We have the main worship service in Akko on Friday evenings at 6:30pm and a weekly prayer meeting in Akko at 6:30pm. Additionally there are 3 Bible studies weekly. The first is on Sunday evenings in Piqaya at 5:00pm, which is 35km from Akko. Tuesday evening at 7:30 we meet for a Bible study in Maker, 10 minutes from Akko. Wednesday Bible study which is at 6:30 rotates between different homes in the area.
During Sukkoth there is a festival in Akko in the Old City. Groups from all over come to help with distributing materials at the Baptist Book Shop. 250,000 people attend the festival. We have the opportunity to reach out and speak face to face to the people about the Lord.
At Easter/Passover and Christmas time we have different visitors from Akko joining us at the church for blessing. These include the Mayor of Akko and his assistants, the head of the Police department and various officers, the Shechem and Immams of the Islamic Mosques heads of schools and others. The goal of this is to build a good relationship with the community and we have the opportunity to speak about the Lord for the meaning of these feasts.
As of 2008, Campus Crusade for Christ has had the “Back to Jerusalem” crusade in Israel. This was with the understanding that the word of God started in Jerusalem and is now being brought back again. People from all over the world came to this conference and afterwords executed pratical work by distributing packages of Bibles, DVD’s and books of testimonies to many of the Arabic towns in Israel. Last year there were 25,000 packages distributed in all.
Every year we are involved in the global Day of Prayer.
Ten days before Christmas and Easter time we do what we call “Christmas and Easter visiting”. This involves visiting believing and unbelieving families in Akko and the surrounding Arab villages. In each house we sing carols and pray for the family and home and bring Christian gifts. It is a time of joy and peace, a practice that truly needs to be experienced.
For the believing families this is time of encouragement. It is a way of acknowledging our love and the gracious hand that the Lord has placed on us.
The goal for the unbelievers was to open doors so we could speak freely. At Christmas season, this enabled us to talk about the Lord, the reason for His coming and a chance to give the salvation message. Several people accepted the Lord into their hearts.
We had professional movie producers named John Dorr and Robert Savo visit us. A few of our congregants are involved with them in producing a series of movies based the stories of God in the books of the Bible. Robert’s wife was born in Akko, therefore it has been on Robert’s heart to begin and bless Akko by having the first viewing of the movie series in Akko. Many of the actors are also from Akko. These are in Arabic with English subtitles. The goal is to touch the soul of Islam and whosoever watches the stories from the Bible. Each time a movies was previewed in the church there were 80-90 people attending.