhealthy disdain on the church’s part. Though I won’t waste much space on it here, I think Christianity’s scorn for the mainstream media and the church’s (unnecessary) disengagement from it has, unfortunately, been part of the current downfall of modern newspapers and – potentially – part of the demise of general excellence in journalism.

So what’s an aspiring young Christian journalist to do? I worked at a business magazine for a few years before moving into freelancing. I loved the independence that freelancing offered, but it only occasionally offered the chance to do the sort of “God’s heart” work that I still dreamed of.

Then I stumbled upon NWHCM while working on a story about a local couple adopting from Haiti. And it became clear that this was a place where every professional skill I’d ever honed – photojournalism, in particular – could be invested. Not just invested in a corporate media machine, as I’d only experienced before, but directly in kingdom work.

But NWHCM also offered me a new experience in my profession: validation. The mission’s leadership not only expressed a strong affirmation of my belief in documentary journalism, but they pursued me as an employee at a time when it was a risk for them to even consider it. Though I’d been encouraged by countless peers during my fledgling career, it was nearly five years before anyone in the church (outside my family and one beloved professor) offered a substantive and redemptive blessing on my choice of careers.

Though it is a sentimental cliché, this it was a dream come true. Ironically, even many of my secular photojournalist friends were jealous that I’d found such an outlet (amazing what happens when the church actually embraces people!).

To be sure, this is not about me – I would not be comfortable in this position if it were merely about finding a fulfilling job. Neither Erika nor I are pastors, but we have long wanted to participate in some way in “vocational ministry” without giving up the specific giftings we feel God has prospered in us. We want to be “poured out,” in the best sense of the phrase, for the blessing of others.

Finally, we feel we’ve found a place in the church where we’re able to do just that. And we couldn’t be happier.