“The book you are holding will be considered by some as controversial.”
So starts the first line of the introduction of Brother Andrew’s book Light Force: A Stirring Account of the Church Caught in the Middle East Crossfire.
Just the book for me. 
The Author:
Some of you may remember Brother Andrew from his first book The God Smuggler. It was an account of his journey encouraging the church behind the Iron Curtain – as well as smuggling Bibles and other literature to the people.
He has challenged me in a lot of ways through The God Smuggler and The Calling (not to mention Light Force). In fact, a good deal of my “mission practice” comes from him – ie. to calling to go and encourage the church, where ever it is, no matter what; showing up is 90% of the battle.
The Book:
Light Force tells the story of Brother Andrew’s work among the Christian Church in the middle east – mostly Lebanon and Israel. [@more@]
What makes this book different is that it focus on the little known (or cared about) churches among the Palestinians.
Of course, that is why Brother Andrew went to the Middle East – to encourage those believers caught between two waring ethic groups to be the church. In other words, he went to strengthen what was left of the 2000 year old Christian Church and help them minister to the people around them (both Muslim and Jew).
Interesting Fact: There have been Christians in Bethlehem and the surrounding area since the time of Christ.
Now before you all fire off nasty emails to the author about the theological stance of Israel and the end times, please understand that I am not “anti-Israel” – I am pro-Christ.
I don’t care what race a believer is – if they follow Jesus, then they are a brother. This is the same message that Brother Andrew promotes in his book.
One of the cool parts of the book is when the Palestinian Christians get together with a bunch of Messianic Christians!
I love this quote by a Arab minister (a lady nontheless):
Jesus ministered to people through their needs. He went to sick people not to the healthy people – people sick in spirit, sick emotionally. That’s mostly what we have here in Beit Sahour. We have people with broken hearts. Most believe that God doesn’t love them. They think God loves the Jewish people, but He doesn’t love the Arabic people. They are not the chosen people, so they don’t deserve God’s love. All Arabic people feel that way, especially Muslims.
How sad is that?
Somehow the Arabic people go the impression that God does not love them… wow… that breaks my heart.
I pray that the Church – especially the Western church – will remember their brother and sisters who are caught in middle of a ugly situation.