Source: Joel News, October 2016<\/p>\n
Mathild Sabbagh, 26, returns to her hometown. She is the first female minister in Syria. Her town in northern Syria is surrounded by ISIS. Last year her cousin was killed by Muslim extremists. Her brother who is also a pastor was kidnapped.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there are no men who can lead the church at this time, I\u2019ll do it!\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the war her church still had almost 200 members, but today only 30 or 40 people have remained. ISIS has decimated the number of believers. \u201cSome were killed, others fled. From my primary school friends no one stayed. Everybody\u2019s gone. The war left our city shot to pieces and our entire community beaten apart.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it doesn\u2019t keep Mathild from going back. She is more determined than ever, and feels a great sense of urgency. \u201cI believe in the mysterious growth of the Kingdom of God, even against the odds. I go back to my church because I know I\u2019m needed there. The church is like my own family. I\u2019ve learned all my life that I can bring my talents to the church. So now I\u2019ll bring what I have.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00bb Read more of this story<\/a> or subscribe to Joel News<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Joel News, October 2016 Mathild Sabbagh, 26, returns to her hometown. She is the first female minister in Syria. Her town in northern Syria is surrounded by ISIS. Last year her cousin was killed by Muslim extremists. Her brother who is also a pastor was kidnapped. \u201cIf there are no men who can lead … Continue reading SYRIA: \u201cIf There Are No Men to Lead the Church, I Will!\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6689,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6688\/revisions\/6689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}