Our Community Outreach Center Activities This Summer

Our Community Outreach Center includes A Pot in His Hands women’s ministry, the Community Training Department, the Shepherd Society, and the New Vision Media Center. All did some amazing things for the community during summer vacation, and will continue through the fall.

First, A Pot in His Hands women’s ministry recently had a three-day retreat for the team in Jericho. The main goal was to develop and practice spiritual disciplines, such as fellowshipping as a team. They also continued their monthly workshops, hosting one entitled “My Mental Health” for a group of young women. In June, the ministry held an evening event for women in the community entitled “Dealing with Shame and Disgrace,” with help from a team from Kensington Church in the US. During the event, women shared their testimonies of how the feeling of shame and disgrace is the fear of being affected by the judgment and ideas of others towards them. The ministry also published the 18th issue of its magazine, available online and in hardcopy for female readers in Arabic. In September, they will hold a leadership conference that includes women leaders from different ministries and churches.

The Community Training Department had to cancel some events, such as the kids’ summer camp, due to the reconstruction of the college’s entrances. Yet, they were able to be very active during the summer. They did Hebrew courses (level one) for people from the community, and some English courses for kids (levels one and two) during their summer break. The children were able to speak, read, and listen to English enjoyably and actively. They also started a new program this summer called “English Discoveries.” This is a comprehensive, interactive online program with proven teaching methods using multimedia technology. For internationals, they have two online courses coming up. First is one of the Discover course series with Mr. Haytham Dieck entitled “Geography of the Bible,” which focuses on Old Testament Biblical Geography. It is offered to our international friends interested in learning more about the Bible from its original land. Stay tuned for more details and testimonies on this course. The second online international course will be the Arabic course in September (levels one and three). If you are interested in this course, click here.  

The New Vision Media Center is planning for staff training this summer on social media platforms. They will be learning about all the new trends related to social media so they can improve their platforms and skills. The team is also preparing for a new project in which they will produce four short films, 7-10 minutes each, focusing on topics like child labor, women’s employment and their leadership role in institutions. The Center will also continue working on producing more episodes focusing on severe disability cases.

And last, the Shepherd Society took the students of Bethlehem Bible College last month on its yearly mission trip to Jordan to serve the Syrian refugees there. The team organized a summer camp for the refugee children and a special activity for women there, in addition to visiting refugees in their homes and spending time with them. Read more about this trip here. The Society also organized a free medical clinic for people from the community with a group of doctors from the US. There were different clinics, such as eye clinics, gynecology, general medicine, and dentists. Hundreds of people from the Bethlehem area benefitted from the free clinics and were blessed by the team of doctors and our students and staff who helped them.

We at Bethlehem Bible College are very blessed and proud of all the departments and their amazing work in serving the community and bringing the love of Jesus to all people around us!