Mitri Raheb is a pastor of a small Lutheran congregation in Bethlehem, five miles south of Jerusalem, a world away from the Lutheran churches of south central Wisconsin.

Yet on Friday morning, he was talking with a couple of hundred area Lutherans about the way things look from the Palestinian side of the separation barrier that separates the West Bank from Israel.

"The little town of Bethlehem is being transformed into a big large prison," he said, describing how Israel's occupation and the wall and checkpoints surrounding the four square miles of the city have created "an unbelievably depressing situation."

Raheb, who grew up in Bethlehem, was the keynote speaker at the opening session of the South-Central Synod of Wisconsin of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) because of his long-standing partnership with Bruce Burnside, who was elected bishop for this synod last year. Burnside, former pastor of St. Stephen's Lutheran Church in Monona, has made numerous trips to Israel/Palestine.

But Raheb did not dwell on the isolation or the despair in Bethlehem. Rather, he offered five lessons he has learned leading his small congregation as it strives to play a role in the world.

1) "The world is often about words, promises," Raheb said. People in Israel and Palestine have listened to the world's powers year after year promising peace. "People in the Middle East don't believe what they hear," the pastor said. "They believe what they see." He said that Israel has been creating what are called "facts on the ground" -- settlements within the West Bank, a wall that cuts into Palestinian territory. He said that religious leaders often think they need to join in what he called "this choir of peacetalkers" by issuing statements. He offered a different approach: "We as church need to construct facts of hope on the ground."

2) "The world is often about politics," Raheb said, but politics often occurs way above the "polis" - the city where people live. Churches should not spend their time and energy on engaging too much in politics, but to care for the cities.

3) "The world is too often about religion," which may be a surprising sentiment from a religious leader. "Sometimes the temptation for the church is to produce more religion," he said. "If you live in the Middle East, we have too much religion. We are being suffocated by it." He referred to how Israel justifies its occupation of Palestinian lands by citing Biblical mandates and how Palestinian suicide bombers justify blowing up buses as acts of martyrdom. He cited prophets who said that God was fed up with what people called religion and said that in the world today, "there is too much religion and too little spirituality."

4) "The world is often about humanitarian aid," Raheb said, offering another notion that might seem jarring to people who support a wide variety of relief efforts. "For 85 years, the Palestinian crisis has been about humanitarian aid, not about justice," he said. What is needed is empowerment and a main focus of his work at the International Center of Bethlehem is to train leaders for Palestine's future.

5) "The world is often about pestomism," he said, creating a word that signifies that mood swings between optimism and pessimism. The result is a paralysis as people wait to see what will happen next. "There is too much pestomism, too little hope," he said. "They don't have dreams any more, they don't have visions any more." Raheb said that the early Christians -- who lived in this very area of the world 2,000 years ago -- "learned that church is not about whining but about proclaiming hope in the face of the cross."

So what Mirtri Raheb is trying to do is create the potential to dream, even in a place where hope can seem like a rare commodity. He invited the Lutherans here to join him in prayer, in making personal visits to Bethlehem and in picking a project to support that will help change the facts on the ground for the people of Palestine.

(See earlier column  "Amid conflict, Christian Israelis chart a different way")