In 1885, Dr. David Watt Torrance, a 23-year-old Scottish surgeon, arrived in the Galilean city of Tiberias and began work to establish a mission hospital. Planning and permissions took some time, but on January 1, 1894, the hospital was opened ending years of working from rented rooms in the city. Herbert Watt Torrance joined his father at the hospital in 1920 and took over from him four years later. The hospital was always honest in its mission to preach the gospel of Christ and offered its service to all from the beginning, regardless of race, creed, class or colour. That same understanding of the unconditional nature of the gospel message forms the foundation of very different work today.
In 1959, the government of Israel established a public hospital nearby. The mission hospital was no longer needed. The building remained and the witness of worship remained – as did support for the Messianic Jewish movement.
A hostel was organized and continued in the hospital buildings, staffed and run by the Church of Scotland – but the site and property assets were underused. It was unthinkable that the church should voluntarily abandon work on the shore of the lake that saw so much of Jesus' ministry. The potential for the site to be used for the furtherance of the Kingdom called for a response with great vision. In 1999 the Scottish General Assembly overwhelmingly caught the vision.
A hotel like no other hotel was built on the existing site incorporating the old hospital building. It opened in late 2004 and is now Israel's leading boutique hotel. The witness of worship continues. Tourists and pilgrims from all over the world enjoy the hotel and on Sundays they worship together in the church.
But is this mission? I have been locum minister here for several months now and thoroughly enjoy the spiritually uplifting privilege of living on the shores of Galilee, dropping by Peter's house in Capernaum (as Jesus did), visiting Nazareth (where his parents lived) and generally seeing the same landscape with increasing familiarity.
As minister of St. Andrew's Galilee, I have a role at the Scots Hotel. Hotel and church are two sides of the same mission presence. During this past week I have been able to facilitate rest and recovery stays at the hotel for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program personnel from the West Bank and World Vision personnel stressed from the Gaza war. I've sought to minister to congregational groups of Scots Baptists, American Roman Catholics, and a larger group of American Presbyterians. I have also gotten to know Franciscan monks from Ghana, France, England and Brazil, individual Christians from Holland, India and England, and many Messianic believers from Israel. In all of this week's interactions I have attempted to interpret mission as a mission of peace and acknowledgement of God's presence with us while we are still surrounded by injustice and insecurity.
The original 19th-century mission has made all this possible. Based on this foundation of trust and obedience to Christ's call, the hotel continues the tradition of responding to need in this 21st century. There are over 70 staff members at the hotel and they are from all three major faiths – Jewish, Muslim and Christian. My wife and I are the only expatriates in the staff community. The purpose remains the same – to offer community and express the values of the Kingdom at the hotel which is different from all other hotels. This is our mission.
