Home of Jesus the King Church was established on September 20th, 2009 during a prayer meeting started by Pastor Saleem Shalash, his wife Nisreen, and some dear brothers and sisters. Our goal from that prayer meeting onwards was for Home of Jesus the King Church to become a Gospel center for the neighborhood that we lived in. However, since God’s plans are always better than our own plans, and His ways are always higher than our ways. God blessed our meeting and He brought the people so that very soon our attendance had grown to 20 people, with the result that our house became very crowded. As I spent time in prayer, God gave me a vision to rent a house, next to the house in which we were living, to be a place of prayer and worship.
We had no clue how we would be able to afford the rent, but we knew that the Lord is faithful and that He would make a way, as He was the one that commanded us to move out in faith. As we begun have meetings in the new space, God increased the number of people even further. We eventually had almost 70 people gathering for meetings which meant that we had outgrown the house that we were renting. It was time to strep out in faith again and find a bigger place!
The Lord once again spoke to me while in prayer. He reminded me that my wife had once mentioned of a facility in Nazareth that belonged to a carpenter. I was to go and speak to this carpenter about renting his facility. He agreed to renting out half the facility, but it wasn’t ready to function as a church at all. There were no restrooms, carpets, stairs, air-conditioning, light and sound equipment at all.
However, God blessed our renovations on the building, and for two whole months we worked together like one family. The Lord supplied the finances for the rent on a month-to-month basis, and provided us with a new venue to worship Him and adore Him. To this day we are still gathered here as Home of Jesus the King Church in Nazareth.
With time we were able to expand the facility’s floorspace, allowing more than 100 people together for church services. We also added a second floor for Sunday School, and the children were absolutely thrilled to have an entire floor to themselves! As it stands, we are once again about to outgrow our current facility and we are praying that the Lord will supply us with a wonderful new facility in which to gather, with many more new believers joining us in worship.
Currently our monthly rent stands at $1200 per month, which is a very challenging amount for us as a church. For the same price we could take out a loan and purchase our own building, but we need the Lord’s direction. For us to move on from the facility in which we’ve been worshipping for many years now, we will need the Lord to open the doors for us and show us the place that will serve as His sanctuary.
Please stand with us in prayer that the Lord will enlarge our territory, that He would provide us with His appointed facility, and that we as a church will have an even bigger impact on Nazareth and Israel for the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.