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Hurrying through an alley in Gaza's infamously violent Jabaliya refugee camp, Hanna Massad, pastor of Gaza Baptist Church and the only evangelical Gazan with a doctoral degree, lugs groceries to a needy Muslim family on a chilly weekday morning.

Twenty feet away, a 20-year-old Palestinian carefully wraps his semiautomatic weapon in a prayer rug, puts it into his bicycle's milk-crate basket, and rides off. But Massad doesn't flinch. Concealed weapons in the Gaza Strip are not rare. Love of neighbor is.

The 9,600 Christians represent less than 1 percent of Gaza's 1.3 million residents. But Massad, who returned to the Gaza Strip from Fuller in 1999, sees his mission as not only to feed Gaza's hungry, but also to empower its embattled Christians to spread a table of God's grace in a land of enmity.

People have lived in this area, twice the size of Washington, D.C., for 34 centuries. The Gaza Strip in 2005 remains desperate and disputed ground between Israelis and Palestinians. It is without an acre of lasting peace. Terrorism, corruption, military rule, hunger, sickness, and mental illness all stew in the same pot. Earlier this year, Masaad invited Christianity Today to visit Gaza. Most Palestinians in Gaza, including its Christian minority, are descendants of refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

This summer, Israel expects to relocate 9,000 Israeli settlers from Gaza in a historic pullback, which many Zionists hotly resist.

Arriving at his destination, Massad steps over the wastewater flowing past his feet and knocks on the door. A smiling and bushy-bearded Abu Geni Abdullah welcomes the pastor, most likely his only Christian friend. Abu Geni rolls out mats on the floor. We sit as his veiled wife serves hot, sweet tea, and Abu Geni and Massad banter in Arabic. During this encounter, Massad finds that providing a listening ear is as important as delivering food.

For a more in-depth visit, Massad heads for the home of Abu Mohammed, where three generations live under one leaky roof in a two-room hovel. Each night, three adults and seven children sleep on the floor. It's mid-February, 60 degrees, and the children's feet are bare.

Massad immediately notices that nearly everyone in the family has an outbreak of painful skin welts that look like ringworm. With a jobless rate in excess of 50 percent, basic medical care and education are out of reach for most Palestinian families in Gaza. Abu Mohammed and 60,000 others lost their jobs in 2000 after Israel all but closed its borders to Palestinian workers due to terrorist attacks.

As family members chronicle for Massad their woes, 18-month-old daughter Eman whimpers and licks her infected wrist, speckled with pink welts. "May I pray?" Massad asks. Abu Mohammed's wife agrees, and the family gathers around as he asks God to bless them. Massad leaves and gets into the car, but he suddenly realizes he forgot something. He grabs the box of groceries and returns to the family, also arranging medical care and payment for skin ointment.

Massad was raised Greek Orthodox, the family's church home for generations. As a teen, his faith was energized at Gaza Baptist Church, where he made a personal commitment to Christ, and he soon sensed a calling to become a pastor—Gaza's first native evangelical pastor. He left to further his studies at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, where he watched from afar as Gaza Baptist dwindled.

Later on, I ask Massad why he came back to Gaza from Southern California. At a youthful 45, he could have been enjoying a comfortable pastorate. In conversation with him and other Palestinian Christians, I learned that God speaks Arabic—that is, Arabs have been at the heart of Christian history. Arabs were present at Pentecost (Acts 2:11) and were included in the earliest Christian communities. Today, Christians in Gaza may be Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, or Pentecostal. Each one believes God will do something special in Gaza, and they want to be there.

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July 2005, Vol. 49, No. 7