THE MIDDLE EAST
The Servant Partners Middle East team has focused on Muslim refugees fleeing conflict. This has been a highly contextualized and pioneering project in one of the largest and most impoverished cities in the Arab World. The team has the longest known experience of foreigners from the West living among the poor. This experience, which is now under remote supervision, has learned many lessons in seeking to incarnate the Good News of Jesus to the Muslim community in a culturally relevant and appropriate way, with the ultimate goal of planting reproducible holistic churches.
The Arab Middle East is the birthplace of Islam and to this day remains the spiritual and intellectual center of the religion. There are approximately 200 million Arab and Black African Muslims living in the Middle East who have never had the Gospel proclaimed to them in a culturally relevant way. Of these, more than half live in extreme poverty, especially the immigrants, daily facing physical and economic hardships that most westerners can hardly begin to comprehend.
Systematic injustice, Arab-Black racism, domestic violence, a lack of basic healthcare, unsanitary living conditions, extremely limited educational opportunities, broken families, ongoing wars, corrupt governments, and a lack of jobs have crippled and paralyzed many of these people, trapping them in a deep sense of hopelessness. This hopelessness will not lift until the transforming power of the Gospel takes root in these slum communities.
Though currently off-site, our staff has the longest experience in this work, and can help facilitate the return of a new team, increasing its chances of not only survival, but in picking up the work on the experiential shoulders of those who have gone before. The multiple decades of combined experience, with lessons learned, strategies developed, and even relationships already established – could set up a new effort on a solid foundation.
