Gary and Aline partnered with Bill Joukhadar at Maadi Community Church, Cairo where Gary served as the Director of Western and Egyptian Small Groups and Aline as a trainer/coach and administration manager for the Small Groups Ministry. They left Cairo in August 2007 and now live in Llanelli, South Wales, UK.

Gary is an Associate Director of CCI, serving the UK and Europe by following up expressions of interest from churches concerning the development of small groups.

Gary and Aline were married in September 2006 in Cairo. They have a daughter, Fabiana, born in February 2008 and Gary’s step son, Matheus, is nearly 18 years old. Gary is English and Aline is Brazilian.

Gary says…

After completing the “small groups development” course at Maadi Community Church in 2000, I formed a new group that moved ahead with purpose and vision. We saw new believers baptised and groups multiply.

However, it wasn’t until March 2006, when I was invited to go to Poland, that I experienced the POWER of small groups for building God’s Kingdom. Pastor Bill was visiting a church in Warsaw for the second time from MCC with the purpose of following-up his training support. As part of his visit he facilitated a conference for pastors from all over Poland, including two from Ukraine. Several leaders from the church in Warsaw had been to Cairo and during their visit connected with Bill and me and some boys from an Egyptian orphanage where I was coordinating small groups.

Before leaving Cairo, the leaders from Poland invited me to visit their church with Bill. Just before actually making the trip, Bill invited me to join his leadership team in our church as the director of our Egyptian small groups. I wasn’t sure what I should do as at that time I was working full time with a charity that works with Egyptian children at risk.

At the conference in Poland, through Bill’s presentation, the Lord opened my eyes even further to the Small groups vision. Although Bill was primarily speaking to the pastors gathered there, every word he spoke touched me and filled me with passion and enthusiasm. I could see small groups being used by churches as the best way to inspire and empower believers to reach the lost for the Lord … to save them from ‘pew sitting’ and mediocrity.

CCI’s Small groups development strategy engages EVERY believer, leading them through the proper management of their gifts, resulting in drawing the unsaved to Christ through the combined efforts of members in small groups. This experience led me to accept Bill’s invitation to join his senior leadership team at MCC where I had a great time, seeing universal small group principals being put into practice as well as working with the best mentor that is possible for anyone to have.

Before leaving Cairo, Aline (my wife) and I received an invitation from a church in Brazil to facilitate with them a small group training course. The manual and training materials have been used by other churches in Brazil to begin and multiply small groups making it an effective tool to reach the community, train new leaders and develop coaches.

If you want to discover a great way for your church to serve God and build His Kingdom then the Small Groups principals being used by CCI are definitely for you. And, if you want to work with a great man of God who “lives the life” as well as he “talks the talk”, then Bill is your man. It was an honour and privilege to work on Bill’s team, even though it was for so short a time as one year and a half before I had to leave Cairo, and I am really delighted to once again be walking alongside him as an Associate Director of CCI.

Gary’s has been involved in writing training materials and coordinating the training of leaders for “The Alif Project“, an interactive video course designed for small group studies and inspired by the internationally successful Alpha course. It is designed by Arab followers of Jesus specifically for non-Western people and will answer, for Muslim enquirers, the basic questions they have about the Christian faith. At the moment, Gary is working with local churches on developing Small Groups.