By this all men will know that you are my disciples...

If Christians live out the Great Commandment within the church, the world will see it and they will know we are special. That's what Jesus said (John 13:35). The whole thing terrifies Satan. If Christians start being Christ-like to one another, the results will change the world. That's why Satan spends so much time sowing strife within the church.

Here in Israel, the church is painfully divided. For most of the last two-thousand years the Greek Orthodox Church has been "the" church here. About one-hundred years ago the Catholics and Evangelicals showed up. The Catholics have been very successful at displacing the Orthodox. They've used a lot of money poured into schools and social services to do it. The Evangelicals have had some success winning native Arab Christians and a lot of success winning Jews. But, in the mean time the country has become a center of great rivalry between the Christian groups.

The biggest embarrassment to the Christian community is the Holy Sepulchre. It is the (rather large) church that contains Calvary and the tomb of Christ according to the tradition of the ancient churches. It is shared between the Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Syriac, Egyptian Coptic, Ethiopian, and Armenian churches (maybe a couple more). The churches are constantly arguing about who gets to use what floor space and when. The bickering is so bad that for hundreds of years a Muslim mediator has been appointed to set the schedule and hold the actual keys to the building.

Every year at Easter all of the foolishness comes bubbling to the surface. The members of the separate churches all go to Easter services armed with clubs and knives and if they are slighted in any way, they fight. Every year the Israeli police are called in to break up the fighting. This past Easter the Syrians and Armenians fought (Somebody stepped over some line). Several people were hospitalized and a few Armenians were arrested. The Armenians then marched on the police station demanding the release of their "brothers". I can't imagine how Jesus feels when people who claim to be His act so badly in front of non-believers.

In recent weeks all of this rivalry has hit close to home. The Church of God runs a Christian school in a little Arab village, on the West Bank, called Aboud. The school was founded over thirty years ago by Margaret Gaines. The school has functioned all of that time with a great reputation both for the education and for the schools spiritual impact. The Catholics also run a Christian school in the same village. They want to shut us down.

Unfortunately, due to budgetary reasons, the CoG school only goes through sixth grade. When the students leave sixth grade they have two options for junior high and high school. One is the government school and Palestinian authority government schools are not a good option. The other option is the Catholic school.

The Catholic schools have begun failing all of our students in all of their classes and then going to the ministry of education and saying that our students are not prepared. The result is that people are not enrolling in our school because they know that their kids will have problems in the future. Also, if this pressure persists, we run the risk of losing our license.

We are looking at a lot of options. Primarily, the school needs to expand to twelfth grade. Secondarily, we are looking at trying to bring in American Christian volunteers to improve the schools English program. A school that goes through twelfth grade with superior English classes would be hard to attack.

For more than thirty years the Aboud school has been a light in a dark place and hundreds have come to faith because of its witness. Please pray for us as we try to save this institution. And specifically pray for Suhaila Khoury. She is the school principal. She lives in the village and has to wrestle these issues every day. Suhaila has relatives in the U.S.. She could have immigrated and left all of this behind, but she has stayed because she feels called to be a witness where she is. I don't know a tougher soldier of Christ anywhere, but she has a lot of changes and decisions in front of her.

Also, pray for the small church in this land. We are less than two percent. The Evangelical church is a fraction of the two percent and we are torn too. Unfortunately, the Christians who come out here tend to take on the hatreds of the people they work with. So, missionaries that work with Jews identify with them and dislike the Arabs and missionaries the work with Arabs don't like Jews. The bigger problem is that the missionaries/Christians often squabble. I'm pretty sure that Jesus loves both groups and that he is the solution for both Jews and Arabs. Pray that God will give us the eyes of Christ and that we will see everyone here the way He sees them. Only then will we as believers be able to walk in love and unity and really impact this place.