Swedish Lutherans Give Mount of Olives Housing Project $4.6 Million Boost

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- In Jerusalem there's a shortage
of affordable housing for Christian Palestinians. At
the same time Christians in that city are now less than
a third of their number in the 1940s, when about 31,000
Christians lived in Jerusalem, said the Rev. Mark M.
Brown, regional representative, Lutheran World Federation
(LWF), Jerusalem.
To help stem the loss of Christians, the LWF and
partners that include the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America (ELCA) began the LWF Mount of Olives Housing
Project -- a plan to build 84 low-rent apartments and a
community center on LWF property on the Mount of Olives.
The $8.3 million project recently reported a gift
of $4.6 million from the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden.
That "gracious gift ... takes us more than half-way in
our fundraising," said Brown, an ELCA pastor. Something
that may have given "the Church of Sweden the confidence
to make this gift" is the project's "quick start" with
fundraising and publicity in the ELCA, he said.
The ELCA has made a $2 million commitment for the
project, and $600,000 has been raised so far. Other
partners include the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan
and the Holy Land, the Germany-based Kaiserin Auguste
Victoria Foundation, and churches in Norway, Finland and
Germany.
The LWF is "moving ahead as fast as we can with
lawyers and architects and engineers to get the master site
plan and permits approved as soon as possible," Brown said.
"If we had the permits to begin building, we could move
forward with the first two stages of construction," he said,
"but we can't break ground until we have the master site
plan and then 17 permits approved by the Israeli municipality
of Jerusalem."
To help smooth the approval process, Brown said the
LWF began submitting a detailed master site plan to the
municipality in 2007. Groundbreaking is still expected to
occur in late 2008 or the first half of 2009, he said.
"A project like this gives people hope to stay," Brown
said. "The situation is so desperate economically and
politically (that) anything the churches can do to reduce
the level of frustration, to help people build up their
own lives, to strengthen their families and to build a
nation that fulfills their needs as a people, I think,
helps the overall peace process."
The Mount of Olives is "an important location because
of the future of Jerusalem as a shared city between Jews,
Christians, Muslims and between Palestinians and Israelis,"
Brown added.
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More information about the Mount of Olives housing
project is under "Support Mission throughout the World" at
http://www.ELCA.org/giving on the ELCA Web site.

* Elizabeth Hunter is associate editor for The Lutheran
magazine, and editor for The Little Lutheran, a new magazine
for children aged 6 and younger.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org
http://www.elca.org/news