Middle East
King’s College Seminary
In the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian population is mostly Sunni Muslims, with about 5 million, and Christians account for 47,000, or 1% of the population (July 2020 statistics). In 1945, 7.4% of the total population were Christians, and the number (%) is decreasing. And 90% of Christians belong to Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Arab Catholic and other Orthodox churches, and less than 10% are belong to British Anglican Church, Lutheran, and Protestant churches. Protestants and pastors, who are only a few, are difficult to gain recognition from local Christians in this structure. Therefore, in order for the church to become self-reliant and fulfill the role of local mission, it is necessary to train local pastors.
Kings Seminary opened in July 2017 with the goal of fostering local church pastors and leaders in Palestine, training underground church pastors, revitalizing local missions, and planting churches.
R.. Church
The church was founded in 1951 by Cynthia Purdue Mikhail, an American Baptist missionary. Since then, many missionaries have continued to minister R. Church. The church is a nondenominational and it had been run by missionaries rather than local pastors until we came. Missionary Cynthia was said she was unable to minister the church because she was a woman according to the Baptist denomination policy, so she had been in Sunday school and women’s ministry. In the meantime, due to visa issues and poor local conditions, missionaries were unable to stay steadily, so there were many vacant periods, and because of the frequent change of pastors, lay leaders were not raised.
Our couple started raising lay leaders and have been in charge of pastoral and Sunday school at R Church since 2006, and in 2018 we ordained 3 elders and 8 deacons. Currently, we are working jointly with three local elders in our church administration. Sunday School was relatively alienated because a small number of Protestant churches here and R. Church had survived without a pastor. So, my wife’s ministries focus on Sunday School involving development of textbooks, making crafts, and nurturing and counseling of Sunday School teachers. Currently, we run King’s Theological Seminary with a focus on nurturing the next generation of church leaders and raising pastors.