We are pleased to announce that our Management for Church Leaders™ (MCL) training has formally reached the Middle East with our recent training in Cairo, Egypt! Egypt was an ideal location as it is safe to travel to and has an estimated 25% Christian population. Although the training material was in Arabic and we had translators, about 50% of Egyptians speak English.
The training conference was held October 4-6th and was attended by 68 pastors and church leaders from Egypt, Lebanon and South Sudan. We were invited to bring our training there by Dr. Wahid Wahba, founder and president of the Middle East Leadership Training Institute (MELTI). I was referred to Dr. Wahba by Ali Khalil, a pastoral trainer from Lebanon that I met at the Global Proclamation Congress for Pastoral Training in Bangkok in June, 2016.
MELTI has been working in the region for 20 years and has provided Christian training to pastors and church leaders throughout the Middle East through their training center in Cairo. A few of their instructors attended our training and will now be able to teach our MCL material along with their other training material where needed. They are also considering adding our MCL training to their regular training curriculum.
What was particularly encouraging about this conference was that before the 2nd day of training was completed 4 attendees asked for copies of our MCL Training Manual in English along with the MCL Trainer Manual in English with the goal of teaching our training to others. We have provided them with this material and will be following up with them on their training results in the months ahead. One of these individuals is from Lebanon who also has his own training ministry and goes to many other nations in the region. We are hopeful that he will consider being part of our Global Trainer Network as well and include our training where applicable and useful.
During our training we also discovered a few translation errors that are now being corrected by MELTI so as to improve the training in Arabic. They will also provide an Arabic translation of our MCL Trainer Manual so that those who do not speak English can teach our training as well.
We have now planted the seed of our training in Egypt and look forward to watching how God uses us, and those we have trained, to expand His Kingdom in the Middle East! As the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:7, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.”
We thank God for this wonderful opportunity to spread our training throughout the Middle East and look forward to seeing the fruit that is produced from this one seed of training!
To God alone be the glory!!