After being denied registration by the Algerian government, a Protestant congregation worships in secret in the Kabylie mountainside. The Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA) has long been discriminated against under Ordinance 06-03, which was established in 2006 to regulate the worship of non-Muslims by requiring churches to obtain government permission to hold services. When church leadership tried to comply, the registration process takes so long and the procedure is so convoluted that it is near impossible to receive a permit to worship. Only recently has the government begun recognizing the EPA as an official Christian denomination.

It is estimated that there are 80,000 Christians in Algeria today, most of who live in the Kabylie region. The Algerian church is seeing tremendous growth. A congregation that ICC visited last year had twelve members in 1996 and now has 900 believers attending services weekly. The Kabylie revival, as some call it, was neither inspired by missionaries nor introduced as a foreign movement, but was ignited by a small group of faithful believers inside the country. It was a rebirth indigenous to the national church where God is using dreams and visions to turn Muslims to Christ. In a country that many consider ‘closed’ to the Gospel and where proselytism is illegal under Algerian law, the steadfast devotion of Algeria’s Spirit-led church has overcome the government’s resolve to control the growth of its Christian minority.