Cairo – The Baptist appeal for prayer at the outset of the wave of Egyptian demonstrations led to unexpected results. Donations arriving from the international Baptist community made it possible to supply many needy Muslim as well as Baptist families with food packages. And not only that: Funds were sufficient to carry out similar programmes in all 18 of the country’s Baptist congregations. Mounir Malaty (Cairo), the Baptist Union’s Vice-President, wrote: ‘The Lord has been very good to us and even revived our entire church!’ It was moving to observe how Muslims and their children entered a church together with Christians for the first time in their lives in order to receive the food packages. Malaty reported: ‘One look into the faces of the children showed me that better relations between Christians and Muslims will indeed be possible in the future.’ He also received reports from other congregations confirming that this food ministry had helped supply evangelicals with a more positive image within the general population.

The Cairo congregation also used the present period of uncertainty to increase the size of its building. The structure had last been enlarged in 1963. All attempts since then to obtain permission for highly-necessary construction work were rebuffed by city officials. Additional room for children’s and youth work was needed. So they chose to use the present transitional period to enlarge the building. Within two days it was possible to mount the steel frame for a completely new floor on the roof of the church. ‘The Lord himself gave us the starting shot,’ Malaty wrote. The church hopes and prays for the possibility to add one more floor and make its roof into a playing field. The congregation in Alexandria has also begun adding an extra floor to its structure. In order to pay for one more floor, the Cairo congregation still needs 17.000 euros. The pastor requests that Baptists throughout the world might place this concern on their list of prayer requests. Haste is necessary, for ‘one never knows in Egypt what the next day may bring’.

The Baptist congregation in Cairo has roughly 300 members; Egypt’s Baptist Union consists of 18 congregations with 2.100 members. Eighty-seven percent of the country’s 83 million inhabitants are Muslim; another 10% are Coptic Orthodox. Evangelicals are a tiny minority.