Palestinian Pastor Speaks of Joys and Struggles

Rev. Mitri Raheb had only been serving as pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem for a few months when the first Intifada broke out between Israelis and Palestinians.

The violent uprising, which started in 1987 and lasted until 1991, was especially intense in downtown Bethlehem, right outside his church, Raheb said at the January Series 2016 on Tuesday.

“I was a young pastor and not prepared for such a situation. It was hard for me to preach on Sunday because the shooting was so loud,” said Raheb, president of a group known as the Bright Stars of Bethlehem.

Raheb used his presentation, titled “A Tough Calling: The Joys  and Struggles of Pastoring in Palestine,” to sketch the challenges of ministry at the church that, as it turns out, he attended as a youth.

He also talked about the accomplishments he has been able to bring about with the help of God over the years.

Early on in his ministry, he said, he had to realize that all he had learned in seminary and graduate school in Germany didn’t really prepare him to be pastor at this church, where worship has been occurring since the 1890s.

“I had to start asking myself ‘what are the needs of the people? What matters to them? How can you preach the Good News when people wake up every day to bad news?’”

Raheb, who is author of several books and serves as president of the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, realized at the time he needed to find ways to bring the church out from within its walls and begin serving the needs of the community. Only then, by engaging their city and its people, could they grow in faith.

“I thought people in the church would be thrilled when I spoke to them about this, but not all of them were. I was asking them to change the core ministry of the church,” he said.

But he was eventually able to convince church members to expand their outreach, especially in developing ministries for youth and for women.

In the first several years, he said, they continued to grow as organizations helped to fund their work. Meanwhile, the city of Bethlehem was expanding as investment poured in and hope for the future started to thrive.

“Promise was in the air in 1999 that peace would finally come and we would see the formation of a Palestinian state,” he said.

But then the second Intifada broke out. This time young people, many of whom had been armed only with bricks and sticks before, had guns.The Israelis hit back hard and moved into Bethlehem with troops and tanks.

Tanks parked right outside the church and began shelling, destroying much of the area and beginning a siege of some 40 days, said Raheb. When it was over, much of Bethlehem lay in ruins.

But, he said, church members didn’t fall into despair. Women from the church began combing the city for broken pieces of glass, which weren’t hard to find, and started making angels that they sent to people around the world, said Raheb.

“We created angels telling our story of hope born in a place of hopelessness,” said Raheb, who this weekend will be given the Olaf Palme Prize at a ceremony in Stockholm for his efforts in peacemaking.

“Even though all of the work we had done over five years was destroyed in the Intifada, we made it clear that we were in Bethlehem to stay,” he said.

”Out of our broken hopes, we put healing in the hand of Christ to make something whole out of it.”

In fact, out of that time came the vision to build the Dar al-Kalima University College of Arts and Culture that today offers artistic education in film, art, and drama to serve the needs of young people throughout the region.

The school was built on a hill on land owned by the church. “The land had been confiscated, but we were able to get back six acres” said Raheb.

Even though Bethlehem today is surrounded by 20-foot-tall walls and 85 percent of the land is being used by Israeli settlers, the school seeks to encourage students to be constructive and become peacemakers through their creative efforts, said Raheb.

“We now have four buildings and the fifth building, the library, is going up,” he said. “Our college has become the city on the hill. About 75 percent of our students are Muslims and 25 percent are Christians.”

When Raheb first came to the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, he thought he would only stay a short time.

But now it is nearly 30 years later. Although there have been many struggles, he is grateful for the chance to serve in the town where, as a well-known Christmas carol says, the “hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee [Christ] tonight.”

“This is the place where the human met the divine, where the divine Word became flesh,” he said. “There have been some very tough moments in my ministry and yet there have been times of joy I wouldn’t want to miss.”