DALTON, Ga. — For the past year, Chrissie Shaheen and The Tent ministry for women have been conducting leadership retreats for Arab and Jewish women in Israel.

“On Thanksgiving weekend and the following weekend, those women will now be leading the retreats,” said Shaheen, founder and executive director of The Tent. “They will be leading other Arab and Jewish women into a deeper relationship with Christ and working to reconcile each other’s differences. Jesus said, ‘Father, make them one as we are one.’ We believe Arabs and Jews united in Christ have a powerful message.”

Shaheen, a Dalton native, will be speaking at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at the Church on the Hill, 1035 Abutment Road, about the work being done by The Tent.

“I’ll talk a little bit about where our ministry has been over the last 19 years and where we are headed, and I’ll share some video testimony from Jews and Arabs who have come to faith through Christ,” she said.

Shaheen video

The Tent works in Israel and in the area governed by the Palestinian National Authority. Its name comes from the biblical book of Amos, where the Lord promises to rebuild the tabernacle, the tent of David.

Shaheen says looking back she believes her life has prepared her for her calling. Her family was one of the founding families of Ramallah, a village on the West Bank. It was then a Christian village but its population now is overwhelmingly Muslim.

Her grandfather Awad and two of his three brothers came to the United States and founded an import business in Chicago. But when World War II made it difficult for them to import goods, they began coming to the South to buy chenille bedspreads and other textiles and shipping them back to Chicago. Eventually, they moved to Dalton and became pioneers in the carpet industry.

Shaheen’s mother is from Dalton, and she was raised here in a mixture of Middle Eastern and southern cultures.

She made her first trip to Israel in 1996. She spent the next two years studying the roots of her faith and returned to Israel in 1998. She says she felt God calling her to serve him there, so she returned later for a three-month prayer ministry. But the call continued, and she met so many women who had suffered abuse. When the three months were up, she returned to Dalton, sold her home and went back to Israel to found The Tent.

Shaheen has learned both Hebrew and Arabic in order to communicate with the women she ministers to.

Margo Gardner, a board member of The Tent, will also speak.

“I’ve been involved with the ministry for 12 years and watching Jewish women and Arab women come together through the love of Jesus,” she said. “It has been astounding to see them overcome fears and overcome obstacles. It has been a huge privilege for me to watch that.”