Nehemiah Award 2024
The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem has established the Nehemiah Award as an annual honour bestowed on a Christian leader who has demonstrated a lifetime of achievements in building support for Israel and the Jewish people. It is named for the biblical figure Nehemiah, who led his people in rebuilding the fallen walls of Jerusalem and bringing spiritual renewal to the nation of Israel.
Malcolm Hedding was born in South Africa in 1952 and received a dramatic calling into ministry at age fifteen. He first served as a church planter for the Assemblies of God of Southern Africa, and also got involved in the Christian Zionism movement in the mid-1970s through Basil Jacobs and Christian Action for Israel. This brought him into contact with many of the pioneers who founded the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem in 1980, and thus he has shared the journey of our ministry from its inception.
Awarded to
The ICEJ is proud to bestow this year’s Nehemiah Award on Rev. Malcolm Hedding for his lifetime of accomplishments in standing with Israel and the Jewish community worldwide, and most notably as our primary leader throughout the crucial second generation of our global ministry.
Rev. Malcolm Hedding
After handing over the reins as Executive Director to Dr. Jürgen Bühler in 2011, Malcolm continued to serve with the ICEJ as an International Spokesman and a respected member of the Board of Trustees and governing Association until he stepped down earlier this year. He was and will always remain a beloved and highly sought-after Bible teacher and conference speaker within our global family and the wider Christian Zionist movement.
Malcolm Hedding’s contributions to the Christian Embassy are unparalleled. His leadership helped safeguard the organisation in critical ways as he steered the ministry into a more balanced, spiritual and biblical-based foundation. His sharpened defining of Christian Zionism on solid Scriptural grounds has impacted other ministries and entire denominations around the world. He mentored a new generation of leaders to operate with wisdom, integrity and godly character. And he earned the trust of Israeli officials and Jewish community leaders in truly significant ways that have strengthened Jewish-Christian relations for the challenges ahead.
In light of his longstanding involvement with the Christian Zionist movement for the past fifty years and his many invaluable contributions to the ICEJ since our founding, Rev. Malcolm Hedding is a most worthy recipient of the Nehemiah Award for 2024. In honouring Malcolm, we also recognise the many contributions of his wife Cheryl, and their children Charmaine, Daryl and Liesl to the ministry over the decades.
Thank You for your
dedication
Malcolm first came on staff with the ICEJ in 1986 as our chaplain in Jerusalem, while also serving on the pastoral team of the Jerusalem Christian Assembly (now King of Kings). He arrived in Israel under trying circumstances, as Malcolm was forced to flee South Africa, along with his wife Cheryl and three children, due to threats from state security for challenging the apartheid system from the pulpit on theological grounds. The Hedding family sought refuge in Jerusalem and thus began Malcolm’s many years of official service with the Christian Embassy.
As the apartheid regime began to wane, the Hedding family returned in 1989 to South Africa, where Malcolm pastored the Olive Tree Assembly in Durban, while also staying involved with ICEJ as an international speaker and as a regular fixture at the Feast of Tabernacles.
Then in 2001, Malcolm was invited by the ICEJ Board of Trustees to return to Jerusalem to begin serving as the Executive Director, taking over from Dr. Johann Lückhoff. Over the next eleven years, Malcolm set our global ministry on a course for greater stability and growth. Most importantly, he established a firm theological foundation for Christian support of Israel based on Biblical Zionism, and rooted in his distinctive teachings on Covenant theology. He also oversaw the establishment of strategic and even historic partnerships with Yad Vashem, the Knesset, and The Jerusalem Post.