Learning from the Middle East churches

Christian Century, May 16, 2001 by Gary M. Burge

This community has made me rethink the "care of souls." What is the shape of ministry when the wolf is near your flock? My evangelical heritage has consistently disengaged me from social or political involvement--just as many Palestinian evangelicals straggle with disengagement today. But pastors in Nazareth, Bir Zeit, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Belt Jalla hear a different call.

* This church places a high priority on compassion and caregiving. Christian leadership in a land of crisis means living with the straggles of your people and defending them, no matter where it leads. In his book I Am a Palestinian Christian Mitri Rahib tells the story of a church family whose vineyard was under the threat of confiscation by the Israelis because they claimed it was "uncultivated." The family had purchased the land 100 years earlier, and their vineyard had been richly productive. But the Israelis had restricted water distribution in Bethlehem, and without water the vineyard had ceased to be productive. The real reason for the confiscation was simple: the vineyard occupied a lovely hilltop surrounded by three Israeli settlements. The Israelis wanted to consolidate Jewish control over this area.

The church decided to help the family fight the confiscation order. Committees were set up to prevent the loss of land. One group, headed by an attorney, worked on a legal appeal. Others obtained tractors to replow the land and plants to renew the fields. Another worked on media relations. When word got out, Christians and Muslims, Americans and Europeans came to the vineyard to plant trees.

In 1999 I had the privilege of standing with the young men of this family on the highest point of their land. The cave where their grandfather lived while he tilled the land for the first time stood behind us. But looming to the west was an incredible sight. A settlement, pristine, modern and growing rapidly--a new suburb for Jerusalem--hovered on the edge of the family's land. Bulldozers were scraping away at the perimeter of the farm, defiantly eroding its boundary. These are the "cutting edge" issues of Rahib's pastorate.