Today Peter and I went to church at a Palestinian Christian Church. These beautiful people are not Jewish, they are Palestinian. Some of them have been Muslim, but not all. The minister got an undergraduate degree at Bethlehem Bible College, then did work at US seminaries, some in person, some distance education. He has a DMin. His wife is nearly finished with a degree in counseling.
Their building is located in the Christian quarter. The congregation is associated with the Christian Missionary Alliance. Here is the sign for their church. Services were scheduled to start at 10 a.m. We arrived about 5 minutes early and hardly anyone was there. By 10:20, service began with prayer and singing, which included everyone. One thing I took notice of was that these Palestinians prayed for the Jewish people. This is the exact opposite of the violence that so often makes the news. Over the next half hour people continued to enter. The place was very full.
Services are in Arabic, but they provide headsets for translation into English. After about 40 minutes the song leader began to speak. There was no translation, so I did not understand anything, except what little the keyboardist translated (he was also the preacher). There were many westerners present. One young lady was from Germany. A large group of Athletes in Action basketball players, men's and women's teams, was visiting. Most if not all were from the US.
At some point, I think the little children may have had a separate service, but I'm not sure; many were still present. The preacher spoke about 40 minutes, this with English translation. We closed with communion and a prayer in which everyone in the room held hands. The worship was enthusiastic and the fellowship was warm. It was great to be with brothers and sisters I had never met before.
The afternoon was spent mostly in bookstores (we found one very excellent one). Here are a couple of photos of Christ's Church inside the old city. It is Anglican and was built in the 19th century. One of their main goals was to win the Jews to Christ. Consequently, most of the materials, including the Bible, are in Hebrew. The In the center of the first photo is the communion table and behind it a beautiful panel with the 10 Commandments in the center, the Lord's Prayer on the right, and the Apostle's Creed on the left. The second photo is the communion table. The top line of Hebrew reads, "This do to remember me." In the center, the symbol with the crown and the star of David has the word "Immanuel." It was quite a beautiful complex and maintained by volunteers.
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