Fruit of 30 years of Sowing Bible Seeds in Egypt

Here is a report from Ramez Atallah Director of the Bible Society in Egypt of how God has done wonders amongst the teens of Egypt

More than thirty years ago I had the privilege of meeting Bishop Moussa, the newly appointed Coptic Bishop for youth in Egypt.

At the time he asked me if I could help with training of Coptic Orthodox youth leaders in inductive Bible study at his office.  What started as a small group of 18 youth leaders developed eventually into the St Timothy Center for Inductive Bible Study which continues until today.

On Saturday I attended a “Day on the Bible” organized by a small church in an inner-city district in Cairo.  The ambitious priest of that church, Father Marcos, has a vision for helping young people interact with the Bible and had planned that day as a way of encouraging people to interact with the Bible creatively.  I was amazed by what I saw!  By the time I got there at 10:30 in the morning about one thousand young people had already arrived and during the day many more joined them.  They had rented a school for the event and had set up about thirty different booths, each focusing on the theme of the day which was the parables and proverbs in the Bible.

One of the booths showed how many of the proverbs in the Bible are related to popular proverbs in Society.

Another presented the parable of the Sower in a creative way by pouring water into four different cups each having a white powder at the bottom and the first two gave no reaction, the second lots of fizz which fizzled away quickly and the forth lots of fizz that overflowed and continued to overflow from the cup! The young youth leader using this visual manner explained the parable of the Sower and its message!  Many other booths had creative titles and creative ways of presenting the different parables and proverbs in the Scriptures.

I was amazed by the enthusiasm, the creativity and the commitment of these Coptic Orthodox young people who obviously love God’s Word and want to help others to interact with it.

When I arrived Bishop Moussa was addressing the crowd and when he saw me asked me to join him on the platform and say a word to them.  As he introduced me he talked graciously about the ministry of the Bible Society in Egypt and its role in helping provide the Scriptures in attractive and creative formats for all ages.  I told those present that without this kind of vision and drive to get the Scriptures out to young people, we as a Bible Society would not succeed as a publisher.  Yes we do produce the Scriptures in as creative formats as we can but without church leaders and volunteers who will distribute and communicate these Scriptures our nice publications would simply sit on the shelves of our bookshops.

How I thank God for the vision of a person like Bishop Moussa who for thirty years has been encouraging young people to engage with the Scriptures and someone like Father Marcos who organized this day and worked so hard to get God’s Word out.  It is exciting to serve the Lord alongside great men and women of God in the church in Egypt