Today, the Pastor^[1], whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant or Episcopalian, is faced with two scourges that are eating away at the local church. These are prostitution^[2] and corruption (Hosea 5:4; 9:1). These two scourges are in themselves the main causes of the country’s extreme poverty and, consequently, of underdevelopment at all levels.

Max Weber (1964) describes a relationship between the church and social development. The Haitian Protestant Church^[3] is no exception to this rule. Protestantism has played a large role in social development.^[4] Its contributions can be seen in education and health, as well as in agriculture and culture (Marc, 1966; Pressoir, 1940, 1945, 1976; Fontus, 2001; Romain, 2004; Déméro, 2017; Déméro & Regulus, 2017; Desroches, 2017). However, during the celebration of the bicentenary of Protestantism in Haiti, several authors and opinion leaders pointed out what they called the failure of the Protestant Church in advancing the Haitian people.

In his realistic novel about the condition of the Haitian peasant in the 1950s, Bon Dieu rit, the Haitian writer, teacher and diplomat Edriss Saint-Armand (1978, p. 253) wrote: “In truth, I understand nothing about all these things. We do vodou ceremonies, it doesn’t achieve anything; misery kills us. We go to the Catholic Church, the misery remains. Every day the misery becomes more terrible. We become Protestants and still nothing changes.”

The theologian and pastor Jean Fils-Aimé (2017) says that after two hundred years of Protestantism in Haiti its results are unimpressive^[5]. His essay concludes that the Protestant Church is celebrating 200 years of massive zombification.

In a similar spirit, the journalist-writer Sony Lamarre Joseph (2018) descrobes a link between the Haitian church and underdevelopment. In his book Our Church and Underdevelopment, the author shows how inadequate communication from certain religious ministers results in advertse effects and disastrous consequences for society. He also points out certain practices in the churches that create obstacles to development. In addition, he suggests a new approach for communication from church leaders to combat poverty.

These criticisms have attracted much attention and have sparked hopes for a guide for action to foster development and progress within religious institutions. These must not contribute to the zombification of the faithful, still less to the underdevelopment of the country. A religious leader, while being a man of God, must be a bearer of hope and light in his preaching. Therefore, he must be an ambassador of Jesus Christ and his kingdom in his way of life and in his management of divine matters. In other words, he cannot, under any circumstances, encourage laziness, mediocrity, passivity and begging, let alone corruption and prostitution (Hosea 9:1). Moreover, as a righteous person, he accompanies God’s people in the righting of the foundations that have been overthrown by human disasters (Genesis 6; Psalm 11:3).

This book does not pretend to solve all the problems related to poverty in Haitian society and the church^[6] in particular. The wise reader will find in it a methodological guide for a pedagogy of action within this institution. The much desired change begins with the life of the leader. If he experiences a change in his personal life, it will affect his family life. This change in his family life will, in turn, affect the life of the church. The change in the life of the church will extend to the whole community. Ultimately, the change in community life will impact the whole country.

This book attempts to answer a series of questions. How can we conceptualize poverty within the church? What is the meaning of this concept in the Bible? What factors are at the root of poverty within the religious institution? What should a Christian attitude to poverty be? More specifically, starting from the hypothesis that there is a link between poverty and underdevelopment, the book attempts to answer the following questions: How can the term development be conceptualized? What are the attitudes that encourage and promote development? Since Christians are the focus of the book, it is important to define what we mean by “being Christian”, to clarify what the word means in the Bible, and to examine how to develop a Christian character in all believers.

The book is divided into four chapters. The first clarifies the fundamental concept studied in the book, namely poverty. A wide definition of the concept is taken from both secular and biblical points of view. A clarification of the essence of Christianity is the basis for the proposed holistic development approach. Chapter two outlines the character traits needed for the development of the Haitian people and society. Chapter three presents an analytical framework for understanding the concept of holistic development. This approach is proposed as a strategy to fight against poverty. Chapter four offers a practical outline for fighting poverty through a plan for spiritual, socioemotional, physical and cognitive development. This outline provides guidelines for holistic development that will enable the faithful to achieve the full potential that God has entrusted to them. I wish my readers fruitful contemplation in these pages.