Haiti Baptist pastor among the dead

BP

Two young Haitian men display a banner pleading for help in their decimated neighborhood. Behind them is what’s left of a mini-market that collapsed during the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP) — The devastating earthquake that shook Haiti Jan. 12 has claimed the life of a leading Haitian Baptist pastor in Port-au-Prince, according to reports received from the vice president of the Baptist Convention of Haiti.

Bienne Lamerique, 56-year-old pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Port-au-Prince, died of injuries sustained when his house collapsed. Several Haitian Baptist pastors buried him without a coffin – because none was available – Jan. 14, according to emails received by Mark Rutledge, International Mission Board (IMB) missionary to the Dominican Republic on stateside assignment in Richmond, Va. He and his wife, Peggy, work among the Haitian people and served within Haiti for 26 years.

He was “one of our best pastors,” Pastor Gedeon Eugene, vice president of the Baptist Convention of Haiti, wrote in an email to Rutledge, who is from Murfreesboro, Tenn.

“Haiti lost a godly man,” Peggy, from Glendale, Calif., said Jan. 15 from the IMB’s International Learning Center in Rockville, Va. “Pastor Bienne did everything with his whole heart.... He had a heart for people and for reaching people. He planted more churches than any other pastor I know in the convention. We loved him dearly.”

When the Rutledges became career missionaries in Haiti in 1987, they were part of Lamerique’s first church-start in a Port-au-Prince slum.

“To me personally ... he was a real encouragement,” added Mark, who traveled to Port-au-Prince Jan. 17 to translate for a Southern Baptist team. “He was one who raised up and grew leaders and started new churches. He also was one to take churches that had stagnated and begin to work with them to renew them and get them on course again. He had a tremendous impact on multiplication of churches.

Lamerique’s congregation met in a building that once was a vehicle-repair garage for the United Nations, Peggy said. It is located about a mile from the U.N. building that collapsed in the quake.

IMB missionary Dawn Goodwin, who works with Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic, visited Lamerique’s church Jan. 16 with Dominican Baptist leaders who traveled to Port-au-Prince to assess needs of quake survivors. The sanctuary sustained significant damages but was still standing. Some church members were living in the churchyard, Goodwin – who earlier served 17 years in Haiti – said in a Jan. 17 phone interview.

“We prayed with and encouraged them and their associate pastor,” said Goodwin. The team also left supplies, including tarps that church members planned to use to shade themselves from the sun during worship services.

First Baptist Church of Port-au-Prince, located downtown near Haiti’s collapsed presidential palace, also sustained damage but was still standing, Goodwin said. She and the Dominican delegation – which included Carlos Llambes, an IMB missionary in the Dominican Republic – also visited Concord Baptist Church in Port-au-Prince, which escaped damage. Llambes is a native of Cuba from Hialeah, Fla. The pastor’s wife, a nurse, is treating patients in her home and has set upa first-aid clinic at the church, Goodwin said.

Maria Elena Baseler is a writer for the IMB.