On the flight here, I read C. Peter Wagner’s book Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World, and Art is reading it now. Thebook is about how the gospel brings about social transformation, but author admits that one of the problems is that there are so few examples of social transformation to point to. But we saw a real “transformer” this week, though he wouldn’t call himself that.
On Tuesday we visited our friend Dr. Maria Khoury in Taybeh in the West Bank. We were there in 2005 and were eager to see how the situation there has changed. Art believed from his reading that the West Bank, unlike Gaza, has become more stable, more secure, and better-governed, and that life in the West Bank should be improving. We were disappointed when Hassan, the taxi driver who drove us from the Qalandiya checkpoint to Taybeh, told us that life is worse now because of the security fence.
Taybeh is a beautiful village in the Judean Hills not far from Ramallah. One of the highlights of our time there was a short visit (complete with spicy, sweet Arab coffee) with Fr. Raed, the priest of the Latin Church of Taybeh (Roman Catholic). Besides being friendly and incredibly energetic, he is a genius at making things happen. His many projects are ambitious and as well-implemented as they are visionary. His conversation is peppered with statistics of the economic impacts and costs of projects like Beit Afram, the lovely home for the elderly that we visited with Maria. He knows exactly how many people can be employed by the new guesthouse, which is a retreat center for pilgrims, and how many visitors it will require to keep up with payroll.
The school and the medical center serve a population that is nearly one-third Muslim, and since unemployment is a foundational social problem in the West Bank, employment statistics weight right alongside educational and health outcomes in his calculations. It was very interesting to see that in his thinking, goals are piggy-backed, and he knows how all the pieces fit together.
One of the most appealing of his projects is the Olive Branch Foundation. We toured the workshop on our last visit and brought one of the peace lamps with Taybeh olive oil home. Fr. Raed has international trading partners in Europe and the U.S.. For a parish priest in a village of 1,600 people, that’s a pretty amazing network.
The West Bank has a long way to go, but if there were more like Fr. Raed, the progress would be quicker and happier.
