A number of pastors and ministry leaders have been seeking to inform their people about Haiti so they can mobilize prayer and support. I had my research assistant put together some basic data on Haiti and I am posting it to be of service to anyone who can benefit from it. For those of you who use the content we give away, thank you for letting us have some influence in your life and ministry.

Click here to download this information sheet (with footnotes) as a PDF.

1. How many people live in Haiti?

9,035,536

2. How many people live in Port Au Prince?

704,766 at the 2003 census but all estimates have it at over 2 million in the metro area

3. How many people have died in the quake thus far?

• Estimated Number of Deaths: At least 65,000 people
• Estimated Number Displaced: 200,000
• Estimated Affected Population: Approximately 3 million people

(Jan 19, 2010 USAID Fact Sheet)

4. How many aftershocks have there been?

In total, Haiti has suffered 49 aftershocks of magnitude 4.5 or greater since the devastating 7.0 quake in Port-au-Prince....
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From the recent sermon Jesus Without Sin, on Luke 4:1-13.

1. Satan is a real enemy

Satan is a real enemy. Do you believe that? You need to discuss that at your community group and with your friends. If you don’t, if you still think, “I think that’s hocus pocus. I think that’s psychological projection. My community college professor really confused me on this point,” you need to articulate that. Don’t be a liar. Be honest. Come clean.

See, one of the most amazing things Satan did is he presented himself in the media: cartoons, little horns, red cape, and pitchfork. “Here he comes. Yeah, we know it’s him. How can we tell? He’s the red guy.” It’s not that easy. He’s into marketing and advertising. He’s subtle and crafty and sly and he’s very adept at baiting the hook. You have a real enemy. If you don’t believe that, confess that as sin. That’s the beginning of all your troubles. You have a real enemy. You’re born into a real war. You’re born again as a Christian on Christ’s side of the battle. But, the battle rages in your life as it did in his.

(Click here to see the rest of this post)

On Sunday, January 24, I had the great honor of sharing a lot of photos, videos, and stories of the church in Haiti and how the church is responding to suffering. A number of pastors and ministries have asked if they can use that sermon. The answer is yes. The elders at Mars Hill have always been gracious in giving content away for free to serve Jesus, which is a great joy for me personally. So, we have made the entire sermon available for download free of charge, to be used however and wherever God’s people desire.

As a side note, this sermon is a bit different than the one that is posted online on Mars Hill’s media library and that played at the Mars Hill Campuses on Sunday. The sermon that played at Mars Hill included some issues about our giving and generosity that will not pertain to other churches and ministries. So, we have cut out that content but left everything else. We hope it is helpful to God’s people for God’s glory and you can download it for free here, including an option to burn it onto a DVD, if that is easiest for you.

Get the video

• YouTube

• High-resolution M4V download

• DVD .iso for burning to DVD

This will also be available with the other media we have posted on the Churches Helping Churches site.

Churches Helping Churches

Who will help local churches in the wake of catastrophes? You can. Learn more here.

Download this video for use at your church this weekend
or download the DVD ISO

One thing we have never done at Mars Hill Church is take a special offering. However, that will change this Sunday when we take a second offering for the mission of Churches Helping Churches in Haiti.

Many pastors have been contacting us, saying that they too want to take a special offering this Sunday. We rejoice in your willingness to help those who are suffering so greatly. I would like to specifically invite my brothers in Acts 29 and our pastor friends at The Resurgence to do the same.

Download this video for use at your church

For those of you who, like us at Mars Hill, have not ever taken a special offering, the following tips were coaching points Pastor James MacDonald gave me on our return flight from Haiti.

Why You Should Take a Special Offering

1. It is biblical. Galatians 6:10 says, “So then, ​as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
2. If you want the people in your church to be generous, then be an example for them by being a generous pastor. If your church does not give regularly and generously to such things as mercy ministries and church planting, then it is hypocritical to ask your people to be generous.
3. As ministry leaders, we need to give voice and bring clarity to the tragedies that people are processing through the news. By instructing our people biblically on how we intend to help, and then inviting them to participate at whatever level they are able, we guide them in working to help with what breaks their hearts rather than simply grieving it. God ignites a passion within a leader, who then takes that torch of passion into their church and sets their people aflame for the cause. Simply put, people follow the passion of their leader.

How to Take Your Special Offering

1. Notify your entire church of the special offering at least a few days before the service. Such thing as email, the church Web site, church blog, and social networking tools (e.g., The City, Facebook, Twitter) should be used to notify people in advance so they come prepared to give generously.
2. Keep your first offering in its usual place.
3. Put your second offering at the end of the service. Begin by inviting the ushers forward and allowing them to stand. This will provide time for people to prepare their offering. Use this opportunity to show multi-media to inform your people. If you like, you are welcome to use any of the photos, videos, blogs, and so on that we have provided at www.ChurchesHelpingChurches.com. When the offering is being taken, it is generally not a time for corporate singing, but rather a time for the performance of a special musical piece while the people are led in prayer by their pastor for the needs in Haiti.

Harvest Bible Chapel gave the firstfruits of the mission of Churches Helping Churches. Their people gave generously and were very joyful at the opportunity to give. As I witnessed their offering, I could see that the Holy Spirit had moved their hearts to give generously and their church leadership served them well by helping them to be obedient to God’s call.

When your church takes its special offering, you can forward the money to ChurchesHelpingChurches.com in one of two ways:

1. You can add up your church’s entire special offering and simply make one contribution through PayPal on the Web site.
2. You can mail one check on behalf of your church to

   Churches Helping Churches
   P.O. Box 6558
   Elgin, IL 60121-6558

3. Lastly, we hate that we even need to say this, but in our day it is a legitimate concern. Neither Pastor James MacDonald nor myself will receive any monies from Churches Helping Churches, as we serve in this ministry on a volunteer basis.

Download this video for use at your church

As the images started coming in after the earthquake, I became haunted by Haiti.

The pictures of dead bodies piled in the streets, parents carrying their limp children, and appendages stretching out from underneath rubble were everywhere. On every channel, every website, and every cardio machine at the gym. I know you saw them also. Suddenly, our lives seemed so simple and so blessed. Whatever had troubled us before we were haunted by Haiti suddenly shrank in significance as the reality of true pain and massive suffering pressed itself before our eyes and into our hearts.

On Thursday morning James MacDonald, who leads a wonderful church and Bible-preaching ministry, called me to brainstorm some ideas he had to get involved and help direct other pastors and churches to do the same. As our conversations, texts, and emails continued, by the day’s end we had decided to take a trip together to Haiti. He had secured transportation and an initial delivery of 1,000 pounds of relief supplies. From Mars Hill we gathered a small filmmaking crew and a Pulitzer Prize finalist photographer who has covered events in Kosovo, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Rwanda while working for Time magazine, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe, who volunteered to go with us.

We had also made contact with a number of other pastors in the US wanting to help out, as well as the president of World Concern, which shares a facility with one of our Mars Hill Campuses, and a handful of other ministries that are doing great work helping those in need and that could really use your help. We were stunned by the gracious provision of God as Jesus truly provided the resources for this mission in rapid succession, and we take no credit for it but are thankful to be on it. As an aside, you can also pray for Merry Fitzpatrick of Mars Hill Shoreline who is helping coordinate the field work in Haiti right now.

So, on Sunday a pre-recorded sermon will play at the Ballard Campus of Mars Hill Church while we are en route to Haiti. If you would like to know how to pray, the following would be appreciated:

• Pray that we can get into the country and are able to travel safely.
• Pray that we are able to get the plane full of medical and relief supplies effectively distributed to those in need.
• Pray that we can serve where we are needed, as reports indicate that so many pastors are dead and churches destroyed that those Christians seeking to grieve and serve need much support.
• Pray that we can forge some solid bonds with the best local churches and international relief agencies on the ground.
• Pray we can get some great stories on video about what God is doing in order to help encourage God’s people around the world to be generous and help those in need.
• Pray we can get great photos and other video footage to give away online, to give to Christian agencies who could use it to help get the need out, and to give to mainstream media outlets showing the difference the church and God’s people are making as well as all that remains to be done. There has been a great deal of great media coverage, and we want to add to it some of the stories of God’s people doing God’s work to encourage more of God’s people to support that work.
• Pray for the ongoing generosity of people around the world sending in support and supplies.
• Pray for the complicated task of getting supplies to needy people when roads are not passable, and only a quarter of the country’s roads were paved before the earthquake.
• Pray for the hearts, minds, and souls of the people, who are reportedly 80 percent Catholic and 16 percent Protestant, while roughly 50 percent also practice voodoo.
• Pray for the rebuilding of the city of Port-au-Prince as prior to the earthquake it was the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, with 80 percent of people under the poverty line and 54 percent in abject poverty with a Gross Domestic Product per capita of only $1,300 with two-thirds of the labor force not even having a formal job.
• Pray for protection for disease, as the spread of hepatitis A and E, typhoid, malaria, leptospirosis, and dengue fever is a reality as conditions worsen.
• Pray against civil unrest that would further promote chaos.
• Pray for the government, which has lost many of its buildings and leaders.
• Pray for the safety of the people, since some of the jails and prisons are now emptied and dangerous criminals are running the streets without police patrol to contain them.
• Pray we get home safely and can take what we learn to help encourage churches and Christians to strategically pray and give of their resources for the long haul, as this will not be a short rebuilding effort.
• Pray for the children as roughly half of Haiti’s population is reportedly children.
• Pray that Christians will help bolster the remaining churches in Haiti and support the planting of many more Jesus-centered churches so that the people of Haiti can see the gospel rise out of the devastation.
• Pray for us as a plan is forming for churches helping churches in places where war and disaster have struck.

Lastly, I am hesitant to post any of this because it may not come to fruition in light of the great complexity of the mission we are on. But I felt that our best hope was prayer, and so thank you for interceding. Our hope is to serve those ministries and organizations who are helping those in need and helping partner God’s people to places of strategic gospel opportunity.

If you would like to support the rebuilding of churches and resourcing of pastors in Haiti, you can find more information or give at www.churcheshelpingchurches.org.

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A police officer I recently met was gracious enough to send me a long report on church safety. I’m passing it along in hopes it can be of help to all churches.

• How to Assess the Safety and Security of Your Place of Worship (PDF)

Resurgence Podcasts

Get all the latest audio sermons, interviews, and lectures delivered straight to you as soon as they are released. Find out more.

It seems all the rage lately is for the pastor to be called anything but “pastor.” This has resulted in epic silliness. So, in an effort to assist the silliness I have compiled the following chart to help “pastors” select a very cool urban hip arty title. All you need to do is select one word from each column and then find a guy with tattoos on his arm and a cigarette in his mouth to do your graphics, and odds are revival will break out.

Vintage Church:

In this book, Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears discuss the essentials of what it means to be a biblical church. Find out more.

Churches go through critical seasons of their life that largely determine both their longevity and health. Seeing, accepting, and navigating these seasons is incredibly important for the ongoing forward progress of the gospel.

Gestation

In this phase, God calls a leader (or leaders) to begin a new church and begins to clarify the specifics of their vision. An initial core of people is gathered, a meeting location is secured, some ministries begin to form, and funding is acquired.

Birth

In this season, the church goes from being a concept to a reality, opens itself up to invite in the greater community, and focuses its attention on evangelism, growth, and implementation of new systems and leaders.

Infancy

In this season, the attendance settles into a somewhat stabilized pattern, longer-range planning begins, new programs are added, and administrative structures grow to prepare for numerical growth and evolving vision.

Adolescence

In this season, church attendees begin rising up into positions of greater leadership, church government begins to form, and church attendance and financial giving begin to increase.

Maturity

In this season, additional staff is added, the church gains confidence that it now has sufficient stability to exist indefinitely, church government and leadership are solidified, church attendance and giving become strong, and the church is now independent and able to self-govern and self-finance. It is also common for churches in this season to purchase their own facility.

Parenting

In this season, which ideally would be during the first year of the plant, the church is ready to reproduce itself by giving leadership and monies for the purpose of starting another gestation phase and repeating the church planting cycle. This results in the birth of a new congregation, likely in connection with other church planting churches networking together for the cause of church planting. The unique element here is that the church(es) sponsoring the new church plant have a vested interest in praying for and holding accountable the new work since they have directly sacrificed for it.

Grandparenting

In this season, a church has planted enough churches that it begins to see third and fourth generation church plants birthed.

Death

In this season, a church is unhealthy and does not see conversion growth or attract young leaders. It thus faces a critical decision between two options. One, the church can deny its impending death, which may be many years out, sell off its assets such as land to prolong its death, redefine its mission to defend its death, and simply hold on as it slowly and painfully dies, often rewriting the best years of its history so as to feel significant and successful. Or two, the church can embrace its impending death as an opportunity to resurrect.

Resurrection

In this season, a church knows it is dying, or at least that it is not as healthy and fruitful as it should be, and humbly decides to shut down its organization and replant the church. This can be done by hiring a new entrepreneurial pastor to start over with the assets and with the freedom to kill programs, prune problem people, and decide whether to upgrade the facility, which is usually suffering from deferred maintenance, or sell it to use the money for a more strategic facility.

This can also be done by giving the facility and assets to a church planter or a growing church, which requires the dying church to be more concerned about the name of Jesus than its own name, and the Kingdom over its church. Those churches that have this humility and wisdom should be cheered as model churches for the majority of American churches that have plateaued or are declining and need to have a vision for a faithful and fruitful future.

A Day With Dr. Don

Get all the audio and video content from D.A. Carson's lectures at Mars Hill Church in December 2008. Read More.

There is simply no clarity regarding the timing of Jesus’ birth.

The Scriptures do not speak directly to the issue, but the presence of flocks in the field has caused many to question the traditional December date of Christmas. This is because grazing in the field seemingly indicates a milder climate than that of winter, although there are reports of occasional breaks, for upwards of a few weeks, in the rainy winter season.

Commentator William Hendriksen raises an interesting point as well: “At this season of the year many roads in that region are impassable. No government would have forced people to travel then to the places where they must be registered" (New Testament Commentary: Luke, vol. 11, 150).

On the other hand, New Testament scholar Darrell Bock shows that while “some Jewish traditions argue for grazing in the period from April to November,” others note “that these restrictions are limited to sheep ‘in the wilderness’” (Luke 1:1-9:50, 226-227). Furthermore, a section of Talmudic literature (M. Šeqal. 7.4) “implies year-round grazing, because the Passover lambs graze in February, which has the harshest weather of the year. Thus, this reason for rejecting the tradition is not definitive" (Ibid., 227).

The traditional December 25 date of Jesus’ birth originated during the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine (A.D. 306–337). As Bock describes, the December 25 date

coincided with a pagan feast of Saturnalia, or the rising of the sun from darkness. . . . But the tradition for the date may go back even further, since it may be mentioned by Hippolytus (A.D. 165–235) in his Commentary on Daniel 4.23.3. . . . However, Hippolytus’s meaning is disputed, as it is unclear whether he is referring to the date of the birth or the date of the conception. If it is the latter, then a December date is presented, but the reference is unclear. Alongside the possible third-century testimony for a December date stands Clement of Alexandria’s testimony (ca. A.D. 200) for an April/May date (Ibid., 227).

Without a clear date for Jesus’ birth, it seems the early church simply seized the opportunity that the pagan feast of Saturnalia provided. The feast celebrated the return of the sun after weeks of ever-increasing darkness, which parallels the biblical metaphor of Jesus illuminating our dark world. Furthermore, Saturnalia included the sharing of gifts, which corresponds to the gifts given to Jesus by the Magi and the gift of salvation Jesus gives.

In the West, the date of December 25 was established by the time of Augustine. Unlike the Western Church, the Eastern Church observes Christmas on January 6, as the day that both Jesus was born and the Magi visited him.

Additionally, determining the year of Jesus’ birth with exact precision is incredibly complex. The two gospels that speak in greatest detail about Jesus’ birth (Matthew and Luke) are unclear on this point. Therefore, it seems most wise to say that it was 5 or 4 B.C., as those are the years nearly every evangelical scholar accepts after looking at all of the evidence.

In the end, the year and date of Jesus’ birth are apparently not a significant issue because God did not find them valued enough to clarify in Scripture, which simply says it happened “in the fullness of time.”

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’Tis the season for Dad to drop the holiday ball, stress out as the money is being spent for presents, and miss yet another providential opportunity to lovingly lead his family. So, this blog is intended to help dads not fall into the same old rut of holiday humdrum, sitting on the couch watching football and eating carbs, but rather intentionally plan out the upcoming holiday season. Our children grow quickly and if we miss the sacred moments God opens up for us to connect with and bless our families, everyone suffers and we set in motion generations of missed opportunity.

Dad needs...

1. a plan for the holidays to ensure his family is loved and memories are made. Dad, what’s your plan?
2. to check the local guides for what’s going on to make fun holiday plans for the family. In Seattle it’s here.
3. to carve out time for sacred events and experiences to build family traditions that are fun and point to Jesus. Dad, is your calendar ready for December?
4. to not let the stress of the holidays, including money, cause him to be grumpy with Mom or the kids. Dad, how’s your joy?
5. to give experiences and not just gifts. Dad, what special memories can you make this holiday season?
6. to manage the extended family and friends during the holidays. Dad, who or what do you need to say “no” to?
7. to ensure his family is giving generously during the holidays. Dad, who in need is your family going to adopt and bless?
8. to schedule a big Christmas daddy date with his daughter. Dad, what’s your big plan for the fancy daddy date?
9. to schedule guy time with his son. Dad, what are you and your son going to do that is active, outdoors, and fun?
10. to help Mom get the house decorated. Dad, are you really a big help to Mom with getting things ready?
11. to ensure some holiday smells and sounds. Dad, is Christmas music on the iPod, is the tree up, and can you smell cookies and cider in your house?
12. to snuggle up and watch some fun shows with the kids, especially the little ones. Dad, is the DVR set?
13. to take the family on a drive to see Christmas lights while listening to music and sipping cider. Dad, is it mapped out?
14. to help Mom get the kids’ rooms decorated. Dad, do the little kids get lights or a small tree in their room?
15. to read about Jesus and pray over his kids. Dad, how’s your pastoral work going with each of your kids?
16. to repent of being lazy, selfish, grumpy, or just dumping the holidays on Mom. Dad, are you a servant like Jesus to your family?

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