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Oct 11, 2011 | EDOT Staff

First Daughters of the King Established in the Middle East

A new Daughters of the King chapter was installed at Christ Church, Jerusalem on September 11, 2011. Sharon Lundgren, a member of the Diocese of Texas and former national president of DOK was invited to help establish the new chapter by the church’s rector, the Rev. David Pileggi last spring. Lundgren traveled to Tel Aviv with DOK’s international chair, Pam Runyon who will serve as a continuing advisor to the new group. The pair were joined by another Daughter, Rosemarie Valentine.

 

DOK members wear a distinctive cross pin but Lundgren learned that members of the new chapter would not be able to wear their crosses every day for safety reasons and parts of the installation service had to be altered to include “the Messiah” whenever Jesus’ name was used.

 

As Lundgren pinned the cross on one new member, the woman whispered to her that she had believed in Jesus for 20 years but that this was the first cross she had owned. Four others were installed and following the service, three additional women indicated their interest in the ministry. The new DOK members were presented with cards and notes from hundreds of well-wishing members in the United States and “They began to realize they were sisters with women all around the world,” Lundgren said. Before leaving Jerusalem Lundgren attended a Bible Study with the new Daughters and prayed with them.

 

CMJ was established in England in 1809 by Christians to help alleviate the suffering of the Jewish people and soon spread to Euope and the Middle East. They built schools, churches, clinics and published widely. CMJ built the first Protestant church in the Middle East, Christ Church Jerusalem (completed in 1849), known as the “Jewish Protestant Church.”

 

Today, the church serves as an evangelical Anglican congregation and includes both expatriates and local believers (both Jews and Arabs). CMJ built some of the first schools, houses of industry for job training and the first hospital, all of which helped raise standards of health, welfare and education.  

 

Learn more about Christ Church, Jerusalem at cmj-israel.org. According to the church’s website: “We celebrate both Jewish and Christian holidays, incorporate some Hebrew into our liturgy and preach in a way to emphasize a Hebraic understanding of the Gospels.”