By Alexa Smith (PCUSA NEWS)

The Rev. Younan Shiba is focusing on the future these days because the present is practically intolerable.

The world is blowing up around him.

"I have no time for anxiety," says the 40-year-old pastor of two Presbyterian Churches in Baghdad - Assyrian Evangelical Presbyterian Church, in the center of the city, planted by U.S. and Iranian missionaries in 1920, with 120 families; and a newly planted church in the southeastern suburbs that draws about 60 people to its worship services.

"I have a 24-hour job," Shiba says. "Two churches. I run a cultural center. Teach discipleship classes. I have pastoral calls."

Being so busy helps him fight the fear that has engulfed Baghdad, a city barely recognizable to its own residents, with kidnapping, rape and robbery rampant, and bombings almost every day.

"Explosions are the talk of the hour," he says. "But I keep working. And I take time alone for God; I try to map out time for that in my day."

Mapping his day is a challenge. His radio stays on 24 hours a day, helping him decide what he will do, where he will go and how he will get there.

He said his coping strategy is from Psalm 73.

The psalmist, complaining that the rich get richer while the poor die in misery, decides to deal with his doubt by persisting in his work.

Shiba has done the same. And he shares the psalmist's advice with congregants who can see no end to their troubles.

After a recent discipleship class, he took 16 children outside to shovel away the rubble on streets near the church, which is in what used to be one of Baghdad's most affluent neighborhoods.

Now it is surrounded by chaos. There are lootings, rapes, robberies. Whatever you may say about the crimes of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, it did deter crime. Now kids are stuck inside, for safety's sake; men complain that their depressed wives aren't keeping up household routines; and wives say their husbands are short-tempered because money is short and there is no work. Some are packing their bags and heading for the borders, fearing anarchy when the United States transfers power to the new Iraqi regime.

"People's nerves are always tense," Shiba says.

Even his own family switched apartments after two robberies that scared his two small daughters. On bad days, he said, his family accompanies him to the church, preferring to stick together.

Sticking together is what he'd like U.S. and Iraqi Presbyterians to do now. After all, he notes, the U.S. church is the mother church, having founded the one in Iraq. The United States has sent its military might, he says; now it is time to send power of a different kind.

He is philosophical about it. He wants missionaries trained in peacemaking sent to Iraq to help build a strong church that can take a leading role in Iraqi society, and help to transform it. But he says the influx of NGOs and soldiers has brought big-money evangelical churches to Iraq, and they're "stealing the sheep" by offering $25 baskets of groceries to new members. Meanwhile, the churches that have been there for many decades, like the Presbyterians, have no resources to share with the people.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) sent a $30,000 grant to Iraq's six Presbyterian churches; Shiba got $6,000 of it. He says that's a drop in the bucket. Families need help. Churches need repairs. And then there's outreach. (To support Iraqi Presbyterians, call PresbyTel in Louisville at (800) 872-3283 and contribute to account EO51722, the Peace Fund for Solidarity with the Churches.)

Shiba is clinging to a vision of what might be.

"Fear is a lack of trust in God; that's the spiritual definition of fear," he says. "So, when I hold onto an experience of trust, looking back on how the hand of God has moved - whether it is personal experience, family, community or in international relations - I can build a hope for the future."