On July 14, 2025, Pastor Youeel Tarabay and the Addmega team hosted the 3rd Annual Addmega Church Forum in Beirut, Lebanon. A one-day conference to equip and strengthen the church in Lebanon and ultimately the wider Arabic-speaking world. This year’s conference came on the heels of an extremely challenging winter as the country endured intense bombings and airstrikes from neighboring Israel. Churches across the country became hubs for aid and support as refugees fled the most intense areas for safer communities, most often meaning Christian areas of the country. As summer approached and the regular airstrikes subsided, the church in Lebanon began to turn their attention to what’s next. The war brought trial and hardship to their communities, but it also brought people in search of peace, comfort and hope to their doorsteps. It is most often the things that the world means for evil that God instead chooses to use for good.
It was on this backdrop that Pastor Youeel and his team began preparing for the 2025 Church Forum. In a desire to strengthen and encourage the church to press on and dream big, they adopted Ephesians 3:20 as the theme of the conference, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine.” Our vision is often only as big as we are, but God is the one who is able to do far more. He is the one that can take wars, hatred and evil and use it to bring people into a saving knowledge of his Son. He can do far more abundantly that anything we can ask or imagine.
Therefore, this July over 120 pastors and church leaders gathered at a hotel conference room in Beirut to learn, think, be encouraged and challenged to dream big and trust that their God can do far more than they have ever imagined. They engaged with local leaders in breakout groups on topics such as burnout in ministry, children’s rights, leveraging AI tools for ministry and how to discover, develop and deploy new leaders in their churches. One participant stated, “It was my first time attending AddMega conferences, and everything from the worship to the workshop was absolutely beautiful. It was also great to meet and connect with people from all over.”
In addition to this annual conference, Addmega operates an Arabic-language resource website for the church. The website currently has over 170 different topics for leaders across the Arab world to engage with and utilize in their churches and ministries. This number is growing every week as new writers are submitting locally written and produced materials to strengthen the church. To date, over 2500 people have visited the website with over 675 downloads of material to be used in their churches and ministries. Pastor Youeel’s vision is that this website will be a tool that can reach across the Arabic-speaking world and strengthen the church from within their own language, culture and context. Over the next year, Addmega will conduct smaller, focused gatherings around Lebanon to equip the church on various topics. His team is also making plans to bring similar conferences to other nearby Arab countries to equip the church and bring awareness to this valuable resource.
The Arab world is home some the most difficult to reach people groups in the world and is in desperate need of the Gospel. The best people to take it to them are their friends and neighbors who speak their native language. This is why we are strengthening the Arab church to be equipped for the work of the ministry, so that more Arabic speaking people across the Middle East and North Africa can meet, know and follow Jesus.
Pastor Youeel is one of many national leaders around the world that Converge partners with through the relational efforts of our global workers and intentional investment of our churches. The Addmega team is grateful for the continued partnership with Vox Church in Branford, CT and other Converge churches that have come alongside their team to help make this dream a reality. If you would like to know more about how you or your church can partner with the Addmega project go to converge.org/team/Addmega-project or email greatsea@converge.org. You can also view the Addmega website at www.addmega.org