On September 23, Mustafa put his family of five on a small motorbike and drove seven hours north from Tyre to a village in the Lebanese mountains, weaving slowly through lines of gridlocked vehicles. Some in those cars—like his brother Hussein’s family of six—would not arrive for another two days.
The path normally takes two hours.
Mustafa, and thousands like him, were frantically fleeing Israeli bombs aimed at Hezbollah, the Shiite militia designated by the US government as a terrorist organization. Until that moment, he and his brother had been agricultural workers in a farm outside the city, living in a spartan two-bedroom apartment provided by his employers.
CT agreed to withhold his family name for security reasons. Mustafa is a Christian originally from Afrin, a Kurdish area in northwest Syria. Asked if he shared his brother’s faith, Hussein said, “Not yet.”
Their home nation does not recognize converts from Islam. And while Lebanon is the only Arab nation to grant freedom of conversion, Tyre is a socially conservative Shiite city under the political sway of Hezbollah.
This was Mustafa’s second displacement. In 2013, he and his brother fled the Syrian civil war. But over the past five years, as poverty rates tripled in Lebanon, the nominal Sunni Muslims found support from a local Christian ministry offering aid.
Eighteen months ago, Mustafa professed faith in Christ.
“I follow Jesus,” he said. “He saved me.”
When Israel began its ground invasion of Lebanon, it issued evacuation orders to both Muslim and Christian villages in the south. But the large majority of the displaced come from Shiite areas suspected of housing weapons depots and underground tunnels—where resident Shiites may or may not align with Hezbollah’s Islamist ideology.
According to a survey conducted in early 2024, while 78 percent of Shiites viewed positively the militia’s role in regional affairs, only 39 percent said they felt closest to Hezbollah among Lebanon’s political parties, compared to 37 percent of Shiites who felt closest to none.
Only 6 percent of Christians had “a lot of trust” in the Shiite militia.
Within these realities, Christians are eager—and cautious—to help. Gospel commitments and national solidarity require hospitality. Sectarian guardedness encourages suspicion. And Israel’s bombing campaign creates fear that welcoming the displaced might make them a target.
Many are helping anyway.
Mustafa and Hussein found shelter in living quarters offered by an evangelical church in the mixed Muslim-Christian village where they sought refuge. A plastic rug covered half of the cement floor in their private allotment, with thin mattresses pressed up against the walls. Blankets and pillows strewn about were evidence of their children’s fitful night of sleep.
“This is our message: to show love in action as we lead people to Christ,” the church’s pastor said. (CT is granting him anonymity due to the uncertain political situation in Lebanon.) “As they receive, we teach them to give.”
His congregation currently hosts about 100 people, displaced from their homes in the south and in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. More than half are from neighboring Syria; the rest are primarily Lebanese Shiites. The pastor said 60 percent of the total are believers in Jesus. Others, like Hussein, are their relatives or Muslims already closely connected to churches in their original area.
They all pitched in to prepare 500 tuna sandwiches for local distribution.
Not Just Talk
Hezbollah’s current conflict with Israel began last year on October 8, one day after Hamas invaded from Gaza and killed approximately 1,200 Israelis, taking 250 hostages. The Lebanese militia initiated what it called a “support front” for Hamas, launching missiles that caused 80,000 Israelis to flee from villages near the border.
A similar number of Lebanese also fled from Israel’s retaliation, and for 11 months the two sides had kept their missile exchange relatively contained, aiming to avoid a larger and perhaps regional conflict with Iran, which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah as proxy forces.
That status quo held despite the deaths of 12 Druze children, hit by a Hezbollah missile in the Golan Heights, and Israel’s increased targeting of militia leaders inside Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. US-led negotiations to de-escalate or stop the fighting failed to overcome Hezbollah’s insistence on a simultaneous ceasefire in Gaza. And on September 17, Israel included the return of northern citizens to their homes as an official war goal.
Hours later, an attack of exploding pagers, and, the next day, of walkie-talkies—widely suspected to be conducted by Israel despite its official denial—killed tens and wounded thousands of militia members and affiliated medical personnel in Lebanon and Syria. Six days later, the bombing campaign began. Israeli officials reportedly stated their policy was “de-escalation through escalation.”
Lebanon estimates that the fighting has displaced 1.2 million of its 6 million residents. More than 950 public schools, warehouses, and other facilities now serve as shelters. Ninety percent of the displaced, nearly half of whom are children, are unable to meet their basic needs.
The above-mentioned mountain village pastor secured permission from the Muslim-led municipality to provide aid alongside several other relief groups in coordination with a local ministry run by a church elder.
One local assistance coordinator, a member of the heterodox Druze Muslim community, said “the church is number one” in providing help, while some other groups “say they are helping but are mostly just talk.”
But with classrooms throughout the country filled with families seeking refuge, he laments that his three children have nowhere to go for school.
The last Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, in 2006, sent 900,000 people from their homes. Then, churches and citizens of all sects rallied to help, but today, the resources are far fewer.
Many are reluctant to rent their apartments to displaced Shiites, afraid the refuge seekers cannot—or will not—continue to pay. Hyperinflation and a 98 percent currency devaluation had many Lebanese already scurrying simply to provide for themselves. Political gridlock has kept the nation without a president for two years, while the prime minister works in a caretaker capacity.
Who to Blame?
Many people blame Hezbollah.
“I am against Shiites in politics, but in humanity we can’t refuse to help them,” said the Druze assistance coordinator. “We suffered from Syria; we suffered from Iran. Maybe we are waiting for America to help.”
American and French diplomats attempted to broker a three-week ceasefire in Lebanon, and the Lebanese foreign minister stated that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed. Days later, an Israeli airstrike using bunker-buster bombs leveled four residential apartment buildings and killed Nasrallah in his underground quarters. US officials denied knowledge of Nasrallah’s approval.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly agreed to ceasefire negotiations, then backtracked. Israel stated its war is against Hezbollah, not Lebanon. Netanyahu, addressing the Lebanese, referenced the campaign against Hamas.
“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” he stated. “Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”
Lebanon has long officially supported implementation of UN resolution 1701, adopted to end the 2006 war. It calls for the disarmament of all militias and the withdrawal of Hezbollah beyond the Litani River, about 18 miles north of the Israeli border. But Lebanon’s 2008 effort to dismantle the militia’s private communication network failed after Hezbollah’s armed show of force in Beirut.
The United States is reportedly pushing now for Lebanese politicians to elect a president, who, under an unwritten but 80-year-old agreement, must be a Maronite Christian. Members of the Lebanese parliament, divided equally between Muslims and Christians, elect the head of state.
But Christians are divided into two main political parties and other smaller ones, some of which ally with Hezbollah as a political entity to win support from the Shiite electorate. Prior to the Israeli escalation, leading Shiite politicians repeatedly blocked completion of the voting process for the Christian president, insisting on a candidate sympathetic to Hezbollah’s cause.
But the two primary Christian party heads are understood to nurture presidential ambitions and have failed to work together consistently to represent their community.
“I blame Christian leaders—they work for their own interests, not the interests of our country,” the mountain village pastor said. “If you give the space to others, you can’t blame them when they take it.”
In 2000, Hezbollah won widespread social favor, even from many Christians, by compelling Israel to end its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, originally intended to impose a buffer zone against incursions of Palestinian militants. Since then, the militia squandered Sunni Muslim support by entering the civil war in Syria on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, publicly confirmed in 2013. Ordinary Christians joined many in disenchantment when Hezbollah sided with sectarian leaders against the 2019 popular revolution, ushering in the past five years of economic decline.
The militia’s support for Hamas prompted “We Don’t Want War” posters throughout Beirut.
Offering Christian Love
“We are angry. Without any consultation with the government, Hezbollah dragged Lebanon to war,” said Joseph Kassab, president of the Supreme Council of the Evangelical Community in Syria and Lebanon, who said no lasting peace can come through violence. “Many Christians feel that Israel has no restrictions in war, and the militia was wrong to provoke its enemy.”
The winds of change are blowing, however, said Jihad Haddad, pastor of True Vine Church in Zahle, a Christian town in the Bekaa Valley, as he modified a Chinese proverb: Some build walls to resist the wind; windmills would better serve ministry. Since Christians have no political voice in the current conflict, he is directing his efforts to support the displaced.
The relief center at the church already distributed 2,000 food parcels a month before the current escalation, with much grown on its own farmland. To care for the many now sheltering in schools, the church has adapted the parcels so they provide nutrition without requiring cooking. The displaced also face a shortage of blankets, but the church has already emptied its warehouse.
Haddad sees a revival on the horizon, but it is not easy. Lebanon, he said, is stuck between the “hammer” of Israel and the “anvil” of Hezbollah. Missiles have hit one mile from his home and, in the other direction, one mile from the church.
Perceptions of Gaza create poignant fear.
“We are very cautious about welcoming families we don’t know,” Haddad said. “Where Israel finds militants, they bomb them.”
The people of Zahle, he said, carefully check Shiites for affiliation with Hezbollah. True Vine has provided shelter in church apartments for 17 families connected to the congregation, as believers and others seek out what they hope is safety in a Christian location. But Haddad also fears that if the church were to become overwhelmed by housing all those seeking refuge, it could not provide services to everyone.
Church-based help across denominations has made a strong impression.
“If there had been no Christians in Lebanon, we would have been devoured,” stated Mohamed al-Hajj Hassan, a Shiite sheikh known for his opposition to Hezbollah, in a widely shared video clip of his television interview. “They are the ones who protected us and helped those who roam the streets. They are the ones who took in our women and children.”
Christians could have sided with Israel, he said. Shiites must now “reexamine our conscience and think about whether we may have wronged our partners in the country.”
Thimar / Edits by CTSuch appreciation, however, does not make it any easier for evangelicals to open the doors of their institutions, said Nabil Costa, head of the Association of Evangelical Schools in Lebanon. Its 35 schools serve 20,000 students, a mix of Christians and Muslims. Lebanon’s government compelled a Seventh-day Adventist school in a Shiite neighborhood in downtown Beirut to provide shelter for the displaced.
Costa said evangelicals will be willing to open their schools once the government decides all private school facilities are needed to help. This can include discussion of how to cooperate with the education ministry to provide supplementary instruction for public school children forced from their classrooms.
The war has displaced 40 percent of Lebanon’s 1.25 million students.
Costa also heads Thimar, the local Baptist social service organization overseeing Beirut Baptist School (BBS), which negotiated with the government to transform its campus into a distribution center for the displaced. Located three miles north of the densely populated Dahiyeh area of Beirut, where Nasrallah was killed, the school’s vicinity is not currently threatened by Israeli airstrikes. But amid the ferocious echo of regular bombing, BBS assists seven nearby public and private institutions that host the displaced, providing 700 daily meals. Additional aid is provided to mountain churches.
“We have no right to reject refugees,” Costa said. But he cautioned the government, “Do not take advantage of our Christian love.”
Open Our Hearts
Some, even among the displaced themselves, are offering it freely.
On Monday, September 23, Laya Yamout woke at 6:30 a.m. to the sound of Israeli airstrikes. A registered nurse serving with Horizons International, she also volunteers at Tyre Church, founded by her now-deceased father 14 years ago as a church plant in the Shiite city. She had already curtailed her local movements as precision drone strikes targeted Hezbollah militants riding their motorbikes. Best not to be caught behind one, she said, in case they miss.
But this attack felt different. Four hours later, Yamout was visiting an elderly patient with dementia when another blast hit nearby. She rushed home, packed her bags, and drove 55 miles north to Beirut with her dog by her side. The 50 people in her congregation—nearly all Muslim-background believers in Jesus—eventually found their way to scattered locations, sheltering in schools, churches, or with family members. One returned to Iraq.
Yamout stayed with a friend in a Christian neighborhood of the capital.
“Honestly, it is safer,” she said. “I don’t want to have to flee again.”
The next morning, Yamout rose to volunteer at a clinic connected with a large Kurdish church in Beirut. On Wednesday, she went back to Tyre with two others, hoping to volunteer with the Red Cross.
After taking seven hours to reach Beirut two days earlier, it took little more than an hour to return home amid the “apocalyptic” scenes of stalled-out cars abandoned on the side of the road and a half-dozen smoldering buildings to the right and the left.
Almost immediately, she turned around. Tyre resembled a ghost town, with no water, electricity, or cell phone reception. The streets were emptied of nearly everyone but Hezbollah militants, but she was not intrinsically afraid of the environment.
Her father was jailed twice for his evangelism, and church property repeatedly vandalized. But over the years, Yamout said, Tyre Church won the begrudging respect of its community, and the road it is on became popularly known as “Church Street.”
Yet it was not safe to remain. Two believers slept on the beach in fear that their apartments would be hit. Yamout filled a 15-passenger van to return to the capital with the church families that were unable to find earlier transportation to safety.
On Thursday, she was back serving a clinic in a Christian town 50 miles north of Beirut that has received many people displaced from the Bekaa Valley. Each day on average she treated 150 people.
“Now is the time to open our hearts,” Yamout said. “We may never get this chance again.”
Lebanon has Christian content on the airwaves and churches throughout the country, but many Lebanese villages of all sects self-isolate from other communities. Ordinary southern Shiites who know few Christians now find themselves sheltering in Christian areas. They are deeply traumatized, Yamout said, but they light up with a smile when she tells them she is also from Tyre and takes time to listen to their stories.
At each school, Yamout works with the local church to follow up with any who show openness to the gospel. She advocates caution when extending hospitality since some militia members are likely to slip in. But while most are now fighting the Israeli ground invasion on the border, believers might show love to militants’ wives and children. Alongside them are thousands of Lebanese Shiites, unrelated to Hezbollah, who are meeting Christians for the first time.
Meanwhile, at the mountain village church where Mustafa, Hussein, and other “not yet” Christians shelter, they and their families eat around long plastic tables set up in the church parking lot. Mustafa hopes to return to Tyre but not to his hometown in Syria—it is too dangerous there. Despite the uncertainties of an indefinitely temporary residence, he is at peace in Lebanon.
“We don’t know what to do next,” he said. “Only God does, and we trust him.”
