BEIRUT (ABP) — Baptist personnel and organizations in Lebanon were reportedly safe July 18 but are asking for prayers from their Christian brothers and sisters around the world as they hunker down against ongoing air raids from neighboring Israel and help house Lebanese displaced by the conflict.
Officials from the Southern Baptist Convention and the American Baptist Churches USA reported that their missionary personnel in the region were safe, while representatives of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in suburban Beirut reported that the school, so far unscathed, had taken in refugees from the Shiite areas of the nation targeted by Israeli forces.
An official with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, meanwhile, told an Associated Baptist Press reporter July 18 that he was not certain if CBF personnel were still in the affected region.
Israeli forces reportedly continued to shell and bomb military and civilian targets in Lebanon July 18 — seven days after the conflict began. Meanwhile, militants in southern Lebanon continued to fire rockets into northern Israel.
Israeli officials have said they are trying to destroy the military capacity of the radical Islamic Hezbollah organization, whose political wing is part of the Lebanese governing coalition. Hezbollah militants are holding hostage two Israeli soldiers captured in a cross-border raid, sparking the escalating conflict.
Marines began evacuating United States citizens from Lebanon July 18, according to multiple news reports.
Reid Trulson, the Europe and Middle East regional director for American Baptist Churches' International Ministries, said two ABC missionaries who are serving at the Arab seminary and an ABC volunteer “have reported that they are safe, so we're keeping a daily update with them.” Daniel and Sarah Chetti are employed, respectively, as a professor and an administrator at the school. Volunteer missionary Jennifer Wallace also serves at the school.
The Southern Baptist Convention's news service reported July 17 that all SBC International Mission Board personnel in the region were accounted for and safe and that IMB officials were in daily contact with them.
According to Baptist Press, John Brady, the IMB's regional coordinator for North Africa and the Middle East, said the region needs Southern Baptists' prayers.
“We're not here to take sides,” he said. “Our tasks are to pray and minister in the name of Jesus Christ, so one day the people of these troubled lands will know the Prince of Peace.”
Lance Wallace, a spokesman for CBF, told ABP the afternoon of July 18, “I do know that we have had people in that region, but I do not know the status right this second of current personnel in that region.”
Officials from the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary and the organization that runs it reported July 17 that the school and the Beirut Baptist School were safe, but encouraged prayers for the entire nation.
“Logic says that we're in for more tough days ahead. Day by day the targeted zone is expanded, and more people lose their lives and homes. Merciless killing machines target innocent people — including infants and children,” wrote Nabil Costa, executive director of the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development. The pan-evangelical Lebanese organization owns the seminary.
But, he continued, “we refuse to rely on the logic of this world and would rather put our trust in God and await His miraculous intervention.”
Costa asked the seminary's supporters to pray for the school and related organizations, which “are looking at a three-track relief intervention.”
The intervention includes housing and providing supplies for refugees at the seminary, at the affiliated Beirut Baptist School, and at Lebanese Baptist churches.
Costa also asked friends of the seminary to continue to pray:
— For “the people of our country, particularly the homeless and displaced, the mourning starting with those who are in our midst at ABTS and BBS;”
— For “the safe return of our non-Arab friends and partners to their families;”
— “For our country and the region.”
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