“Sometimes when I go to the Middle East, I don’t want to come back.”

Craig Macartney
Spur Ottawa Writer

Good news from the Middle East can be hard to find. Yet encouraging stories of hope from the Middle East are a focus at the Metropolitan Bible Church’s Celebrate Missions 2016 conference. The keynote speaker this year is Nizar Shaheen, founder of Light for All Nations, a Middle Eastern media ministry. Despite the current strife in the region, Shaheen says amazing things are happening.

“The reason we want to focus on the Muslim world is because so many Muslims are coming to the Lord,” explains Brian Mitton, Pastor of Missions and Outreach at the MET. “Nizar says he has never seen so many come to the Lord through media. They are coming to realize there is no salvation in Mohamed. There is salvation only in one name, the name of Christ.”

Walid Bitar agrees that God is moving in the Middle East. Bitar, who came to Christ in his native Lebanon, is now a missionary and the missions pastor at the Arabic Evangelical Baptist Church of Ottawa.

“Sometimes when I go to the Middle East, I don’t want to come back. The field is open and people are accepting the Lord. God is doing great things there.”

Mitton says a key characteristic of the upcoming conference is providing local believers a chance to hear stories of how God is moving around the world.

“There will be a lot of testimonies, times of prayer, reading the Bible, and video clips. We just really want to praise God for what He has done. The second thing is to educate people about what it means to be a missionary, both locally and globally.”

“We like to build into them and do member care when they come.”

Every year the stories inspire people to engage more in missions. Some adopt a missionary family with their small group, others begin praying or contributing financially. Mitton says every year people decide to do a short-term mission trip, or even go into missions fulltime.

“One of the things we hope for is that people will get out of their comfort zone and do a short-term mission trip. We will have about six this year. We’re going to Manitoulin Island, Quebec, Peru, Guatemala, and Lord willing Cambodia.”

Encouraging the families

The conference also connects mission families with support networks that can have a profound impact.

“We try to get them into people’s homes so they can eat with people and talk. We like to build into them and do member care when they come.”

While these interactions may seem small, Bitar says they go a long way in building up the family. He says missionaries sometimes feel shy in front of the whole church, but they develop deep connections with the families and small groups that adopt them.

When he meets with the groups that adopted his family, he says, “I feel more comfortable and I can share with them [on a more personal level] what is going on. We have one group who calls us on Skype. They want to see the whole family and they pray with us on Skype.

“Children, especially, need to feel that they are part of the mission. They need encouragement, for people to talk and pray with them, or just invite them over to play sports.”

Bitar says missionaries work hard, but conferences like Celebrate Missions 2016 are a chance to get away and find some rest.

As for those who attend, he hopes to see them “drawing closer to God and taking their spiritual life to a higher level. I hope the churches will get together and do mission work in this city.”

The conference runs from November 7 to 13, at the MET.