Prayer Requests for Our Church Planters

Our Muslim Background Believers (MBBs) who participated in our church planting seminar as they have arrived back in their home villages and put into practice what they learned at the training weeks. On the last day, we asked them to step over a line in the sand, symbolizing their commitment to follow Jesus anew. Some of the things they mentioned:

1) Many expressed that they harbored doubts about the veracity of the Bible before they came, but the teaching of the Scripture helped them a lot.

2) Some had to deal with moral issues from their past and get those cleared up.

3) Some still have to deal with the fear of man  (not surprising!—none of us Westerners can lift a candle to their courage!) and persecution.

We laid hands on and prayed for each one, and gave them a promise of Scripture in line with the name they had chosen for themselves.

Here’s some personal info on each one, from my perspective, please support these brave believers by praying for them:

• ‘Philemon’ is one of two participants still single. Pray for him and also for ‘Samson’, that God will provide the right marriage partner for them. This is very difficult in a Muslim environment, especially for Philemon. He would like to marry his girl friend (a Christian), but this is very complicated.
• ‘Samuel’ is a ‘grandfather’ in the faith, and leads 15 different house groups! He really wants to develop leaders and give responsibility to others. That will be a tremendous blessing to many!
• ‘Pontus’ (yes, he chose a name representing an area of the NT world instead of a person, but why not!) is a quiet guy who hugged us about ten times when saying good-bye. A very loving guy and a faithful trooper!
• ‘Titus’ asks for prayer because he and his wife are still childless after 3 years—a shame in their society. It would undergird his spiritual authority to be a father, if the Lord wills.
• ‘John’ is from the high class in society and has a lot of potential and a loving disposition.
• ‘Barnabas’ lives up to his name—a young guy, but a sunny disposition, and full of energy.
• ‘Timothy’ is quiet and reflective, with a lot of potential.
• ‘Nehemiah’ is older—also quiet, but a very hard worker. He stayed up until 2:30 in the morning sometimes doing study assignments! Diligent, he will be conscientious in his work—we’re sure he always has been.
• ‘Ruha’ pastors a fellowship of 9 brand new MBBs. He’s a gem (they all are!).
• ‘Simon’ is older but loves kids. He is involved primarily in children’s ministry among Muslims at home. His son would like to study at college, but not sure if that will be possible.
• ‘Philip’ looks like he’s 20, but has 4 children, and is also pastoring a brand new fellowship of MBBs. He is a business man.
• ‘David 1’ is a tailor by trade, really a likable man, and pastors one house group in his home.
• ‘Silas’ is a very bright man with a lot of potential. He repairs cell phones for a living, and is a natural leader.
• ‘David 2’ (yes, there were two Davids!) is an energetic young man who contributed a lot to the discussions. I’ll miss his energy (and wish I had it!)
• ‘Abraham’ is also very bright, and a natural leader, but with lots of love and is very considerate. I’d like to serve under his leadership, quite frankly—and the same goes for many others!

*For security reasons each participant selected a name from the Bible to use for internet and publishing purposes.*

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'

Update from South East Asia: Who Is Teaching Whom?

These are not our participants, for security reasons we cannot photograph those brave brothers,
 but it is simple working men like these that are leaders of house churches in South Asia

As we have been teaching this church planting seminar to South East Asian Muslim background believers, we are continually impressed with their faith, and with just how much we from the West have to learn from them.

‘Samuel’ is a grandfather in the faith. He led ‘Simon’ to faith in Christ, and Simon did the same for ‘Ruha.’ All three are currently attending the training sessions here in South Asia, and all three are pastors of house fellowships.

They don’t necessarily use the word ‘church,’ or even the word ‘Christian’, because both terms are associated with negative ideas. The main problem is that the old wineskins just aren’t the right fit for the new ‘wine’ of God’s transforming power. They don’t want the buildings, programs, or entertainment of Western Christianity, they want a real life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ for themselves, their families and their communities. They spent their day Saturday looking for Muslims in the local area and sharing God’s love with them.

Even as we teach them, they are teaching us. Here’s what I mean:

We are teaching them theories and principles. For example, we taught them Jesus’ parable about the houses built on the rock and sand: ‘Everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house, and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock’ (Matt 7:24-25).  We analyzed the story with them using the education we've been blessed with. We looked for the key words and ideas, and stressed that the rock is obedience to Christ, not simply knowledge of Christ.

They are teaching us the practice. These are, for the most part, farmers, fishermen, and handworkers, who labor by day, and minister to others at night. They left their jobs in order to come here for this three weeks of training, and at the very least, they will lose their whole monthly income (maybe around $200) in order to be here. They might get their job back when they go home, but they will struggle to feed young families. The ‘winds’ of persecution and hardship are slamming against the ‘house’ of their lives and families all the time.

Most of them pastor at least two fellowships of Muslim background believers who meet in homes at least once a week, and some more often than that. All know what it is to suffer rejection for Jesus.  Some can never go back to their extended families.

So who are the real teachers here, us or them? Sure, we have perhaps more knowledge and resources. We come from a part of the world where Christianity has a long history of dominance and we are the heirs of this history. They live in a land dominated by other religions and live in constant danger of persecution. They aren’t yet acquainted much with principles of Bible interpretation and background information, but they are experienced in the area of spiritual warfare, and have seen many people delivered from demonic oppression. They know Jesus personally (many have had first-hand encounters in dreams or visions). As we have shared with them, we have learned amazing lessons in faith, obedience and trust.

Even if I were to never come back to this place, I will never forget these brothers: Samuel, Simon, Ruah, Nehemiah, Philip, Samson, David 1, David 2, Silas, Abraham, Pontus, and Timothy. Then there are the new ones who came just this week: Peter (also a father in the faith), Philemon, Titus, John, and Barnabas. 

Thanks for praying for them, and for us:—Joshua, Titus, Eric, Miriam, and John—we have five more teaching days with them. Pray that the Lord would use us to fill them and encourage them for the last five days of teaching. Also pray that God would use these men to teach us what true obedience and faith looks like.

-Eric Adams

P.S. You may wonder how all of these men are named from the Bible. For security reasons, no real names are used in this post. These South Asian brothers each chose a name from the Bible to identify with. Please keep them in your prayers.