Part I: Gratitude is not Enough

This entry is Part I of the Pieces of Cane series we recently introduced where we share what we have learned and are learning from our experiences serving in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and inner city of Louisville, Ky.

Serving with Christian brothers and sisters living in a 3rd world context as a North American Christian can really awaken you to perspectives and realities that may otherwise be unavailable. That’s certainly true of mine and Vicki’s experience. The discrepancy between the two cultures in terms of available resources is the most obvious reality because at first, it’s the most tangible. Water from the utilities is not safe to drink due to no back flow prevention and poor treatment. Safe drinking water is an added cost and less convenient because you have to bring it back to your home 5 gallons at a time. Electricity is unreliable. It makes tasks as simple as doing laundry difficult to complete because it requires having electricity, water in the neighborhood and sun light to dry your laundry all three available at the same time. Add to it the harsher realities of malnourished children both in city slums and rural communities; add to it again the reality of dirt cookies in Haiti. The differences in available resources are stark.

So the first response to the developing world, at least ours was, was to just be grateful. To simply just be thankful for all of the basic things that we learned by exposure were things that we had taken completely for granted. We have shelter. It has running water and a sanitation system. We can drink the water and it doesn’t make us sick. We flush the toilet and the waste is removed from our home, not staying next door in an out-house potentially making us sick. We wear shoes as do our children. We don’t worry about parasites being contracted by walking around bare foot. We have actual food to give to our children. Sometimes… far too often in fact, food gets thrown away and wasted.

And so, in response to all of the needs that we observed that weren’t being met we were faced with the reality that all of our needs had been and continued to be. This experience almost force feeds you a sense of gratitude. Regardless of whether or not we actually did, we realized that we really have nothing at all to complain about in our lives back home. Our first acknowledgement was of how truly blessed we were to have all of our basic needs met.

That is a typical acknowledgement of many that come down and serve in a short-term capacity. We're grateful now to know that camping out on gratitude is not enough if we are Christians. Non-believers easily have the same kind of experience, “We just don’t realize how good we have it back home in the …” We realized that we could be very grateful and still be selfish. We could be very grateful about what “We have” and still make darn sure that we got to keep whatever it was we had and add to it daily. To be a Christ-follower and serve in a context like the Dominican Republic or Haiti or somewhere else and go back home and only be grateful is an unfaithful response to what God has exposed us to. We’ve missed the point. We are not blessed so that we can gorge ourselves on it. We are blessed to be a blessing.

The gratitude needs to take us somewhere. It needs to get us to the place where we ask, “What do we do with all of this blessing? How do we move forward as responsible stewards of it?” For us it started with reflecting on the many ways in which we were blessed. Not surprisingly, that first round of responses recounted many, many material blessings and comforts that we enjoyed, that took up our time and our resources. We live in a culture that is drunk with the accumulation of stuff. We finally came to the place where we were able to ask the following: If all of our basic needs are met and most of our wants are attainable (within reason) where then is the line between blessing and gluttony when I know that there are people in the world living without basic needs being met? How do we know if we’ve crossed over? If our basic needs are met and there’s much left over where is the line between blessedness and wastefulness? When does using the resources available to us to obtain our wants rather than meet someone else’s need become failing to do the good that we know we ought do (James 4:17)? Where is the line? We must confess that we’ve been at this work for 9 years and we still don’t know the answer.

We do know this. Tim Keller is a pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC. We heard a sermon he preached once where he asked this simple question: There are only two Kingdoms, God’s and yours. One is coming to fulfillment and the other is going away forever so which Kingdom are you going to use your resources, privilege and power to build? Yours which is fleeting or God’s which is coming?

So one answer to the questions above is rooted in recognizing that nothing is really our own, that we are only stewards and that we must simply put ourselves and everything God has given us at his feet and ask his spirit to lead us. The other answer to the questions above, we believe is simply being committed to the practice of asking them of ourselves on a regular basis and being willing to live in a healthy tension that realizes this an area that we will be growing in for a long, long time. We invite you embrace the same tension.

Grace & Peace,

The Rogers

Partnering with the Church in Phaeton, what's to come...

G.O.'s Partnership wit the Church in Phaeton, Haiti from Jeff Rogers on Vimeo.

In July Jeff had the opportunity to visit Phaeton, Haiti with Tim Krauss. We're excited at G.O. to be at a place where we can focus more resources on this community. You'll hear more about our work in this community in the near future. As of September 19th Tim helped nearly complete the project for the temporary structure for the church and nutrition center. At the moment it's about 10 boards shy of completion. There will be photos to come. We're finalizing details with the Haitian government regarding the cost of land we would like to purchase on behalf of the ministry there to facilitate soccer outreach, the drilling of a much needed fresh water well, sustainable agricultural projects and contextually appropriate micro-businesses.

Pieces of Cane: An Introduction to Lessons Learned on the Field



When Vicki and I aren’t working from the G.O. office state-side or doing life in the inner city of Louisville, Kentucky we’re enjoying our time serving on the field in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. That time spent on the field amounts to over 3 of the last 9 years. Our roles with the ministry allow us to be hybrids in a lot of different and exciting ways. One of our roles on the field is to help facilitate short-term teams and to introduce North American Christians to an experience in Christian service that has deep implications for their lives once they return back home. The experience of serving on the ministry field in the developing world alongside local brothers and sisters in the faith can radically deepen discipleship, broaden one’s vision of God’s Kingdom and the implications of its global nature, cultivate a life of worshipful self-sacrifice in the service of others for the sake of the Kingdom and simply encourage one to become radically generous with all of their resources. In short, a short-term service experience can be utterly transformative for those that come down and serve. That’s mine and Vicki’s story.


We want to introduce a series of entries that we will be offering from time to time called “Pieces of Cane.” The sugar industry in the Dominican Republic can easily be characterized as unjust. We’ve written about it before and highlighted some of our work there with G.O. One night we were with a team on their way out of the country the next day. We were helping them debrief regarding their week with us. I noticed a glowing in the distance, right off of the coast. There was a field ablaze. Sugar cane was being prepped for harvest. Cane fields are thick and the cane can grow as high as 15 feet. The thick leaves form sharp blades that can easily cut you if you try to move through them. In order to harvest the cane many workers will light a field on fire so that it quickly burns off the leaves. The fire burns so quickly that it only consumes the leaves. What remains is what’s valuable, the cane itself. Now harvesting with the machete is much “easier” than it would have been before.


Serving on a short-term trip can be like lighting your spiritual field on fire. When you dedicate a week of your life to silence everything but how you feel God is calling you to serve all of the junk that has accumulated in your life that has made a claim on you and has made navigating your own heart cumbersome burns up like the grass blades of the sugar cane almost overnight. What is left as the smoke clears is that thing in the field that is the most valuable: the cane itself, ready to be harvested, refined and put to use.


That piece of cane discovered on the trip can look different for every team member coming down to serve. Some of us have entire fields that are revealed to us that we can spend the rest of our lives working out what it means to harvest, refine and make useful. There are common themes, basic lessons that are the same across the board, but there are also things revealed and discovered that God leads us to that are only our own, specific to the story God is telling in us for his Glory. To experience this kind of fire together makes us a stronger, deeper community of God’s people. Harvesting our cane together allows us to be sharpened by each other’s stories, embodying more faithfully that grace called the Church.

So we want to begin sharing with you some of our own “Pieces of Cane.” We’ve learned many lessons from the field that have very much shaped who we are, how we understand the Gospel and how we desire to live faithfully towards the Kingdom based on what we’ve learned. We’ve also learned that there’s much that we still haven’t learned though we’ve had the same lesson over and over again. Essentially, that means that we’re still learning, that the smoke is still clearing for us. And we share so that you may be encouraged, that we can all be challenged and that we can celebrate God’s story being told in us.


Peace be with you,


The Rogers

Phaeton, Haiti...

Rogers' Work with G.O. in Phaeton, Haiti from Jeff Rogers on Vimeo.



We are fortunate to be involved in great work all over the island of Hispaniola. Here's a glimpse of one of those works that we're getting ready to ramp up in Phaeton, Haiti.

Paying a Dealer's Debt...


Last night we gathered with other Christians in our neighborhood to discuss the Gospel, what it means to us and to our neighborhood, an under-resourced community struggling with (or spiraling into) urban blight, drug addiction, prostitution and poverty. We gather weekly to fellowship, reflect and pray. Some who live on the other side of the neighborhood from us have befriended a bottom rung (i.e. not well off) drug dealer. We’ll call him Jonesy.


Last night, after we had prayed for God to make use of us in the neighborhood, to make our lives a lifestyle of worship evident by our loving service to each other and our neighbors there was a knock at our host’s door. It was Jonesy. He had an emergency. He owed someone $50 bucks. They broke into his house and shot his dog to remind him that payment was due or else…


The gunshot wound wasn’t fatal. Brooks, our host, informed us as to what was going on. We passed the hat and quickly came up with the $50 to pay the debt and dispel the threat that was hovering over Jonesy. Last year a 20 year-old got shot and killed just a few blocks away over a debt of $100. Brooks, a Christian that lives across the street from Jonesy, gave him the money stating that this is from the Church and is God’s grace to you. We got the dog in Brook’s car and off they went to the vet.


Those who partner with us in our ministry to the Dominican Republic and Haiti also partner with us in the inner-city as well. Last night I reached into my wallet and pulled out our money, our ministry partner’s, mine, Vic’s and God’s, to help pay a life threatening debt on behalf of a local drug dealer in Jesus’ name.


I can’t help but think that the Adversary really gets pleasure out of such acts of wickedness… from a dog being shot as a threat, to the meaninglessness of being a drug dealer in a community that has nothing, generating more nothingness, to the desperation of a mother in Haiti feeding her child a cookie made of dirt to stave off hunger pangs a few thousand miles away, and the dulling reality of that desperation becoming a normal means of coping with hunger. I can’t help but think of the sickening smile on his face.


But you know what makes me smile? What gives me pleasure? Everything from leading a small delegation of North American Christians on a day trip into Phaeton, Haiti with the intent of establishing a daily nutrition center through the local church and working on a plan to bring sustainable agriculture and micro-economic growth there in Jesus’ name to knowing that last night when I took our cash out of my wallet the laughing mockery stopped because suddenly Hope was injected into a scenario that was supposed to be hopeless. I thank God for the opportunity to pay a life threatening debt on behalf of the local drug dealer.


You know why? Because I have a debt that was paid for me by God, himself, in the person of Jesus Christ. And last night, because of many Partnerships in the Gospel with us, we could help communicate that truth to Jonesy in way that could actually make sense to him one day. Please pray that it does.


So today we want to remind you to smile too. From the brokenness of the inner-city of Louisville, Kentucky to the interior of Haiti and the Dominican Republic the mocking of our Adversary is silenced with the coming of God’s Kingdom as it blossoms from seed and takes root, returning the dead to life. Hopelessness cannot remain where there is Love (I Cor 13:7).


If you follow our work and ministry and feel the urge to partner with us financially as well know that it is welcome and needed. Find out how here or contact us directly.

You can also connect us with your church, small group or Bible study. We'd be glad to come and share.


Thank you and Peace be with you today!


Jeff & Vic