Page 77 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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Zwemer, much would have seemed familiar and much changed.

The medical mission was being continued hut now not as an

isolated clinic run by the missionaries but rather as a small
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contribution to a much larger, secular state health service.
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' The bookshop was also still there, but now as a self-support­

ing institution more oriented towards education than evangel­

* ism. And what of the evangelistic side of the Mission? There

were no more forays by camel into the interior of Saudi Arabia

or by boat and steamer up through the marshlands of southern

Iraq. Nor were there active attempts at street evangelism

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either by the church or the bookshop personnel.
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The medical, educational and evangelistic mission act­

i ivities had been replaced by a pastoral one. There were now

over ten thousand Christians in Kuwait, not converts from
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Islam but Christians nonetheless. Most of these Christians
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: were members of the Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholic churches

and almost all were expatriates who had moved to Kuwait look­

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i ing for new jobs. Most of these non-Kuwaiti Christians were

! Egyptians, Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis or Indians, and had
arrived in Kuwait since 1950.

Organizationally, the Christian churches in Kuwait

had formed a loose association called the Kuwait Council of

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Churches containing thirteen major denominations (see diagram).
The National Evangelical Church in Kuwait was a charter mem­

ber of the Kuwait Council of Churches. Three of the other

denominations were loosly tied to the Evangelical Church and

made occasional use of its facilities. Eive others con-
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