When I hear “Mosul,” I think of the Church in that place, specifically the Presbyterian Church there which I first visited in 1998 (my first of 15 visits to Iraq). Where I was led on foot through a winding “rabbit warren” of streets — too narrow for cars — to stand in front of an ornate, carved doorway in a wall with my eye drawn upwards to see in a tear-shaped rondel the words, in English, “The Protestant Church.”
Read MoreUpheaval and Renewal
Over the 24 years I have known the Presbyterian Church in Iraq, I have been continually inspired by its faithful presence and witness through many trials: life under Saddam Hussein, the American invasion in 2003 which toppled the government (along with its ability to care for and protect its own people), the reign of terror by ISIS and the assorted sectarian conflicts which have destabilized the country and hindered its peace and prosperity. Two of the five churches I knew well from when I first traveled to Iraq in 1998 would, eventually, be shuttered: the Assyrian Presbyterian Church in Baghdad (isolated in what became a dangerous neighborhood) and the historic Presbyterian Church in Mosul, located in the Old City Center (“ground zero” for ISIS).
Read MoreWithin a week of hearing that a crucial generator for the Kirkuk Presbyterian Church had failed, The Outreach Foundation was able to supply funds to allow for the installation of a new one. Rev. Haitham Jazrawi sent the following letter of thanks, along with exciting glimpses of how God is renewing the Church’s presence in Iraq…
Marilyn Borst, Associate Director for Partnership Development
July 18, 2021
Dear Sister Marilyn,
Greetings and Peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I wanted to write to you today to share both my gratitude and appreciation for your (and The Outreach Foundation’s) continued support to us over the years, and to also share some reflections I’ve had over your most recent gift to us this summer.
Read MoreThe birth of a new church in Iraq (with some help from fellow Presbyterians in Egypt!)
Iraq is a very dear country with a rich history. For many years, the Iraqi people suffered from a series of wars that affected their country in all aspects. The Christians in Iraq suffered a lot in the last few decades. Many families were dislocated, migrated, or immigrated to other parts of the world. ISIS and different radical groups caused a great deal of damage to churches, houses, and other properties. This led to a devastating situation for families who had to leave their homes and move to other areas.
The Presbyterian Church in Iraq is one of the oldest churches in the Middle East. History tells us that the Presbyterian Church in Mosul was established in 1840 as the oldest Presbyterian Church in the Arab World. There are three Presbyterian churches in Iraq now. They are in Basra, Baghdad, and Kirkuk. In recent years, God opened doors for the Egyptian church to send pastors as missionaries to the churches in Basra and Kirkuk. Rev. Haitham Jazrawi, the Kirkuk pastor, encouraged a young Egyptian pastor, Rev. Samer Karam, to serve with him in Kirkuk during the last year - a very difficult and challenging time.
Read MoreThe light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1: 5
In this very dark year which has been 2020, one of the “darker” places, from my perspective, has been Iraq where The Outreach Foundation has partnered, for many years, with the three remaining Presbyterian congregations (Baghdad, Basrah, and Kirkuk.) Your gifts, over the years, have sustained the witness of the Church in a place that has, too many times, approached the verge of being declared a “failed state.”
A year ago (October 2019) I led a small Outreach Foundation team back to Iraq to be with our Presbyterian family there – to be “mutually encouraged by one another’s faith” (Romans 1: 12). And, indeed, we were! Of all the days we spent, none was more impactful than a trip we made to a now-deserted Mosul, the once-thriving, second-largest city which had been laid waste by ISIS and then by the military campaign to retake it from ISIS. We wanted to see what, if anything, remained of the tiny, historic (1840) Presbyterian Church, located deep in the old city.
Read MoreOf the three Presbyterian churches in Iraq, two of them are being served by pastors from Egypt! When our Outreach Foundation team journeyed to Iraq this past October, we were delighted to meet the Rev. Samer Karam, an Egyptian, in Kirkuk (he and his family had arrived in January) and learn a bit of his story…
While in university in Cairo, Samer had joined Campus Crusade, and, when he graduated, he stayed on as staff for a year before heading to the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo (ETSC) for further study. Because two of his brothers were married to Iraqi Christians, he had heard many stories of how Christians there held great fear of terrorist organizations who were targeting believers for kidnapping and killing. As Samer tracked both the vulnerability of Christians and the subsequent immigration of many of them seeking safe haven, he began to pray about how best to serve the Church in places where Christians suffer.
Read MoreGood Shepherd Schools: Spaces for Hope
A ministry of the Presbyterian Church in Baghdad, the Good Shepherd School began with a vision to create a kindergarten to serve the community and provide a place where the Good News could be shared with children and their families, especially those who are not (yet) of “the household of faith.” The Good Shepherd School (which now has 94 children in its kindergarten and another 16 in the nursery) was beloved by the families whom it served and soon, those families asked Rev. Farouk Hammo, the pastor of the Presbyterian Church under which this ministry falls, to extend the school into elementary grades. The hard work of securing government permission, building out more classrooms (with gifts from The Outreach Foundation) and hiring qualified teachers was completed several years ago. Gradually adding classes, the elementary school now goes through grade 4 and has 60 little ones! And with a vision to serve autistic children – for whom few services exist in Iraq – the Good Shepherd School has begun preparing classrooms for this purpose. They are working with another Outreach partner, the Blessed School in Beirut, to train teachers for these special needs children. Outreach is honored to be undergirding this new endeavor, as well.
Iraq, over the past few months, has experienced a lot of protests, political upheaval, and even military action, as we all know from our news. The schools have continued on, despite it all, as Rev. Farouk reports that:
…during the last five months, even when most of the Baghdad schools stopped and closed their doors, we did not. The Ministry of Education, which supervises our schools, was happy for our action
Read MoreI just returned from my 12th journey to Iraq where our Outreach team (Jack Baca, Mark Mueller, Chris Weichman, Nuhad Tomeh, Mike Kuhn, Tony Lorenz) gathered in Erbil with leaders from the Presbyterian congregations of Basrah, Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Mosul, as well as Presbyterian partners from Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. On a Sunday, led by Rev. Haitham Jazrawi, we headed to Kirkuk for worship with his congregation and so much more. This was “Tony” Lorenz’s second trip to Iraq and I am grateful for his insightful reflection on our time there.
Marilyn Borst, Associate Director for Partnership Development
Holy Ground
by Rev. Anthony Lorenz, pastor
First Presbyterian Church, Carlisle, PA
“Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5
Iraq is holy ground. I realize this more and more each hour, each day, each trip.
Read MoreFor many years, the Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk has ministered to women in the local prison. Led by Mayada (who has written the letter, below), the wife of Pastor Haitham Jazrawi, the church has found favor with prison officials. Mayada and her team bring Light and Hope to women who are usually permanently shunned by their families and society. If they have children, those little ones are incarcerated with their mothers as there are few other options. At a most fundamental level, this is the work Christ enjoined to his followers when he said, “I was in prison, and you visited me….”
Marilyn Borst, Associate Director for Partnership Development
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I'm writing to you today to share some updates from our most recent visit to the Kirkuk Women's Jail. On Tuesday, May 28, I visited the jail along with two sisters in ministry, Susan and Balsam.
Read MoreThe faithful Presbyterian families in Iraq always amaze me. And the extended family of Rev. Farouk Hammo, pastor of the Baghdad Church, is a prime example. Despite decades of hardships, terror, sanctions, and uncertainty, there is a deep commitment in this congregation to “be the Church” in Iraq and beyond. Their numbers may have diminished, but not their zeal to make Christ known. Along with Farouk’s sisters and their families and his niece and her husband, the ministries of the church – for women, youth and kids as well as outreach to those who do not yet “lift high the cross” – go on. But nowhere is the church’s vision to be “salt and light” more evident than in the Good Shepherd Nursery and newly-opened elementary school.
When our Outreach team was there in late 2017, an old house which stood in front of the nursery school was being renovated to become the elementary school. Rev. Farouk and the school’s principal, Ban, who is a member of the church, proudly shared the results of a university study done on the city’s 400 private preschools: the Good Shepherd Nursery School (which now has 108 students) ranked #2!
Read MoreIn October my colleague Rev. Nuhad Tomeh and I brought a small team to Iraq to meet the three Presbyterian congregations there – Basrah, Baghdad and Kirkuk. Rev. Ginny Teitt, Ms. Gretchen Tilly, Mr. Sichan Siv (a former ambassador to the UN) and Rev. Tony Lorenz were an encouraging presence to the Faithful Church there and we were all, in turn, moved and inspired by those who can say with confidence that they, “rejoice in their suffering, because suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Rev. Teitt shares here her reflection on our time in Basrah.
Marilyn Borst, Associate Director for Partnership Development
Read MoreFor I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. Matthew 25:35-36
Some parts of this passage are easier to live into than others. If you periodically bring canned goods to a food pantry, you have fed him. If you ever donated money in the wake of a natural disaster to provide potable water to victims, you gave him something to drink. Made a Goodwill drop off with old clothes? You kinda clothed him, I guess. And who hasn’t visited someone who was sick or injured in the hospital. But HAVE we ever invited in the stranger? The Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk opened its doors to 70 unfamiliar people fleeing ISIS in the summer of 2014 – and half of them are still there. And then there is that prison thing….
Read MoreThis update is provided by Rev. Haitham Jazrawi, the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk, Iraq. It is a powerful reminder of how our faith can sustain us in the midst of unimaginable loss and brokenness.
-Marilyn Borst, Associate Director for Partnership Development
Since late summer 2017, the Iraqi Armed Forces and the Kurdistani Peshmerga Forces, aided by the U.S. Air Force, have been able to regain control of the Nineveh Valley and much of its surrounding towns. The capital of Nineveh Province, Mosul, was finally “liberated” from ISIS in late July. I use the term “liberated” very loosely in this sense because, in reality, Mosul hasn’t been so much liberated, as it has been obliterated. Western Mosul, also known as the “Old City,” is practically rubble; it’s easier to count the buildings that remain standing than the ones that have been destroyed.
Stories of families running as bullets rained left and right became the norm. Sometimes children laid in the rubble and used the bodies of their dead parents to shield themselves until the armed forces were able to pull them out of harm’s way. I still remember the sight of a mere five or six-year-old little girl; her face made the rounds on Iraqi television stations. She had clung onto her dead mother’s body in the street for three days in the hope that mom would wake up and save her. These are but a few of the sights that are burned into our memories from this past horrific summer.
Read More“Joyful, patient, faithful…” is a pretty apt summary of the Presbyterian Church in Iraq which I encountered, yet again, on my trip to this beleaguered country just a few weeks ago. Iraq makes the “Top Ten List” of the most difficult places to be a Christian; 75% of all Christians have left since 2003 with only about 250,000 remaining, mostly in the Catholic and Orthodox communities. And yet this Presbyterian presence, with its small “footprint” (less than 200 families in three cities), is making a big impact. Ben McCaleb, First Presbyterian, San Antonio, and Steve Burgess, West Hills (Presbyterian), Omaha, were making a return trip with me as we spent time in both Basrah and Baghdad. We were guided by the Rev. Dr. Nuhad Tomeh, mission consultant to The Outreach Foundation and Syrian Presbyterian pastor. Following the Kurdish referendum vote, Rev. Haitham Jazrawi of Kirkuk advised us not to come north but instead came down to Baghdad to meet with us.
All three congregations (Basrah, Baghdad, Kirkuk) have some things in common: they all run kindergarten/nursery schools which are so well-respected by the non-Christian families who attend them that they have been urged to open elementary schools as well; all three either run or are setting up Christian radio stations; for the first time in a long while, all three congregations have an ordained pastor to serve them; and all three congregations open their doors to those who have never heard the Good News, and the Holy Spirit is bringing hungry souls to receive the Bread of Life.
Read More...we rejoice in our suffering, because suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope; and hope does not disappoint us…. Romans 5: 3-5
I first met them in May of 2015. They had been living at the Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk for almost a year by then. Philip, the youngest member of this family who had fled the Christian village of Qaraqosh, had an impish smile and bright gray-green eyes. He was, in Southern parlance, “cute as a button.”
His father had been a guard at one of the churches when they fled the onslaught of ISIS with only the clothes on their back. Along with his four siblings and parents, “home” was now a small Sunday School classroom at the Kirkuk Church – and they were so very grateful to Rev. Haitham Jazrawi and the congregation for it. Recently, I asked Rev. Haitham for an update on this family and the general state of those for whom the congregation was caring for at the church. This is what he shared: Philip is now entering the 4th grade! He graduated third grade as the #1 student in his class. Similarly, his sister, Vatican, is now entering 7th grade, which is the start of high school in Iraq (as opposed to 9th grade in the U.S.). She also finished 6th grade as the #1 student for her class!
Read MoreAlthough the tragic events in Iraq from the summer of 2014 have mostly faded from our daily news cycles, the past is very much present for Rev. Haitham Jazrawi and his congregation at the Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk. It began with a persistent knocking at the church’s gate late one night. It was soon inescapably evident in the streets around town as entire families stood dazed and bewildered, clutching small parcels and, for the fortunate ones, a suitcase containing a few changes of clothing and their important documents. And then the reports soon reached their ears of entire congregations of the Syrian Orthodox Church seeking haven in safer villages not far from Kirkuk….
Read MoreIn late January of 2014, a native of Mosul was consecrated as the Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk-Sulimaniya. Barely six months later, ISIS would invade his hometown resulting in thousands of Christian families seeking shelter in and help from the churches under his watch. In March of this year, I and a small team from The Outreach Foundation met in Iraq with His Grace Yousif Thomas Mirkis. We were introduced to him by the Rev. Haitham Jazrawi, who pastors the Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk. Both share the common burden of ministering to those whose lives were shattered when their homes, livelihoods and churches – not to mention their peace and security – were violently taken from them.
Read MoreWiggly, giggly and mesmerized by the foreign visitors to their classroom in Erbil, Iraq, these precious little four and five year-olds seemed very typical for their age. But they were not. When our small Outreach Foundation team visited them in March, it had been about eight months since they and their families had run for their lives as ISIS marched upon their villages in the Nineveh Plain. 200,000 of these Assyrian Christians fled from their small, once peaceful enclaves: Bartella, Bashiqa, Batnaya, Karamlis. They found haven in safer towns deeper in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Northern Iraq and the big city of Erbil. Their young priests like Father Yacoub, whom you see here, shepherded and encouraged them along the road. And now those young priests, with no resources, work hard to create some sense of normalcy for these traumatized families. They have started a few kindergartens/preschools in which to nurture these tender young lives.
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