Dominican Republic Vision Trip

Orlando Cabrera and I just returned from the Dominican Republic from a short vision trip with our partner LoveServe’s International. It was truly exciting to see what God is doing to impact so many communities through the pastor’s who are part of their network.

LoveServes International exists to bring about sustainable community transformation by mentoring national pastors to develop healthy churches that meet the communities’ greatest needs through the love of Christ. We met with several pastors whose understanding of the church has shifted through LSI’s training, as they help these pastors rediscover the nature and purpose of the church. In doing so, these churches who once were invisible to their communities, have become beacons of light, as they now live missionally and have truly become the hope for their communities.

When we meet with pastors in Southwest Florida, we always ask the question; “If your church ceased to exist, would your community miss you?” These churches, through the investment of LSI, have become the type of churches that truly would be missed by their communities if they ceased to exist. We met with a young pastor that has only been part of LSI for 3 weeks and has already begun an after school training center that is ministering to 108 teenagers, shifting their focus of being a closed-collecting community, to being a missional-reaching community, in order to share the only hope for the world.

LSI is currently working with 716 churches throughout the DR and each of these places is seeing communities transformed through the love of Christ. They are seeing families restored, crime reduced, drug and alcohol addicts healed and most importantly, lives transformed as the come to the saving power of Jesus. This is being done through the local church because they have come to understand that God has called the Church to uphold the gospel, not only in word, but in deed, giving every man, woman and child and opportunity to see, hear, and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We look forward to our continued partnership with LSI and believe that God will continue to use them to bring the hope of Christ to the Dominican Republic, as they do the great work of equipping church leaders to be missional-minded churches that equip their people to love and share the great hope of Jesus to their communities.

Michael Girado - Xpansion Co-Director