Samuel Zwemer and 9/11

I know, nothing can excuse the horrific events of 9/11/2001.

And yet I have to wonder, what if Christians had not neglected the Muslim world for centuries? What if, instead of the Crusades, we had engaged them more consistently with respect and love?  

Samuel Zwemer is an example of the latter approach, but he was the first visible one to do so since the 13^th century. Back in that time, Raymond Llull, who– although not exemplary in his attitude towards Jews– tried to dissuade the Pope from attempting to use military force to convert Muslims to Christianity.

Zwemer’s life spanned three careers—as a missionary on the Arabian peninsula, as a mission leader in Cairo, and as a professor at Princeton university and publisher of what was then a prestigious journal, Moslem World.

Zwemer and a friend named James Cantine formed the American Arabian Mission during the latter part of the 19^th century. Zwemer and his first wife, Amy, endured incredible hardships on the Arabian peninsula. Their two daughters (ages 4 and 7) died within only eight days of each other in Bahrain. The words written on their tombstones sum up the Zwemers' lives and ministry:  “Worthy is the Lamb to receive riches.”

Ruth Tucker (From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: a Biographical History of Christian Missions) relates how Zwemer, as a single missionary volunteer, visited nearly every church in his denomination west of Ohio to raise support on behalf of Cantine, while Cantine did the same for Zwemer in the churches east of Ohio! (Is that a possible model for mission workers today? Some workers are certainly more adept at raising support—could they offer to do it on behalf of their colleagues?)

Samuel Zwemer

Zwemer was full of energy, never able to stay in bed for more than half an hour at a time! Even though he probably never saw more than a dozen Muslims turn to the Lord in his whole lifetime, his greatest achievement was awakening the church to the needs of the Islamic peoples.  

He is truly and rightly labeled ‘the Apostle to Islam.’  

I think we need more Christians like Samuel Zwemer. And then I don’t know, but I suspect that if that had been the case in preceding centuries, there might be less Muslims like Osama bin Laden?

What do you think?

By the way, check out the Institute of Muslim Studies named after this missionary statesman– it's one of the best!

An Unreached Muslim People-Group In China?

The Uyghur people of Western China number over 11 million, with several thousand more scattered through some other countries. Uyghurs are almost 100% Muslim, and almost entirely ‘untouched with the Gospel’ (Operation World): ‘The highly charged political and religious atmosphere, the removal of expatriate Christian workers from most of the region, and the general lack of vision by Han Chinese to evangelize these peoples are all contributing factors’ to this dire situation in Western China.

What makes this situation even more tragic is that  there was once a thriving church among the Uyghur people (13^th century).

Some years ago, a young Uyghur named ‘A’ was contemplating what he had learned from his study of the Qur’an: that Isa (Jesus) had never sinned. ‘Why,’ he thought, ‘do they say that Muhammad is greater, if Muhammad sinned, but Jesus did not?’  No one, not even his grandfather, nor his scholarly teachers, could answer that question for him, but many years later a foreign Christian at his university did. ‘A’ eventually came to Christ, studied in Bejing and in Turkey, and became an effective preacher of the Gospel to Muslims in Europe. God can reach them, but He uses human agents to do so!

‘A’  was a student in our Bible school in Germany back in the 90s. He as such an effective evangelist

among Turks that the mission that had sent him to our Bible school asked him to stop evangelizing in our city, because it was getting back to Ankara and making trouble for their work there!

Pray that the Uyghur people will be open to the truth of the Scriptures, and that they will have access to them, and read and study them! You can read up on the Uyghur people at the website of one of our partner missions, SIM:  http://www.sim.org/index.php/content/uyghurs

Is this Guy Crazy or What?

Last summer our international director handed me a book by Jerry Trousdale entitled, Miraculous Movements: How Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims are Falling in love with Jesus. I read the book, of course. After all, that’s what you do when you’re accountable to someone, right?

My first reaction: Is this guy crazy? I suppose maybe it’s true, but we’ve heard supposed "great success stories" before that had no basis in reality. This guy is probably some fringe semi-lunatic with a bunch of trumped up evangelism stories who is going to make a killing off the publication off this book. There is just no way to verify the stories he is telling. After all, Trousdale doesn’t document any of his stories. He doesn't identify any of the countries, he doesn't name any specific people, nothing. So are we supposed to believe this guy?  I remained skeptical.

Until I saw it happening.  Well, sort of.

South Asia isn’t Africa and many of the specific things that Trousdale mentions look different where I've been assisting (mainly through teaching Bible) in the training of church leaders for the past three weeks. Nevertheless, I have witnessed firsthand Muslim background believers in South Asia who can tell similar stories to the ones I read in Trousdale's book. 

There are certainly some differences. As far as I know (which admittedly isn’t much), we can’t talk about Disciple Making Movements (DMMs) in South Asia yet. A DMM is the basic element of a Church Planting Movement (CPM). Before you have a church, you have to have disciples, which is where Jesus told us to start (see Matt. 28:18-20). In this area of the world, the old paradigms of the top-down, centralized-leadership church are still very dominant even in totally unreached areas.  After all, they’ve seen Christians ‘doing church,’ at least many have, or they’ve heard about it, so it can be hard to have these smaller grass-roots DMMs to take root.

Even so, God is moving in South Asia and Muslims are learning to be disciples of Jesus.

The common approach seems to be to share what the Qur’an says about Jesus as a bridge to the Gospels. Once Muslims with an open heart start listening to the Gospels, things begin to change.  

The men we’ve been with for the last three weeks have led hundreds of Muslims into the path of discipleship. That's right, these 17 men have led literally hundreds of Muslims to Christ! What they struggle with, at this point, is empowering and training leaders. Up until now, they’ve been leading all these new groups themselves. In fact, the oldest and most experienced of the group we've been working with during our stay here is pastoring 15 fellowships! And he works a full time job during the day! He desperately needs more leaders to meet the demand in his community, so he asked me one afternoon, after we had broken into workgroups: ‘how do we do train new leaders?’

All I could do was show him what we at ReachAcross had worked out in our last plenum session and go over those points in detail. Thankfully our international director was with us and he has actually done this in Africa, and could give some good input on leadership training during the two last days of our conference.

All seventeen of these men are on their way home now, back to their villages, back to their jobs (hopefully), and back to their little house groups.

They are returning to their jobs as church leaders, and our job supporting them has just begun. We’ve looked at Scripture with them, raised questions, encouraged, and given them a chance to network together. We need to pray earnestly for them, and we can, visit them again and maybe help facilitate as they gradually overcome the old top-down paradigms. We can only hope and pray that the work they have already begun, and the time we spent with them over the last three weeks will bear much fruit as these brave men bring the Gospel to their Muslim communities.

As for me, I’m still working out what this time will mean for me when I go home in a few days. There is a lot to think about. In the meantime, Trousdale’s book, that I was so skeptical of before, is a very important read and I would encourage anyone to read it with an open mind. Also helpful is Trousdale's conversation with Marv Newell of MissioNexus. You can read this conversation here.

And I don’t think Jerry Trousdale is crazy anymore, I just think I have a lot to learn.  But much more than that, I’m thankful to have experienced these last three weeks, and to have had a little tiny part in building God’s Kingdom.

God is good, and patient with people like me.

'Gideon'

Moved with Compassion

from the Reach Across U.S. Director

Someone recently wrote that the Western media's portrayal of Islam is generally neither fair nor balanced. It's either "why can't we all get along" or "shoot ‘em and let God sort ‘em out." These ignorant assumptions lead us astray and may keep us from engaging with whole people groups that God has called His church to understand and love.

Jerry Trousdale has written some very encouraging works in his recent volume, Miraculous Movements: How Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims Are Falling in Love with Jesus (description at the bottom of the blog). This excerpt is from pages 71 and 72:

“When most Christians look at Muslims, they see a monolithic mass of humanity, staunch in their beliefs, ready to fight for their religion, and aggressively seeking to extend the rule of Sharia law into all the world. That is not a complete or accurate picture! Most Christians cannot imagine what is really going on inside mosques, as more and more Muslims are doubting the teachings and worldview of the Islam that they inherited from their parents, a rigid belief system about which they are not supposed to ask questions.

Actually, we are discovering that shockingly high percentage of Muslim leaders are discouraged and disillusioned because they struggle to meet deep spiritual needs in a system built around a very different view of God than the loving God of the Bible. . . . A personal, loving relationship with God is not only impossible in Islam, it is not even a desired goal.

Muslims living in Christian-heritage countries, like the United States, find that it takes some courage to face each day in public. Despite a hefty dose of political correctness, in dozens of ways a message is transmitted clearly to Muslims every day: “Since you choose a religion of intimidation and violence, you are unwelcome here.” But many peaceful Muslims worry privately that something is terribly wrong with a violent Islamic worldview.

Unfortunately, most Christians have difficulty looking beyond the perplexities of today’s news from the Islamic world to imagine what can happen when a Muslim family discovers and obeys truth in the Bible. No devout Muslim anywhere has any concept of what it means to call God ‘Father,’ never mind something as intimate as ‘Abba’ (Daddy). . . . These core principles of Christianity are far outside the thinking of Muslims, but when they discover and obey these truths, their lives are transformed in unimaginable ways.

Recall some of the words and phrases describing Jesus’ view of the people around Him: “moved with compassion,’ “weary,” “scattered,” “without a shepherd.” If we are to follow the example of Jesus, we would do well to learn similar responses to the Muslims who live in our own communities, learning to be moved with compassion toward those who lack godly leadership, who are trapped in bondage to a religion that warps and despises human individuality, who are exhausted with their endless pursuit of good works that cannot lead to salvation.

We should be moved with compassion toward those who are lost.”

Are we?

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We recommend this book to encourage us all with the fact that the Holy Spirit is reaching Muslims today. While Trousdale’s descriptions of great openness to the Gospel among Muslims today have largely to do with specific locations in Africa, they give us hope that Muslims in other areas of the world will respond to His call, and remind us that no one is beyond His reach!

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Miraculous-Movement-PB-Trousdale-Masih/dp/141854728X