Occasionally I run across a METS old timer—someone who did the trip during the 1980s or early 1990s—who asks: “Are you still doing the METS trip?” My first reaction, which I suppress, is to respond: “Of course! And we have a METS website and a METS Newsletter. Where have you been?” Also, I try to give him/her the benefit of the doubt: surely the question has nothing to do with the fact that I am now a senior citizen, but that the political situation is so dicey now days.

The METS program continues to flourish, the magic works again every year, the 2007 trip was one of the best ever. And Julene has already booked airspace for 2008. But the program has changed somewhat over the years, even as the face of Middle Eastern politics has changed.

During the early 1980s, when the first METS groups ventured into the Middle East, Lebanon was gripped in civil war, Muslim fundamentalists were threatening to overthrow Syria’s Baathist regime, and Jordan remained officially at war with Israel. Camp David negotiations had resulted in a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1978 but Sadat was assassinated within the year and Begin’s “interpretation” of the agreement rendered it essentially meaningless as far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was concerned. Those also were dicey times.

Thus the earlier METS groups traveled only in Jordan and Israel. Jordan was truly frontier territory for tourism, with Petra the outer limits of the frontier. There were no hotels at Petra, for example, only the run-down Government Rest House which was an experience in itself. Reflection papers from the 1980s often mention the night sounds at Petra. But neither were there tickets to be purchased or a gate to keep us from entering the Petra Siq as early as we wished. With Israel and Jordan officially at war, crossing the border from Israel into Jordan, or vice versa, depending on the itinerary for the particular year, was always a problem. Both countries were pro-American and pro-tourism, however, so the crossing could be managed either direction on a “wink-wink-nod-nod” basis.

Syria stabilized during the 1980s, due in no small degree to the horrendous 1981 Hama massacre, so that we were able to add both Syria and the Sinai to the METS program in 1988. Jordan and Israel signed a peace agreement in 1994 opening Jordan to mainstream tourism. Soon five-star hotels appeared throughout the country including Petra. By 2000 Lebanon was the new frontier for METS groups.

So gradually, by taking advantage of the shifting political scene, the METS program was transformed from an essentially Holy Land experience that focused heavily on biblical archaeology to a much broader Middle Eastern adventure. Another change has been the addition of guides, required now that tourism in the Middle East has become more regulated. Also the METS program has doubled in size; we travel now as two groups rather than one.

What has not changed so much, it seems to me, are the issues that METS groups have discussed year after year (sometimes rather heatedly) on the long bus rides. What was the big issue on your trip? The top two through the years, I would say, have been biblical authority and women in ministry.