Hope in hard places E5 - Alia from Lebanon
In this episode, Embrace’s Revd Su McClellan speaks with Alia Abboud from Lebanon. Alia is the Chief Development Officer at Embrace’s partner, Thimar, a Lebanese non-profit organisation that seeks to strengthen the witness of the church in the Arab world.
Above: Alia Abboud
The conversation begins with Alia sharing what life is like in Lebanon for ordinary people, following waves of successive crises and the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war. She also talks about Lebanon’s recent history and how the civil war (1975-1990) led it to become such a sectarian country.
Alia shares about the incredible work of Thimar, and how it cuts through arbitrary sectarian divides. She speaks passionately about Christianity that lives outside the walls of the churches and serves the neediest people in society. She also speaks about the nature of Christian love, and issues a powerful challenge to the church in the UK.
Listen to the episode:
Interview transcript:
Su: My name is the Reverend Su McClellan from Embrace the Middle East. And I am absolutely thrilled and delighted to have Alia Abboud from Thimar in Lebanon with us today. Alia, welcome. Lebanon has been through so much, and particularly in recent months, with the war. Could you just tell us a little bit about what life is actually like for ordinary men, women, and children who live in Lebanon today?
Alia: Yeah, thank you for this invitation and for the opportunity to speak about my country and my people. Lebanon, as you said, has been going through compounded crises since 2019 and it's like one crisis on top of the other, and every time we think this is it, we've reached the climax, something else happens. Last year, 2024, was by far the worst so far. Over 1.5 million people were internally displaced at a time when the host communities were already struggling economically and financially. The compounded crises had already left over 82% of the population living in poverty. And so, there was a wave of displacement when families who normally take on, or invite people, their family members to stay with them, were already struggling to survive.
I mean, the bombing was really devastating, whole towns were totally devastated. A good portion of the southern suburb of Beirut has been leveled as well. I cannot even start to describe to you what we went through day in day out from the bombings and from always trying to keep track of where people are. But one thing that we did as Thimar, and years of crisis have led us to take on and just find ourselves doing, is changing gears and instantly finding ourselves responding to the needs of people, people who have children, and who are really wrestling with: Why is this happening? What did we do wrong? What did our families do wrong? Why us? Why Lebanon? Is it going to become another Gaza? It is not easy. Today we wrestle with very much, with strong feelings of uncertainty.
I mean, living in uncertainty, is in itself very traumatic, actually, not knowing what the future holds. And in this country and in this region, anything can happen. So we're not in a good place. The good thing that happened, which is a reason for hope, is that now we have a new president and we have a new government, a new prime minister, who has just put together a new government. So, this is something to be hopeful for, very much so, especially since the elected or the appointed ministers, most of them are not affiliated to any of the political parties that have played a major role in the past years. The source of hope today is that perhaps the new government can actually lead us into a new way where the country can have its own sovereignty. Hopefully, we have hope. We cannot live without hope.
Su: It's very unusual, actually, to hear somebody talking about hope from the Middle East, because particularly in recent years, it has been, you know, so hopeless. So it's wonderful to hear you actually use that word. But, as you say, there's this great uncertainty. And, of course, you at Thimar, this is your context. This is where you do your work. Can you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do and how you are responding to the crisis?
Alia: Sure. So Thimar is focused very much on strengthening the witness of the church in Lebanon and the Arab world. And we focus on equipping the Church and that through training and developing leaders, both women and men, for the church and the Arab world. And so, while our seminaries focus on equipping leaders, we work, through our publishing house, on making available much-needed Christian resources that address the needs of the church. The publishing house and the seminary have been focused for years on equipping the church.
Our relief and development arm, MERATH, is today very much equally involved in equipping the church, helping the church be the hands and feet of Jesus in the community. So we're very much involved in addressing the needs of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, vulnerable Lebanese in Lebanon. Now, actually, we're working alongside internally displaced Lebanese as well. But also, we have a track that is very much involved in ministry in Syria as well. The way we operate is that we always work through churches. So, when I talk about MERATH helping the church be the hands and feet of Jesus, it's like helping our churches understand their role, outside the walls of the church.
And actually, it's been quite a journey whereby we saw our churches that were very much inward-focused before the influx of Syrian refugees, and we see them today flourishing and actually going out of their way to serve the community, serving as agents of hope, agents of transformation, in beautiful ways and exemplifying biblical values such as non-conditionality, non-discrimination, which of themselves speak of who Jesus is and who we are as followers of Christ.
Su: It's incredible to hear just all that you are doing and I think that for some of our listeners, they might be quite surprised to hear you say all of this because often when we think of the Middle East, the church is perhaps not the first thing that we think about. Could you say a little bit about the Christian community in Lebanon?
Alia: Well, there are 18 denominations in Lebanon. Christians were estimated to be over 50% before the civil war. Today they are projected to be about 30 to 35%.
Su: Yeah, so sorry to interrupt you there, but just for the benefit of our listeners, perhaps just to remind everybody that the civil war raged from 1975 to 1990, and so obviously that is a huge wound in Lebanon's history, the consequences of which you are still living with today.
Alia: Yes. And actually, what happened is that during the civil war, the whole country became geographically segregated along religious lines. And there were lots of political parties who were also militias at the time, or I should say lots of militia, religiously-affiliated militias who became political parties, and were represented in the parliament later on. So, lots of religiously-based militias and, almost all of them, if not all of them, had blood on their hands.
Let me give you a personal example: my father was kidnapped during the civil war. And we never heard back of him, but when he was kidnapped, I started attending meetings for families of kidnapped people. And so I would sit in the same room with people who had lost their loved ones or had their loved ones missing, at the hands of non-Christian groups. So here I am, my father was Christian, was kidnapped in a non-Christian part of the country, and theirs were kidnapped by Christians. But I am not their enemy, and they're not my enemy, you know? But, all you know is that Christians kidnapped or Muslims kidnapped, and the pain and the suffering. I mean, there were 17,000 people who went missing during the civil war, whom no one knows anything about, and so there is no closure. And at the same time, every militia feeds its own religious-based group the same hate language.
And so this is where we are, this is why sectarianism has been so very harmful, because the majority thinks of the other in terms of their religious affiliation, and they don't see people as people. So our hope today is with the new government. Since they're not part of the same militias, hopefully this new government will actually be able to do some reform that can actually change things. Because I believe Lebanese Christians and Muslims can live harmoniously together, without any challenges.
Su: So when you talk about the work that MERATH does, I mean, you're working in impoverished communities. Are they multi-confessional communities? How would Shia or Druze communities, for example, respond to the work that you do?
Alia: When I did my research, I interviewed leaders of different faith-based groups and one of them drew my attention to something that I should have known, actually. He said, “Your mandate as Christians is to work with the neediest of the needy”, so not with our own people. And so that is one of the values that we actually work with our churches on. So, if we are to be salt and light, we should not focus on ourselves. So we always work with the churches on developing criteria for who is needy in your community, regardless of their affiliation, whether it's religious or otherwise. And, actually this has raised the credibility of the church big time in the community. Such that people come to us, knowing that we will stand by them regardless of who they are or what they are, and actually that is what the church should be. That is the role of the church.
Let me give you an example. This recent war, for instance, our school, Beirut Baptist School, which is located in Beirut, became a community centre. So, while continuing to offer our studies online, Beirut Baptist School became a community centre serving internally displaced people and six educational institutes around the school. These are people we don't know. We know that they have been displaced. They've lost their homes. And so the school went out of its way to help provide much-needed assistance for those families.
It's like putting the faith into action. I believe that years of crisis have taught us and our partner churches to change gears every time there's a crisis and just instantly respond. And we're able to respond because of this network of churches that we work with, and we've been working with for some time, who share the same values in terms of non-conditionality, non-discrimination, helping the neediest of the needy. One of the churches that was doing this for the first time actually came back to us and they said: “We love it! We love just helping the community.” This crisis we went through helped us see that our role is out, not inside.
Su: I'm just fascinated by this because one of the themes that is in all the gospels - in fact, I counted it once, I think it said six times in the gospels - is that unless you're prepared to lose your life, you won't find it. It is the theme going across all the four gospels, and it sounds from what you are telling us that that has been your experience. I mean, it would be the easiest thing in the world maybe to just, you know, hunker down and say, “we will just focus on ourselves because we're in this terrible situation”. And yet you've done the complete opposite of that. You've reached out, you have made the sacrifices to reach your local community. And that's had such an impact. I mean, when I was in Lebanon myself a few weeks ago, I heard of churches that have seen phenomenal growth because of the sacrifices that they have made. It is a gospel principle, isn't it?
Alia: It is, and actually just this morning in our devotions, we were talking about love being costly and love comes with deed and truth and not just by word. You cannot see someone who's hungry or homeless and just say, “God bless you”. And you mentioned sacrifice. Honestly, there is no love without sacrifice. So Jesus on the cross, that is his love for us led him to the cross. And so you cannot love without paying a price. Honestly, you really cannot.
Su: Yeah. And I'm just reminded of that passage in Matthew 26, when Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane. And it's actually really, really powerful because I think it's in that moment, for me anyway, even more than Jesus on the cross, it's in that agony of the Garden where he knew what he was going to have to go through, and the pain of that. And the sacrifice becomes so obvious in that moment. How do you, as the Christian community in Lebanon, with all that you have been through, all the sacrifices that you have made, where do you get your strength from?
Alia: Definitely from God. But, God in his faithfulness, in his graciousness, actually, every time we're starting to feel tired, God shows us fruits of the work that he has called us to do. And he has taught us to be obedient to his promptings, without even knowing oftentimes where he's leading us. But then he honours our steps of faith and he takes it from there. Just looking at the fruits and looking, you know, just before we came, I put on our WhatsApp group as a team and I said, “what does hope mean to you today, in our context?” And it was just amazing, the responses. Some spoke about, let me read some: One said, “I see hope in the kindergarten children learning to hug their teachers in the morning”. One said, “in the ability to change perspectives and touch hearts through people's stories and voices.” Another one said, “watching a child with special needs develop milestone skills. Witnessing their parents’ reactions when they see their non-verbal children communicating”. “Seeing churches keen on standing by the vulnerable and the needy without prejudice, regardless of who they are, in so doing, genuinely reflecting who we are in Christ”.
We know that we're here because God wants us to be here and, frankly, he makes it clear what he wants us to do. And so, it energises us to see the difference made in the life of others., And again, it is not by our efforts, it's by the grace of God.
Su: Absolutely. I felt this last time I was in Lebanon, and I feel it again today talking to you, that when I hear about your ministries, when I see what it is that you do, I feel that I've somehow stepped into a 21st century version of the Book of Acts. I would just love to know what message would you like the UK church to hear from your context?
Alia: Just from our own experience, I think there's a huge role for the church to play as an agent of hope, agent of peace, agent of love. There's so much pain and suffering in the world, and who can bring hope other than the church? And God calls on us to stand up for issues of justice. God calls on us to be his hands and feet. So we cannot be selective. We really need to be with the vulnerable.
I think we should take our cue from Scripture: how did Jesus live? What does he tell us about the poor, the widow, the vulnerable? And that is the way forward for the church. Only then can the Church be salt and light. Only then can the Church reflect who we are in Christ. You cannot serve while staying in your comfort zone. We really need to go out of our comfort zone because the people are out there and they need to see Jesus in us. They cannot see Jesus in us when we're living in our own communities, as was the case in Lebanon before the civil war. And you do your part, take steps of faith, and God will handle the rest. That is our experience.
Su: I can't disagree with that. Alia Abboud from Thimar in Beirut, thank you so much for joining us today. We will of course continue to pray for you, your colleagues and your incredible ministry in Lebanon. Thank you so much.
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