Archbishop Malkhaz Giving the Friday Sermon (Khutbah) at the Mosque in Oxford

A unique event took place on Friday 21 December at the Mosque in Oxford, where the Imam, Dr. Taj Hargey, invited my friend the Georgian (Baptist) Archbishop Malkhaz Songulashvili to present the Friday sermon (khutbah).

Here is the message I have received from the Archbishop:

Dear Friends,

You will be glad to know how did my khutba go at the MECO Mosque in Oxford. Many thanks to all of you for your support. Your prayers, your encouragement and support has meant a lot to me.

The service was an unforgettable experience. I had to make considerable preparations: lerned Arabic alphabet, I studied and memorized all the Friday prayers in Arabic, familiarized myself with some basic principles of Muslim liturgy and theology. In other words the preparation for the khutbah was a fascinating experience.

The Way – A Presentation

In May 2009 we were launching in Cluj the Romanian translation of Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism. in the presence of one of the authors, my friend Dr. Bradley Nassif, Professor at North Park University in Chicago. To my joy, the 500 copies we have printed have been sold out in less than four months and we are now discussing about a new print run and a revised edition. It was the fulfilment of part of my dream to create the conditions for initiating a theological dialogue between Evangelicals and the Orthodox in Romania.

As I was explaining on a previous post on this blog, during that visit in Romania, Dr. Nassif told me for the first time about The Way, an Orthodox adult catechism that was reinventing for the eastern context the approach of the Alpha Course, that was so successful in Protestant and Catholic contexts.