Middle East/North Africa (MNN) — Where do you start if you want to reach the entire Middle East/North Africa region for Christ? If you’re The MENA Leadership Center, you begin with hundreds of ministry leaders currently at work in the MENA region.
Instead of teaching Gospel workers how to fill leadership positions, MLC works with believers currently in a leadership role. These leaders already have “boots on the ground,” MLC’s Fadi Sharaiha says.
“We are empowering them so that we will have a much larger impact. Whatever they are learning, they are applying in their ministries,” Sharaiha says.
Executives must often expand their knowledge in various fields, from persecution to HR to strategic planning. MLC connects Christian leaders in every workshop with a subject matter expert or SME. More about that here.
“The training inspired me to new approaches to ministry… I began to implement the material, combining both the passion and skills for a more significant impact in God’s kingdom. Thank you for the abundant, precious resources you left in our hands.” – Key Ministry Leader from Jordan
(Photo, caption courtesy of MLC)
Using a format fit for adult learning, leaders in MLC workshops are “meeting and learning from each other” about a particular topic, Sharaiha explains. “The SME, or the subject matter expert, facilitates the whole learning process.”
During one MLC workshop, believers learned how to develop online training courses. The “trickle-down effect” of training leaders at an executive level was phenomenal.
“We trained maybe 60 or 70 different people from 20 ministries in the MENA,” Sharaiha says.
“Those ministries took the materials and produced around 100 training programs with around 15,000 people being trained online.”
Another popular workshop originated during the pandemic. “In Digital Church, we have trained 150 people in the last three years,” Sharaiha says.
“Today, [there is an] online presence for different ministries and churches, and we have around 102,000 people benefiting from this.”
MLC workshops are usually reserved for leaders in senior or executive positions. “It is important that we can work with the right people rather than building the capacity of people who are not going to lead in those ministries,” Sharaiha says.
If you want to invest strategically in the MENA region, consider partnering with the MENA Leadership Center.
“Please pray that we have the right SMEs – subject matter experts – for our teams. Please pray that those ministries and churches in the Middle East and North Africa will be rooted in Christ,” Sharaiha requests.
Header image is a representative stock photo courtesy of Levi Meir Clancy/Unsplash.
