Turkish Christians appeal: Do not distribute the Bibles after afternoon…… | News reports

An unnamed Turkish man dug through the rubble. The stench of rotting corpses filled his nostrils. The shouts of the trapped survivors pierced his ears. Finally, he found a little girl he could help, cleared the debris around her, and pulled her gently from death’s clutches.

Social media insulted him.

The man filmed the entire episode on Facebook Live. Contrary to his expectations, derisive comments poured in from all over the country. While his religion is undeclared, Turkish Christians warned against similar earthquake exploitation by their brothers and sisters in the faith.

When the Bibles were distributed in Kahramanmaras, between the epicenters of the 7.8- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes that killed 47,000 people along the Turkish-Syrian border, local authorities responded by saying they did not want to help the church.

“This is not the way of Jesus. It’s opportunistic and doesn’t work,” said Ilyas Oyar, a senior at the Protestant Church Foundation in Diyarbakir. “We say we are Christians all the time, but it is disgusting to associate this with helping.”

The Turkish Protestant League (TeK) has worked hard to establish guidelines. And after last week expressing a “debt of gratitude” to all who have prayed and supported the relief effort, she issued six directives.

Besides banning Bibles and evangelical materials, there was a basic request to work with the local church to overcome Turkish sensitivities. These included basic requests for aid coordination, as well as the avoidance of unauthorized political comments and photos.

But permission is not the only issue. Uyar said a Christian group from Italy had come to Diyarbakir to offer help. They photographed and took pictures, and then asked for the help of the church to move to Kahramanmaras.

Maybe they will go home and help raise money. But to spare overburdened local volunteers from playing the role of tour guide, Teck suggested three axes for outreach and fundraising.

The first is organization.

The First Hope Association (FHA), a disaster relief agency founded by Turkish Protestants, has long been cooperating closely with the official authorities. More than 10 trailers have been dispatched to deliver 55 generators, 150 beds, 200 heaters, 3,000 blankets and 12,000 food boxes.

More than 4,000 people benefit daily from FHA hygiene trucks.

But, echoing TeK’s concerns about Bibles, FHA Chairman Demokan Kileci described his anger at the number of Christian organizations raising money from the disaster.

He also regretted that some of the others are well-intentioned tourists.

“They fly over a group of 20 people, stay in hotels, rent cars and come to the area,” he said. “In the meantime, our staff can’t even find places to sleep.”

He continued that Turkey is not lagging behind, as it works according to European standards with professionally trained experts. And the church began to provide psychological support to many volunteers.

Injury care workers and children’s programs can wait up to a month.

However, the job is too big for Turkey alone. The FHA was set up by the government to facilitate Samaritan’s Purse, which has erected a virtual mini-city with 22 tents, a 52-bed field hospital, and a rotating staff of about 100 international disaster relief professionals.

“We offered our help, and they took it right away,” said Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Evangelical Aid Society. “We are open to our Christian faith, but we didn’t come to hand out shoeboxes.”

Operation Christmas Baby, the popular holiday awareness campaign that has sent 209 million gift boxes around the world, has missionary and direct missionary purposes. But in Turkey, Samaritan’s Purse is focused on the urgent need to save lives, Graham said. Through his work at the US Embassy, ​​he praised the Turkish military for delivering a helicopter to the parking lot of a collapsed hospital facility outside Antakya.

He added that the local medical profession was devastated.

A week after the earthquake, Samaritan’s Purse chartered a 747 to deliver more than 500 emergency shelter items, including family tents that now hold more than 3,500 people. He received more than 900 medical care, including 25 surgeries. Graham expects Samaritan’s Purse to be around for up to four months, replenish supplies every 10 days, and will leave everything behind when the turkey is able to take over domestic care.

Until then, its staff laments the fires that are lit in the streets to help people keep warm.

“You look at the great suffering, but you don’t get paralyzed,” said Aaron Ashoff, deputy director of international projects, who draws strength from the Psalms. “You have to walk through that pain, and then come out, and say, ‘We’re Samaritan’s Purse, we’re going to move on.'”

So you have two other TeK hubs.

Soner Turfan, a TEC board member, said many churches and organizations are helping with the relief. But sister churches were identified in Diyarbakir and Antakya because of their strong local ministry. The Shima Radio Ministry he heads recently restored its signal to the latter – and it survived a 6.3-magnitude aftershock this week.

“Now we need to spread hope, healing and God’s love,” Tofan said. “I cry with them and share your grief.”

Uyar said his church is ready and has prepared others.

With a congregation of about 50 members, their numbers are low as disciple believers have been sent to minister in about a dozen Tek churches across Turkey. It facilitated coordinated relief work, and 10 of its members were dispatched from Diyarbakir to other regions for earthquake relief.

The Antakya Congregation, smaller with about 30 members, had long had a good local reputation in its neighbourhood. Now the church building is destroyed, along with about 80 percent of all buildings as “biblical Antioch was wiped off the map,” Oyer said.

Diyarbakir is further removed from the epicenters, with only about a dozen buildings collapsed – including three residences for church members, with another four among the thousands displaced as aftershocks continue to shake their now cracked apartments. Generous Turkish citizens, however, “flooded” the city with supplies.

In other places, traffic is not enough.

Oyar said the road closures and mass destruction mean that areas of the village are less well served, even by well-functioning authorities doing their best. His church, which is six hours away from Antakya, decided to rent a warehouse in Adana, just two hours away, as a distribution point for church members who serve in eight cities overall.

One now lives in a shipping container in Adiyaman.

Ender Beker, from Mardin, is joined by several others who are staying in similar places, including Eser Gunyel of the Yalova Lighthouse Church in Istanbul. Employing their welding skills, they build canvas-covered tin huts with a heating unit where they distribute blankets, mattresses and more than 20 tons of food to locals in need.

They left their families behind, as the area was devastated by looting.

“For the first week, we had to take care of ourselves,” O’Yar said. “But we cannot sit idly by.”

Adiyaman’s team got permission from the authorities and became the only evangelical presence in the city. There is a Syriac Orthodox church that has suffered “irreparable damage”, and a small Protestant congregation with seven members – one of whom is a deaf-mute believer pulled from the rubble – have all been relocated to other areas for safety.

There and elsewhere, they co-operate with their Christian and Muslim brethren alike.

A similar story was reported across the border in Aleppo, Syria. With five churches and four schools – all surviving the quake – the city’s Armenian evangelicals joined in housing a displaced population frightened by the constant tremors.

“Each church is responsible for its neighborhood, not its dispersed community,” said Harutyun Selim, head of the Armenian Protestant Churches in Syria. “Together we give hope for a brighter future – after destruction there is resurrection.”

There are 11 members of the Council of Christian Community Leaders who have met regularly for years. The day of the earthquake was a mess. On the second day, they meet and agree to ring the church bells – calling everyone to safety.

Protestants, Greek Orthodox and Muslims mixed in the courtyard. The Muslim Charitable Society discontinued it, promising to take care of any disabled Christians with monthly rents and stipends. Salem signed two Armenian families.

His community has been active in neighborhood service, with a street-cleaning initiative, open enrollment in schools, and distribution of food parcels for the needs of the war-torn city. The number of families the church has helped has now doubled from 300 — with 25 percent for members, 45 percent for other Christians, and 30 percent for Muslim beneficiaries.

The council also agreed to form teams of engineers to inspect the buildings. The government sent only three to Aleppo, where the earthquake destroyed 180 buildings. But fearful of nervous bureaucrats who might signal the livable structures for demolition, the Christians took on—and paid for—the work themselves. The official ministry agreed to accept church reports instead.

To date, only a few buildings have been marked “green”. The majority are marked “orange”, requiring imminent evacuation and substantial repairs. The ‘red’ buildings – a third of the total – will be demolished.

People trust the church, Selim said, and the Middle East Council of Churches is raising money to pay for the necessary renovations. Here, each sect visits the homes of its members.

However, many mingle in the churches.

“We are witnessing a new phenomenon,” said Selim. “The earthquake shook our consciences and shook the entire region.”

Will it also shake their faith? Some evidence from Turkey suggests this may be the case.

She posted one viral message on social media: “We entrusted our lives to Christians, Jews, Armenians and even atheists.” “But we protect our property from Muslims!”

Oyar, misattributed to the famous Turkish rock star, said the statement symbolized local frustration with contractors who built substandard flats and neighbors digging through the rubble for valuables.

But the answer – at this time – is just sincerity.

Instead of addressing Muslims, the elder of the church quoted the Bible to his fellow Christians. When you give to the needy, don’t let your left hand know what your right is doing, Oyar withdrew from the Sermon on the Mount. Don’t worry about the fruit, he continued, remembering Jesus’ healing of the ten lepers, only one of whom returned with thanksgiving.

And if the extremists accuse them of exploiting the needy, he said, remember Peter’s saying: Keep a clear conscience, so that those who speak malice against your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.

But his most damning prayer came from Paul, applying to well-wisher Christians what the apostle originally addressed to the Jews in Rome: God’s name is blasphemed among the nations because of you.

Maybe it’s time to talk about Jesus in six months.

“When we lay down our lives and ask for nothing in return, people become curious,” Oyar said. They will ask, “Where did this love come from?”

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