What is the Egyptian Church contending with?

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What is the Egyptian Church contending with? Evangelical Believers live in a predominately Muslim culture which ebbs and flows from peaceful daily life and activities to political and religious upheavals that turn violent within hours. In these upheavals, Christians deal with terrifying life threats to their families and churches. Although many Christians live in peace with their Islamic neighbors, for Muslims who radicalize, attitudes can change quickly.

One church building we entered still shows marks of fire bombs thrown against her walls only a year ago. As the outside caught fire, neighbors, both Christians and Muslims, rushed in extinguishing the flames. All pastors in Egypt live with economic concerns; the Egyptian currency took a nosedive in November 2016 as the Central Bank floated the pound, then in March 2017 with Ramadan purchasing, banks loosened their restrictions again hoping the pound would rally; it hasn’t. Having held a rather consistent 5-6 pounds to the dollar value for years, now it’s 17.5, meaning almost a triple loss value. This economic pressure is in the pew as well, affecting tithing, health and attendance. For some pastors it means finding a second source of income, but this isn’t a guarantee of security either; one pastor attending our conference was forced to leave immediately upon arrival as his`duck farm suspiciously burned due to a possible electrical shortage.

How can we make a difference and impact these faithful pastors and churches?

Pray – Jesus gave us many examples of how to pray and to pray consistently in the power of the Holy Spirit. Pray for the pastors and their families, for their marriages, pray for their congregations, pray for breaking down of spiritual strongholds, pray for more workers in this harvest. Pray for Muslims and nominal Christians to be open to the Gospel. This newsletter and our website are designed to provide you many ways to engage in prayer with us each month.

Join us in a 2018 Prayer Walk – Take your praying to the next level and engage with transformational prayer!

Consider IM’s Global Church Planting Initiative – IM is involved in church planting, evangelism in Egypt with a great Egyptian national team who are working hard serving the Lord here. Your financial partnership helps us help them.

Sponsor a child – We focus on helping children of widows, and all the kids and their families in our program have contact with our church planting team with a goal of making church attendance available to them. With grades on the rise and better health reported for most of the kids, we’re certain the kids are benefiting.

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