Thirteen years ago, Nader Kawar stepped into Maranatha Chapel in suburban Chicago to approach Pastor Doug Banks about renting the church out for an Arab-American ministry.
But Banks wasn’t interested in renting the church, Kawar recalls. Instead, the pastor said, “We’ve been praying for an Arabic service. Join us and be one church.”
A year before, Maranatha, in Evergreen Park, Illinois, had launched a Spanish service. However, Banks wanted even more diversity because he saw the neighborhood around it changing.
“Who do you see when you go to the local PTA or the Home Depot?” Banks remembers asking church members. “What languages do you hear? Why shouldn’t our church mirror the community?”
Having served as a missionary in Mexico, Banks used his familiarity with the language and culture to launch the Spanish-language ministry, but he lacked this connection to the Arab culture. So, after Kawar began attending, he and his brother soon assumed leadership roles at Maranatha. The two then became ordained ministers, and now Kawar’s brother is the pastor of a church in Jordan.
Since the Arab ministry began, it has ballooned from about 10 members to 70. The Spanish language ministry became so successful that it outgrew Maranatha and is now an independent church. A ministry Maranatha started later for Messianic Jews enjoyed the same fate. Today, the Arab ministry and an African ministry (of about 25 worshippers) continue worshipping at the church, which averages 240 worshippers on weekends.
The ministries meet separately on Sundays, but several times a year they unify to worship. There is just one youth ministry, however.
Kawar said young Arab-Americans particularly benefit from attending a multicultural church.
“Our youth—they deal with two cultures,” he says. “When they go to the Arab church, there are some things they could not relate to, so they like our model. The children feel they belong.”
