Jerusalem
and the Middle East
Church Association

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Introducing…
John Clark - Chairman Elect

As our present chairman Mr. Richard Owens has explained, he will pass the leadership of the Jerusalem and the East Mission Trust to Mr. John Clark in the near future. We have asked John to write of his Middle East experience and readers will surely agree that the Trust could not be passed to more experienced hands...

“My connections with the Middle East date from the three months between school and university that I spent travelling in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. It was during that visit that I was attracted to work in the Middle East and after university I spent the period between 1968 and 1979 in Iran involved in church related publishing. I remained in Iran for several months after the Islamic revolution and was then appointed as the Regional Secretary for the Middle East and Pakistan for the Church Mission Society (CMS). For seven years I travelled across the region from Pakistan to Algeria developing connections for CMS with Anglican and other Churches in the area, and particularly with the four dioceses that make up the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East. The experience opened my eyes to the challenges and opportunities that local Christians faced in the midst of great social change arising from growing Islamic consciousness, economic development from oil wealth, the consequences of the unhealed sore of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, and the problems of external intervention whether Russia in Afghanistan, or the USA in Lebanon.

In 1987 I was appointed Communications Secretary for CMS until 1992 when I became Secretary to the Church of England’s Partnership for World Mission (PWM). JMECA is an Associate Member of PWM which was a constituent part of the Church of England’s Board of Mission of which I became Secretary in 2000. Re-structuring was in the air and in 2003 the Departments for Mission and Social Responsibility, Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns and Hospital Chaplaincy Council were combined to form the Mission and Public Affairs Division of which I became the first Director. It was a wide ranging post, leading a team of colleagues in the national work of the Church of England to do with issues of public affairs and government relations, social responsibility, urban and rural issues, inter faith relations, minority ethnic concerns, the environment, hospital chaplaincy, mission and evangelism (including the work on ‘mission shaped church’) and world mission through the Church’s mission agencies.

I have been connected with the work of JMECA since the early 1980s, joining the Council in 1992 and becoming a director in 1999. My lived experience has been in Iran, but I have travelled and visited the other three dioceses on numerous occasions and am very committed to supporting the life and witness of the Anglican/Episcopal Churches in the region - not least through the work of JMECA.”

The Treasurer Says…

We hope to publish in every issue of Bible Lands notes from the Treasurer on our finances and funding. John Pringle writes…

“As Treasurer it is very satisfying to be able to allocate our funds to help a wide variety of projects in the four Dioceses of the Province. Here are some recent examples: