Tragedy struck the Church of the Nazarene last September in Beirut, Lebanon. Rev. Raja Nwaisser died of a heart attack in a combined church service in front of most all of Lebanon’s Nazarene church members as well as a large number of visitors. It happened as Pastor Raja was baptizing the second person in a line of seven people ready to give witness to their new life in Christ. Pastor Raja was only 40 years old, and he is survived by his wife, Seta Kejelian, and two daughters, Glory (6) and Holy (4). He was pastor, Bible College President, NCM Coordinator and former Lebanon District Superintendent (D.S.) for the Church of the Nazarene.
We are all baffled by God’s planning and timing in all of this. Nazarenes in the whole Middle East are now in the process of grieving the loss of this talented, beautiful servant of God.
Nine month’s after the memorial services for Pastor Raja, Andrew Salami, Lebanon’s D.S., and Seta asked NCM to help guide the church as they continue to grieve individually and collectively as the body of Christ. When we asked ourselves, “Who can help us in this task?” Rand and Phyllis Michael immediately came to our minds.
Rand is Associate Professor and Program Director of Marriage and Family Therapy at the George Fox University’s Graduate Department of Counseling and his wife Phyllis is Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Warner Pacific College in the Portland area. Rand and Phyllis have been partnering with Middle Eastern Nazarenes for the past 25 years, and they spend most of their summers passing on their wisdom and skills to leaders in many different areas of the world.
The Michaels shared with me that around February they had decided to turn down every ministry request for the summer of 2009… unless someone from the Middle East called. About a month after they sealed their pact, we appeared in their outlook inbox asking for their help.
Rand and Phyllis flew to Beirut the last part of May and held 4 sessions at the church, helping us understand the typical and unique responses to grief, how to be helpful to people who are grieving, and how to move on with daily living while working through our grief. Between seminars, Rand, Phyllis and Tom Gray (who is on staff with us in the Middle East and is a professional clinical counselor and PhD candidate in counseling education) met with many people who wanted to speak in private with a professional counselor.
When Rand and Phyllis finished their last session on specific ways people can help others by empathetic listening, many of the church leaders expressed an interest in receiving more training so that they can provide proper emotional support for people in the community. It seems that there is a great need for counselors in Beirut, and people are hungry for help.
Perhaps this is why…Two generations of Lebanese people have suffered a long civil war, a war and occupation by its neighbors, and political as well as religious strife. The Lebanese are wonderful, resilient people, but events of this magnitude produce festering wounds that affect individuals and families at a deep level.
Consider this… Marlene Mshantaf (NCM Coordinator in Beirut), who managed the logistics of the counseling event, is the assistant principle of the Nazarene Evangelical School which serves 160 children in grades K-9. When I peeked into her office and commented that she looked really tired, she replied, “Yes, I am. We are trying to finish all of our final exams for the children early this year because next week there is an important election and depending on the results we are not sure if there will be a war or not.” It seems every trip I make to Lebanon there is a rumor of a possible war starting. The country is full of people who have endured war in their lifetimes and are often expecting new outbreaks.
Earlier we asked Marlene to tell us what it was like to live through 16 years of civil war. She started telling a story about the time the killing was so fierce that she had to live in a shelter for a whole month without leaving. The shelter was home to 2,000 people sharing one bathroom and very little food. She gave only a few details, then she stopped, apologized, and said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
This is the context in which Nazarenes in Beirut are building communities of faith. What impact could a church in Beirut have if leaders were trained in lay counseling skills to help people understand the circumstances that brought them to their present “life troubles” and help them make changes in their life outlook and behaviors?
Rand and Phyllis Michaels have developed just such a series of courses to train community mental health advocates. The finished a cycle of training last summer in China, and we are studying the possibility of training people in the Middle East.
And we need this not just because of the trauma in Beirut…but also to help Iraqi refugees, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Iraqi’s who just yesterday endured 6 church bombings, children in our schools who are living in a society which is changing rapidly, and ministers and teachers who experience burnout due to the stress of serving this population.
Want to help us do this? Feel free to comment and ask questions…right here on this blog. Go for it.
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