Cairo and Craig


I spent three days in Cairo with the pastor of my church here in Ankara. We were going to meet with some churches and ministries there in order to consider sending our Filipus students to Cairo for the month-long out of country portion of the program. It was my first time traveling to an Arab country.


I was struck by how different the situation of the church is in Egypt compared to Turkey. Egypt is sharply divided between Muslim background and Christian background citizens. Christian background Egyptians can go to church in relative peace and new churches are started all the time. I was shocked at how many active churches are working in Cairo. On the other hand, Muslim background Egyptians are prohibited from changing their official religious status which is printed on their national identity cards and the government effectively prohibits church attendance on the part of Muslim background Egyptians. This has lead to the growth of an underground church movement which doesn't really have a parallel in Turkey. Workers who are caught doing evangelism among Muslims are quickly sent home and converts from Islam are often imprisoned, and worse. For this reason many of the workers have a "public" dimension to their ministry which is focused on Christian background Egyptians, and another more indirect dimension...


Some of our friends are running a ministry training program among Christian background believers. They spend 3 months doing ministry education and training in a micro-business field. At the end of the program they are able to apply for a loan to start a small business such as a barber shop, a food cart, an electronic repair business, etc. Many of the graduates move out of Cairo to a less reached area of Egypt to set up their businesses.


We spent several hours with the staff and students of the training program. Many of the students had never actually met a professing Muslim background believer, and none of them had met one who openly proclaimed his testimony. So, when my pastor powerfully shared his testimony with the students they were profoundly impacted. It was a positive sign that our Filipus students will be able to truly encourage the Egyptian church simply by virtue of their being Muslim background believers.


And we did get to ride horses around the pyramids...


For the last two weeks I have been traveling with and coordinating ministry and speaking engagements for William Lane Craig and his wife during their time in Turkey. Dr. Craig gave several lectures at universities and churches and all of them were very successful. At the first talk at Ankara University he described the Kalam Cosmological Argument, an argument for God's existence which was first proposed by Ghazali in the 11th century has has since been developed extensively by Dr. Craig. He went on to defend a Trinitarian view of God in that talk, which sparked some very lively debate.


Dr. Craig also gave a closed-session lecture to the faculty of the divinity school at Ankara University on the "Coherence of the Incarnation." It was an excellent paper but the faculty were so unfamiliar with anything like a rational defense of the Incarnation that their questions and responses were seriously underdeveloped.


I had a great time showing them around Turkey and taking them to Cappadocia to see some of Anatolia's Christian heritage. During our time in Istanbul Dr. Craig mentioned that he would like to experience a Turkish bath (hamam in Turkish). It isn't the kind of thing I had been interested in doing for myself, but in the end I had to promise his wife that I would accompany him for the experience... and the rest of that story will have to be told in person!



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