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ELCA NEWS SERVICE

July 23, 1999

ARAB AND MIDDLE EASTERN LUTHERANS MEET IN ASSEMBLY
99-185-ES**

     BROOKLYN, NY (ELCA) -- The Association of Lutherans of Arab and
Middle Eastern Heritage (ALAMEH) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America (ELCA) met in assembly here July 9-11.  ALAMEH was created for the
"mission and ministry of witness and service with and among persons of Arab
and Middle Eastern heritage, that will affirm the dignity and worth of
these peoples and their cultures."
     Dr. Ryan LaHurd, president of Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, N.C.,
gave an overview of what ALAMEH has accomplished.  Lenoir-Rhyne is a
college of the ELCA.
     It is through ALAMEH, in cooperation with the ELCA Division for
Outreach, that there are two Arab-speaking congregations in the United
States and that the Arab and Middle Eastern community has been recognized
as the fifth community of color within the ELCA, said LaHurd.
     ALAMEH has the task of raising up leaders among the Arab and Middle
Eastern population in this country and encouraging candidates for ordained
ministry, said LaHurd.  It is important to tell men and women that, in
addition to the more traditional route, there are other routes to
ordination, he said.
     The assembly adopted a new budget for the coming year, designating
$2,500 to each of the two Arabic congregations for their ministry.
     Elected to office were Grace El-Yateem, Brooklyn, president; the Rev.
Rimon Sai'd, Chicago, vice president; Suad Nijim, Santa Clara, Calif.,
secretary; Yousef Husary, Chicago, treasurer; and Katy Abdallah, Hammond,
Ind., and LaHurd as members-at-large.  El-Yateem, Nijim, Muna Tarazi, Troy,
Mich., and the Rev. Richard G. Mahan, West Charleston, W.Va., were elected
to the ELCA Commission for Multicultural Ministries steering committee.
     The assembly voted to request organizers of the next Women of Color
Gathering to send an official invitation to women of ALAMEH.  The
association is eager to participate actively in all aspects of the ELCA,
says the resolution.  The 1999 Women of Color Gathering -- organized by
Women of the ELCA -- was held July 5-7 in St. Louis.
     Dora Johnson, Washington, D.C., participated in the Women of Color
Gathering.  She was one of five "weavers" -- weavers wove together the
threads of thought, concerns and issues that emerged from the gathering's
community caucuses, workshops and Bible study.  Johnson is a native of
Beirut, Lebanon, and an active member of ALAMEH.
     In other business, the Rev. George Muenich, Zion German Lutheran
Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., presented a check to the Rev. Munib A. Younan,
bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan, for the work of the
Lutheran church in Jerusalem.  Muenich's congregation has been involved
with this area of the world since 1895, when it began a financial ministry
to the former Schneller School, which was also known as the Syrian
Orphanage, Jerusalem.
     A special moment occurred at this assembly when Nakhleh (Nick)
Khoury, Worth, Ill., introduced himself to Muenich.  Khoury is an inventor
with over 35 patents under his name.  Last year he was nominated to the
Inventors' Hall of Fame.  In 1941, Khoury graduated from the Syrian
Orphanage.
     Susan Thompson, executive for newly organized congregations, ELCA
Division for Outreach, Chicago, talked about the Arab and Middle Eastern
ministry in Jordan.
     "The Lutheran Church exists in this country," Thompson said, "because
of Lutherans who came from other countries for various reasons."  Thompson
spoke of the objectives that were established for ministry to Arab and
Middle Eastern Lutherans.
     "The overall objective was to create a ministry of witness and
service with and among Arabs and affirm the dignity of Arab people,"
Thompson said.  Some of these objectives have been realized with the
establishment of  ALAMEH and the two Arab-speaking congregations in the
United States, she said.
     Thompson introduced the Rev. Rimon Sai'd, St. Elias Arabic Church,
Chicago, and the Rev. Khadir El-Yateem, Salaam Lutheran Church in Brooklyn.
     Sai'd came to this country for the purpose of participating in Arabic
ministry in America.  He has been pastor of St. Elias since 1995.  St.
Elias shares the site of Immanuel Lutheran Church, Chicago.  The church
serves Arab Christians from places such as  Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon,
Palestine, Sudan and Syria.  St. Elias consists of Lutherans, Catholics,
Greek Orthodox and Coptics.  The congregation serves the community through
weekly worship, Bible study and a family program.
     Sai'd told the assembly about the lack of Lutheran worship resources.
"There were no Arabic Lutheran worship resources in this country, so I
reproduced the worship book which is used in the Lutheran church in
Jerusalem," he said.
     "When you worship at St. Elias, you feel as if you are in Jerusalem
or a church in the Middle East," Sai'd said.
     "The congregation also lacked a hymnal."  Sai'd began the arduous
task of typing Arabic hymns into his computer in hopes of producing a
hymnal.  "After typing in more than 500 hymns my computer crashed," he
said.   "I just cried."
     "Yet God provides.  While on a trip to Jerusalem, I went into Jordan.
There, in a Baptist bookstore, was a hymnal with over 700 hymns in Arabic.
It was an answer to a prayer."
     Sai'd has produced Bible study booklets about Baptism and Martin
Luther, the 16th century German church reformer.
     To help maintain the identity of the Arab and Middle Eastern
community as new generations are born in this country, Sai'd began a
program for children in which Bible stories and hymns are taught in Arabic.
     El-Yateem talked about the first time he visited what would become
Salaam Arabic Lutheran Church in Brooklyn, then known as Salem Danish
Lutheran Church.  His first trip took him into an Arab community.
     "I felt like I was driving in Jerusalem," El-Yateem said.  "The
congregation was dying.  They prayed for a miracle.  They began reaching
out into the Arab community that was 80 percent Muslim and 20 percent
Christian through an English as Second Language program.  Through this
program, they began to connect to the Christian Arab community."
     "The people of Salem Danish had a wonderful impact on Christian and
Muslim students," said El-Yateem.  "The people of Salem Danish gave all
they had to this ministry -- funds, a building and time.  Finally, through
this effort, Salem Danish closed its doors to give birth to Salaam Arabic
Church."
     "The people of Salem Danish knew that God didn't want them to die in
quiet and peace, but to go into the community and bring others in to
experience the wonderful love of Jesus Christ our Lord," said El-Yateem.
He still honors a commitment that he made to hold a service in English each
Sunday as long as one person comes.  At present, about five people attend,
he said.  "The people of Salaam Arabic think of the members of Salem Danish
as their family.  Without them, we couldn't have done anything," he said.
     El-Yateem spoke of the challenges in ministry to this community.
"People come into the community, learn the language and move on," he said.
"The immigrant community is not a stable one.  The church has begun a
pre-school program which has helped reach out to young families with
children and to try and stabilize the community."
     Another struggle is the fact that the people of Salaam are not only
from different areas of the Middle East such as Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and
Jordan, but they are from different denominations like Greek Orthodox,
Roman Catholic and Baptist.  "It is a fascinating mix," El-Yateem said.
"Each comes with his or her own expectations, customs, and spiritual
needs."
     El-Yateem and Salaam's church council worked every night for one
month on a mission statement to proclaim a common vision.  "The result," he
said, "is that the congregation is about respect, love and faithfulness.
We can have no discrimination or denominationalism.  The church is here to
serve all God's children."
     Sixty-two participants came to the ALAMEH assembly from throughout
the United States to be encouraged in their ministry by being with other
Lutherans of Arab and other Middle Eastern heritage.  Suad Nijim said,
"It's like a reunion and, as an added gift, we get to learn more about
Lutheranism."
     Arlene Hancock, Santa Clara, Calif., spoke on the need to keep the
Middle Eastern identity alive.  "Every year on April 24 we have a
commemoration of the genocide of Armenians," she said.  "Each year
generations who remember this terrible time pass on and new generations are
born.  The commemoration gets shorter and shorter, and now it is even being
done in English.  We need to recapture our identity," said Hancock.
     Many young people attended the assembly.  Jack Younan, 14, said, "I
like coming.  We meet each other and get to know each other."
     Muna Tarazi, Troy, Mich., the outgoing treasurer of ALAMEH, led a
devotion in which she spoke on the time spent worrying about the year 2000
in business and personal life.
     Tarazi said, "God's promise is to be with us always; it is all in
God's hands.  Rather than worry, we need to think differently.  We need to
open our eyes to the world around us.  We exploit each other.  There is
racism in our churches and communities.  We need to stand for equality and
justice on the part of the poor and oppressed.  We need to approach the
year 2000 with gratitude for all that God has done for us in the past and
will do for us in the future."
     Dora Johnson told the Assembly, "Just as many of you don't speak
English as a first language, I don't speak Lutheran as a first language.
What I want to say is that this church can be very accepting.  Even if I
still don't understand all the bishops, commissions, pastors and how they
are all interrelated, what I do know is that this is the church of Christ."
     Johnson also explained the fear an Arab or Middle Eastern immigrant
has in speaking out on the pain suffered by those left behind in their
homelands.
     "Not only is the American press sensitive to the position of the
Israeli Jew, but the church still suffers guilt over its silence in the
face of atrocities in Germany in World War II.  In the face of these
dynamics, the plight of the Christian Arab is not a comfortable position to
state.  Christian Arabs are afraid to speak out, so they either become
clannish or they quietly assimilate into the fabric of society.  Many in
our country associate Arabs with terrorism," she said.
     Fuad Nijim, Santa Clara, Calif., outgoing president of ALAMEH,
continued on this theme, "It is a unique phenomenon that the Arab
assimilates very quickly into the fabric of U.S. society and becomes less
obvious.  We must sensitize the Anglo community as to who we are and to our
existence."
     In the face of assimilation into society, the Rev. Christian G.
Holleck, Pontiac, Mich., chair of the ELCA Southeast Michigan Synod task
force for Middle Eastern Ministries, explained  the frustration of pastors
to identify Middle Eastern Christians within their congregations.
     "People aren't always aware that there are Arab Christians.  They
think that all Arabs are Muslim," he said.  "We want to identify Arabic
leadership to help us in the Detroit area which has a large Arab and Middle
Eastern population," said Holleck.  "We want to build bridges into the Arab
community and have the leadership know that we want to work with them."
     Heather Anderson, a student at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary,
Berkeley, Calif., who recently visited Israel, said the suffering of the
Christian Palestinians encouraged her to speak out about their plight.  "As
I went through Israeli customs at the airport, I was asked if I had
associated with any Palestinians.  Those who admitted they had such contact
were detained.  I became afraid and didn't admit to meeting with
Palestinians."
     Anderson said, "When I returned home I was asked to preach and the
Gospel for the day was Peter's denial of Christ."   Reminded of what she
saw as her own denial in the face of fear, she became bold to share the
story of the pain experienced in the Christian Arab world with others.
     Grace El-Yateem, newly-elected president of ALAMEH and Commission for
Multicultural Ministries steering committee member, sees the need for
"identity" to be one of ALAMEH's priorities.
     "We want ALAMEH to be the backbone of support for the Arabic church,"
Grace El-Yateem said.  "We want to be there to share in their concerns,
their needs, their sorrows, and their joys."
      "ALAMEH can be a voice to the Commission for Multicultural
Ministries and the Division for Outreach.  'Alameh' means 'sign.'  I pray
we will be a sign to the Arab community that we are here for their personal
and their congregational lives," said Grace El-Yateem.

[** Eileen Smith chairs the communication committee for the ELCA
Metropolitan New York Synod, New York.]

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