On Monday, March 6, 1911, representatives of the Coptic Christian community convened in the Upper Egyptian city of Asyūṭ for three days to discuss the main grievances believed to have been hindering Coptic equality with Muslims in public life. Given the unprecedented nature of the event and its uncompromising language, it became customary to situate the 1911 Coptic Congress within the nexus of Western Protestant missions and the rapidly escalating sectarian strife in colonial Egypt—particularly following the appointment and assassination of the first Coptic Prime Minister Buṭrus Ghalī (1908-1910). Notwithstanding the merits of these scholarly approaches, this paper proposes to examine the 1911 Coptic Congress against the backdrop of its Ottoman context, particularly the growing lay Christian movements throughout the Empire. In this light, this paper argues that the 1911 Congress constitutes a development of the community council movement (al-majlis al-millī) aiming at expanding the purview of the lay elite representing the Coptic community (ṭāʾifah) on both geographical and denominational levels. To this end, this paper will first present a synopsis of the different processes underlying the development of community councils throughout the Ottoman Empire. Second, it will present an overview of the Coptic community council from its inception in 1874 and the snowballing of Coptic lay movements. Lastly, it will conclude with a discussion of the 1911 Congress and its agenda situating it in its Ottoman-Egyptian context in general, and the growing Coptic lay movement in particular. This study rests primarily on an examination of a wide array of Coptic publications from the period of inquiry including newspapers and magazines (e.g. al-Waṭan, Firʿawn, and al-Karmah), as well as other publications whether published by charitable societies (such as Jamʿiyat al-Tawfīq and Jamʿiyat al-Ikhlāṣ al-Qibṭīyah al-Markazīyah) or by journalists and public intellectuals (such as Jirjis Fīlūthāʾus ʿAwaḍ, Yūsuf Manqaryūs, and Tawfīq Ḥabīb)—in addition to the proceedings of the congress published in 1912.