Paul Calvert talks to Madleine Sara, professor at Bethlehem Bible College, about founding A Pot In His Hand Ministries, and the challenges facing women in Arab culture.

Madleine Sara

Paul: What is A Pot In His Hand Ministries?

Madleine: A Pot In His Hand ministry is a ministry that I founded about three years ago. It is targeted towards women, mainly women of the West Bank. I also do some work in Jerusalem and other places, but because the place is located in Bethlehem my focus is towards these women.

Our objective is to reach out to women from different backgrounds.

The main focus is counselling and doing workshops with women and meetings once a month, meetings that aim to create awareness towards our psychological health and towards our background, and how all of these things affect our daily life.

The main thing that I aim with this ministry is that women will find their value, and they would start identifying their passion for their life, so that they could be of use within society and within the Church as well.

Paul: Is this a unique ministry?

Madleine: Yes I believe so, because we don't have ministries that really focus on psychological issues. There are a lot of ministries that focus on Bible study and discipleship and reaching out. All these things are really great and I do use them as part of the ministry, but what is unique about this ministry is the focus on our psychological side, which is usually neglected.

I used to minister with women for 13 years in a church. What I found is that sometimes we really focus on the spiritual side of our being and then we would find that people would suffer in character. So through that ministry I found that we are lacking that part that we should be focusing on.

We should be reflecting on our past, the way we were raised by our parents or the society. We are living in an Arab culture, which in many places is really hard and tough.

This is from where my passion was birthed. I was ministering in local church and I did further studies. I finished my master's degree in Christian counselling and now I am working on my doctorate on spiritual leadership formation, but through that I was really watching and observing how that side of us is being neglected and we need to be more aware of that. This is why I think this ministry is really unique.

Paul: What age group do you work with, is it all ages?

Madleine: I could say it is open for all ages, but my focus group is the young women leaders, in terms of my passion. I want to see a new generation of leaders coming up from these workshops and lectures and one on one counselling.

It's kind of like the bottom line. It's mentoring leaders through counselling, through the workshops, and through the lectures.

I am able to see and spot potential woman leaders who are already active and involved in society or church and help them mature and grow. I find someone who understands them and someone they can lean on. At the same time it's all based on spirituality, on the Bible and scriptures.