Nine men and one woman, all in their twenties and thirties, arrive either by foot or bike and sit in a circle of chairs arranged on the dirt floor of a pink elementary school building in Dabòn, a town a couple of hours outside of Port-au-Prince. The room isn’t completely enclosed by the tin roof, so two perfect coconut trees stood watch as this group Bible study that is part of Beyond Borders’ new initiative, Living Words, meets on a recent Thursday afternoon.

Each week a different person leads. Today Claudy starts singing a hymn, and the group joins in vigorously. After welcoming everyone—most of whom have been attending this group since mid-February—he reads Luke 1:46-55, “Lè sa a Mari di: Nanm mwen ap chante pou Mèt la ki gen pouvwa. Lespri m pran plezi nan Bondye ki delivrans mwen….” And Mary said: ‘My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior….’”

Claudy first learned about this participatory approach to Bible study, based on the ancient Christian practice of lectio divina, in an introductory seminar held in Dabòn in early February. He is leading Refleksyon Bib la (its Creole name, meaning “Reflection on the Bible”) for the first time, but is already confident enough that the Creole step-by-step explanatory brochure is nowhere in sight.

He instructs people to listen for a word or phrase that grabs their attention and then reads the passage again:

After a brief silence, Claudy asks, “What stood out to you?”

Each person in the group says what struck him or her; the ability of Scripture to speak universally yet individually is on display as only a few phrases from the passage are repeated more than once. Adding to the diversity, nine different denominations are represented.

From this first pilot group, participants have gone out to start four different Refleksyon Bib la groups in their own churches. On one side of the circle sits Rakine, a quiet, insightful man of about thirty who wears thick glasses and who last Friday started a group using Psalm 1 as their inaugural passage in his church, a thirty-minute walk away. Beside Rakine sits Wilio, who along with Claudy started a group a couple of weeks ago that includes a few illiterate participants, “who are fully contributing, just as much as anyone else!” To invite educated and uneducated Haitians to reflect on Scripture as equals is almost unheard of. But one hope of Living Words is to help to break down some of the false pride, categories, and hierarchies too often found among children of God in Haiti (and, of course, in the U.S. and elsewhere).

Then Claudy reads the passage again: “This time listen for how the passage speaks to your life right now.”

Some people have taken a while to warm up to the idea of sharing how God seems to be personally speaking to them through the passage. A few people respond to Claudy’s invitations with sermonettes (“Here’s what I hear God saying to you/us”). But others share how, for example, Mary’s testimony is “encouraging me” because of something that happened last week.

Abelard, an elementary school principal in his late thirties, shares the personal insight he finds in the passage. He is part of the small team beginning to spread this method in Haiti. Before the meeting he said that last week he and some other participants were discussing the Bible study and realized: “Not only is this great for studying the Bible and listening for God, it’s also a sort of leadership training. This doesn’t often happen in Haitian churches, but people in the group are learning to listen to others sharing their insights. It’s a more participatory leadership. It gives us hope because it’s creating more unity and building up our faith through weekly meditation on God’s Word with other people.”

Then Claudy says: “This time after we read the passage, we’ll each take turns responding to God in prayer.”

Earlier in the afternoon, Jude and I were talking with Fremy, another of our colleagues, about our plans to begin introducing this method in different cities. “I really appreciate this new approach,” said Fremy, “because people can enter into a deeper relationship with the Bible, which is where they tap into the source of their hope. In a way, people’s hope and energy for life is reinforced because their intimacy with God’s Word is deepening.”

After people finish praying, Claudy leads the group in a final hymn to close the session. As people stand to leave, conversation quickly turns to whether they will be able to catch the conclusion of the France/Brazil soccer match that the rest of the country has been watching or listening to on the radio (after the Haitian team, Brazil has the most fans here) for the past couple of hours. We laugh and shake hands; we look forward to listening to God and each other again next week.