About Agape Flights

Missionaries serving in remote parts of the Caribbean can face a challenge most of us rarely think about.

How do you get the supplies you need when reliable transportation and infrastructure are limited?

This is the problem Agape Flights solves.

Agape Flights is a Christian aviation ministry that provides missionaries with cargo, mail, humanitarian aid, and other essential resources so they can stay focused on serving their communities and sharing the Gospel. From its base in Venice, Florida, Agape regularly supports more than 300 missionary families serving in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas.

Its vision is simple: a world where mission partners never lack the resources they need to share the unconditional love of Christ.

It All Started With Love

Agape Flights began with Keith and Clara Starkey, two retired farmers from Ohio who had developed a heart for missionaries serving in Haiti.

In 1980, they believed God was leading them to purchase an aircraft and begin flying supplies to missionaries there. They even mortgaged their home to help make that vision possible.

They chose the name "Agape"—the Greek word associated with God's unconditional, sacrificial love—to represent what they wanted the ministry to be about.

On November 15, 1980, Agape's first flight departed Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport for Cap-Haïtien, Haiti. A small Cessna 411 carried emergency supplies and mail for approximately 25 missionary families.

What started with one airplane and a handful of missionaries would eventually become a lifeline for hundreds of mission partners throughout the Caribbean.

Keeping Missionaries Supplied

Agape Flights isn't primarily about sending its own missionaries into communities.

Instead, it helps missionaries who are already there.

Agape's hangar serves as a stateside connection and mailing address for mission partners. Supplies are received, prepared, loaded onto aircraft, and flown into the Caribbean, where missionaries help distribute them.

Today, Agape typically operates more than 60 regular mission flights each year.

Those flights can carry everything from ordinary mail and ministry supplies to medical equipment and urgently needed humanitarian resources.

It's practical work, but it can have an enormous impact.

When missionaries have dependable access to supplies, they can spend more time doing what God called them there to do.

Supporting Ministry in Many Forms

The missionaries Agape serves aren't all doing the same kind of work.

Some provide medical or dental care. Others work in education, clean water, agriculture, orphan care, vocational training, construction, evangelism, discipleship, or economic development.

Agape's role is to help keep those ministries moving.

During hurricanes, earthquakes, and other emergencies, that role can become even more important. Agape can help expedite disaster relief and humanitarian supplies into affected Caribbean communities.

One flight might therefore support dozens of different ministries—and ultimately touch far more people than the passengers or cargo onboard might suggest.

We Listen. We Respond. God Delivers.

Agape summarizes its mission with a simple phrase:

We Listen. We Respond. God Delivers.

Mission partners communicate what they need. Agape responds by helping move those resources where they're needed. And behind it all is the ministry's conviction that God is ultimately the One providing.

More than four decades after Keith and Clara Starkey took their first step of faith, airplanes continue leaving Florida carrying resources for missionaries across the Caribbean.

At the heart of Agape Flights is the belief that serving missionaries helps multiply their ministry—and sometimes something as practical as delivering a package, medical supply, or piece of equipment can help carry the love of Christ much farther.