Written by: Shelli Alaniz (MA in Biblical Studies 2023), serves Associate Director of Women’s Ministry for Ananias House, and is the Founder/Trainer of SURGE Team Building.
In 2019, 40 women from four countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) gathered around a room, brought together to build the body of Christ in the 10/40 window. Even within the room, you could feel the division among these women, an echo of borders wrought with conflict, war, and suffering. It would take five years to dissolve those barriers between them and build a community grounded in biblical culture. By 2024, those same women were embracing one another like sisters, so grateful for the opportunity to gather together again and strengthen the thread that binds Christ’s body as one. To witness what God has done over these five years has been profound.
Even though Christianity has its roots deeply embedded in the 10/40 window, today it represents some of the most unreached and unevangelized people in the world. In an area filled with endemic persecution, the Church has not only maintained a presence but has seen incredible growth through that persecution. As the Church has grown, so has the need for resources to equip the body of Christ. In response to that need, Ananias House (a Houston, Texas-based non-profit ministry led by a native Syrian man) launched a development program in 2019 that focused on investing in 40 selected women from across the MENA region over five years to train them in discipleship, leadership, and trauma healing.
Discipleship training focused on teaching women how to study God's Word to cultivate a relationship with Him and grow spiritually, to learn biblical culture, and to practice abiding in Christ. Leadership training focused on understanding themselves and their identity in Christ better, how a healthy leader impacts the ministries they lead, and how to lead with humility. Trauma healing training concentrated on healing heart wounds and understanding the grief process. In addition to helping these women grow spiritually, the program aimed to help them lead other women in their churches and communities effectively.
Ananias House created a training team from the states and each American woman committed five years to this initiative to invest in these women's lives. Since developing relationships and building trust takes time, the MENA women initially had difficulty opening up, especially with persons from other countries. The team focused on cultivating an environment of love and acceptance, and over time, guarded hearts eventually softened. A new community developed grounded in the tenets of Biblical community and honoring one another as image-bearers of Christ. Though antithetical to their cultures, the demonstrations of affirmation and honor helped cultivate spaces of unprecedented transparency.
As the relational connections deepened, the ground became fertile to address the heart wounds that the women had all clearly experienced. The level of trauma among the women ranged from economic decline and hardship to surviving war and losing loved ones. Suffering and persecution were commonplace, and for many, anesthetized them to the severity of their circumstances. The training team invested a few years into addressing heart wounds within the context of small groups, helping the MENA women to talk, process, and ultimately walk through their grief journeys. As the training team became aware of the depths of some of their trauma and the need for additional counseling, they worked one-on-one with each one to facilitate Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) sessions focused on deep trauma healing and addressing PTSD and complex PTSD symptoms. The results were robust as women experienced healing from wounds decades in the making.
In addition, the team helped the women see their cultures in the mirror of biblical culture. To transform the cultural mindset, we presented alternative perspectives to honor-shame tenets that might impede spiritual growth. Understanding ways Islamic culture infiltrated the Church and contributed to syncretism – combatting the honor-shame paradigms with the truth of God's Word – was both a daunting and a liberating experience for the women. It was daunting because stepping away from cultural paradigms opened them up to experiencing shame from their communities, and the women had to be prepared for this reality. The answer to this dilemma was community.
Community is a significant aspect of Arab culture and represents the foundation from which thoughts, beliefs, and choices flow. As women face counter-cultural options for living their lives, ostracization from their communities of origin can occur. The training focused on teaching the women to cultivate a Biblical community where relationships could be rooted in God’s design for community – one of love, support, honoring one another, accepting each other, and serving one another selflessly. The biblical community was modeled for the women over the five years. Multiple small groups focused on reinforcing these community concepts by understanding themselves better (using DISC assessments and reflecting on spiritual gifts), honoring the women around them (by doing affirmation exercises and pointing out their strengths and gifts), and healing from heart wounds (and building trust). This was built around a solid framework of studying God’s Word together and consistently letting Scripture shape and direct the dynamics of the training and the relationships that were being formed. This community model proved a vital piece of the puzzle because living in a communal culture meant that, for these women to live counter-culturally, they would need a new community around them living in that space as well.
In April 2024, Ananias House graduated these 40 women from the Ananias House Women's Leadership Program. No longer could we see the boundary lines represented by their countries, but instead, we witnessed women who learned what it meant to come together as the body of Christ, to live within the Bible culture rather than in the shadows of the Islamic culture, and to love and honor one another as they built a new community focused on glorifying God. They taught us what it meant to walk in faith when comfort was elusive, and suffering was a standard part of their lives. They taught us what pouring your life out for God and for the Kingdom looks like. They taught us what it means to live moment by moment in a felt need for God.
One woman shared, “For the first time, I love that I am a woman. I know now that I am a daughter of the King and that my life has value and worth. I know now what it means to love and honor another woman. And that God will use us to build His Kingdom.”
What a gift to witness God working over these five years and to come alongside the beautiful and profound work that He is doing in the 10/40 window. As we prepare for the launch of our next five-year program with a new group of women, our anticipation continues to grow as we look forward in wonder of what God will do next.
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