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It has taken years, but Elhajj now believes the best way to interact with Israelis is over a coffee table in Bethlehem.

"When you come to Christ, you have to understand that he died for me to reconcile me to God," Elhajj said. "How am I as a Christian, as a citizen of the kingdom, supposed to act? As a peacemaker."

Decades before Elhajj was confronted with these questions within the Muslim community, BBC president Bishara Awad, a child during the 1948 war, faced similar questions from within the local Christian community. For years he held Jews responsible for the sniper killing of his Greek Orthodox father, unforgettably witnessed by Awad as a nine-year-old in front of his home in Jerusalem.

Awad, just like Elhajj, experienced a deep change of heart, while he was director of an orphanage school. Many students were nominal Christians, and Awad was unable to awaken their faith. "Nobody was coming to the Lord. So one night I went to the Lord and I prayed, 'Lord Jesus, what's happening?'

"The Lord was pointing to my heart, because I could see these young students had the same hatred I had, because each one of them had suffered one way or another because of the war with Israel and the war with the Jews. And so that's when I prayed and asked the Lord to forgive me, and that's when the Lord changed my life completely.

"The next day, I went to chapel like every day, but something was different. Students were coming to the Lord, and students were asking, 'We want to continue our education, where can we go?'" In time, he founded Bethlehem Bible College to meet those needs.

Elhajj, Awad, and Munayer don't whitewash past injustices, but their personal experiences of reconciliation give them a vision for God's kingdom that transcends old barriers. Awad told CT, "Talk to anybody here in the Christian community, and if I tell them Ali Elhajj is coming to visit us, quickly they know that this is not a Christian name. But we praise God that the Lord has found him. Jesus Christ is not for Christians only—he died for the whole world, and the whole world includes Muslims."

Such endorsements mean that the Bethlehem Christmas Project gains legitimacy for its model of ministry: Christmas plus reconciliation. Awad says Elhajj is simply being a good neighbor. "Nobody can deny that if you care for people, if you truly love them, you need to give them the best thing you have: the Good News of Jesus Christ."

In early December, Elhajj and his 2008 ministry team will board a plane, headed for the Middle East. This team of about 13 from churches in Florida, South Carolina, and Iowa, together with believers from Israel and Palestine, will visit Bethlehem to distribute gifts to as many as 500 children.

Abdulluah Awwad, director of the Al-Basma Center for Children with Special Needs, remembers the reaction of children during last year's visit. "They don't think about who [the gifts] come from. They just see the gifts and feel happy with it. They are deprived of the simplest means of life."

This glues together all the pieces from Elhajj's original vision: Israeli, Palestinian, and American believers all working to address unmet needs in the Middle East. Elhajj told CT he believes that stereotypical perceptions of evangelicals being close-minded is just as unfounded as some evangelical stereotypes of Muslims. "If you'll just engage people, you'll find a wide range of beliefs and motivations. You try to find folks who are open, are ready to learn, and want to do the will of God."

When Christmas becomes a time for faithful celebration and border-crossing reconciliation, Christians discover afresh why God sent his Son.

Jonathan Miles is a journalist based in the Middle East.

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The Bethlehem Christmas Project has a website with more information, a blog, and a photo gallery.

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December 2008, Vol. 52, No. 12