Please do not distribute this or share details from this where those in the Muslim community could learn of the work. Doing so could endanger us, our national friends and the work that God is doing there.
Last week I traveled with 11 other North American believers back to a Muslim-dominated South Asian country. We divided our group into three teams: Training, City and Rural. Following are the highlights from each team’s experiences.
We started the week conducting a discipleship and church planting seminar in the southern part of the country where the movement is still in its early stages and leaders are very young in the faith. When we arrived at the training center we were greeted by 25 people, only 21 of which were registered. The other 4 had been invited by other participants and had only recently begun to believe in Jesus. My best friend and co-laborer, Pat Powell and I were teaching through the curriculum that I have been helping to develop this year. Central to the church planting training is the command to make disciples who understand and obey the commands of Christ. I have adapted a tool that a professor of mine had developed called “The 7 Basic Commands of Jesus”: repent and believe to receive the Holy Spirit, be baptized, worship and celebrate the Lord’s Supper, love God and others, pray and engage in spiritual warfare, give generously, and make disciples of others by reproducing what you’ve learned. So we taught a session on each of these commands and then watched God move mightily. I asked the participants to create a way to remember the commands and to my surprise they wrote a song and made up hand motions which we used at the beginning of each session thereafter.
After the first session I felt God impressing on me to make sure that all of the participants understood what it means to repent and trust that Jesus is our substitute making us righteous in God’s sight. One of the unregistered attendees stood and said that he had never understood that but that he now wanted to surrender his life to Jesus. The other 3 followed his lead and before I knew it we were sitting around a table coaching the national leaders as these 4 former Muslims placed their faith in Christ alone for salvation. The most amazing thing is that our first session the next morning was on baptism and the leaders decided that we should start the day with an early morning baptism in the pond adjacent to the training center! It was such an amazing thing to see these new converts boldly declaring their faith in Jesus by being baptized in public as Muslims passed by on the nearby path. Each subsequent session was equally moving – especially when I taught on prayer and the leaders decided to gather around me and pray for my ministry and for my mother-in-law Susan in her battle against cancer. We had no sooner completed the one training commissioning those leaders to go and reproduce what they had learned when we had to depart and go do the same thing with a group of leaders whom I had worked with in 2004 up in the northern part of the country.
After a full day’s journey in a cramped van we arrived for the second training and I was blessed to see so many familiar faces of those amazing men I had done an initial training with last year by teaching through Acts 1-10 and challenging them to plant new churches in unreached areas. An initial survey upon my arrival revealed that the 20 leaders had 32 churches at the time of my training last year which had now multiplied to become 67 churches with literally hundreds of new believers! I was so blessed to learn that they had taken what I taught them last year back and trained their groups and then followed up on many of the areas where we’d distributed Scripture portions, which is where the new believers and churches emerged.
There were several highlights to this second seminar. One came when we were teaching on baptism and a younger leader stood up and exclaimed, “I’m confused. My leader has told me that new believers need to wait to be baptized until they’ve proven themselves, but what you’re teaching from God’s word seems to say that believers should be baptized immediately without unnecessary delay. Which authority do I follow?” After collaboration we decided that in order to keep the senior leader from losing face that we would ask forgiveness for our predecessors teaching something contrary to God’s revealed word. At that the senior leader stood up and looked at the younger leader whom he had been discipling and said, “Young man, you have heard the truth from God’s word. That alone is your authority. You obey God!” Immediately the crowd of leaders burst into applause and excitement that they could now go back and baptize so many whom they had previously told to wait. Pat and I sat back in amazement as they were developing a theology based solely upon the authority of God’s word! Another moving moment came after the session on giving where Pat had taught, but because we were running short on time we cut out the activity at the end. One small man who I imagine looks something like Zaccheus jumped to his feet with several Taka (currency) thrust up into the air and proclaimed, “Wait a minute! I want a chance to give! Every session we’ve had the opportunity to practice what we learned. Where’s my opportunity to give?” We sat in awe as these men who make less than $350 a year placed their money into a box to meet needs both within the community of believers as well as to fund outreach to Muslims. We finished the training with our activity displaying how we are to love as the local missionary and I called the leaders forward and washed their feet. One of the first men tried to pull us off the floor and put us in the chair but we persisted and as his beautifully calloused feet were covered with water his tears poured forth. Some of the leaders after having their feet washed buried their faces in their hands wailing and weeping that their teacher would become their servant. My friend told them, “As I have washed your feet and loved you, so you should do the same to others.” After we had finished they placed us in the chair and washed our feet – and we wept with them! As we departed from there the leaders affirmed that once again they would take what they had learned and teach the hundreds in their churches releasing them to go and plant more churches among the unreached. As soon as I got home I had an e-mail waiting on me that my translator and dear friend had already trained the leaders of the 18 churches that he supervises and they were excited to multiply the training through their ranks.
As for the Rural Team which was led by Rick Camp, they did bible distribution and personal evangelism in mosques, Muslim schools and even in an Al-Quaida member’s home! Everywhere they went they prayed with people and gave them copies of God’s word trusting that the national believers would follow up and see a harvest.
Following is an amazing story that comes from one of the members of the City Team:
“We were walking through a housing colony in the capital, we had been in there for awhile and were getting ready to leave. As we were entering the gates our translator said that we should turn down a path. We did so and as soon as we got a little way down the road, our translator noticed someone watching me from above. I stopped and said "Hello", she then immediatly invited us up. Her home was small, but very warm and inviting. We knew instantly that we had found a person of peace (Luke 10). After chatting about our families for 10 minutes she told us that we were not just guests in her home, but her children. It was then about 3 p.m. and she asked if we would join her family for Iftar (the first meal at the end of the Ramadan Fast day). After some debating we accepted. We spent the time leading up to Iftar doing mehndi decorations on our hands and learning more about each other. After enjoying a wonderful feast we decided it was time to speak with her about Christ. We started our conversation relying on the Camel method (using questions about the Koran to stimulate discussion about Jesus). She was not only very receptive, but knew alot about Isa (Arabic for Jesus). We had many emotional moments as she realized that Isa is the only way to heaven and she subsequently accepted to follow him as her savior. I felt in those intimate moments with H. that God was not only watching this, but sitting right next to us guiding us with words of wisdom and encouragement. Even more amazing is that her 2 daughters were in the room also, and we know that at least 1 of the daughters also prayed to surrender to Christ. I felt so blessed to be used in such an awesome way that day. I really feel that God brought me half way across the world just to spend that day with H. and her family. It is something that I will never be able to truly display in words.” - Katherine
It is amazing to think what God accomplished in a 10 day journey through a small group of reconciled sinners. We distributed Bibles, saw new believers baptized and we even had the privilege of washing some beautiful feet! And the best thing about it is that God gets the glory as His fame spreads through the land of South Asia and beyond.
Update on the Bible Project: Many of you have been praying for and giving toward this effort to raise funds and provide bibles for the over half a million new believers in South Asia. Thus far God has blessed us with $190,000 and we have printed and distributed nearly 50,000 whole bibles as well as thousands of New Testaments and copies of Luke. In my most recent meeting with the Strategy Coordinator in South Asia he requested that we try to now begin fundraising for an Audio Bible Story Project which will be used to teach the tens of thousands of illiterate believers. Almost every family even in rural areas has an old cassette player and radio. The plan is that eventually these stories would be aired on radio as well. If you would like to give toward that project, please make a check payable to “International Mission Board, SBC” and mail it to me with a note indicating you’re giving toward the Audio Bible Story Project.
Thank you once again for your incredible partnership in the gospel. Know that God is using you to make a difference!
click here to see photos:
http://www.photoshow.net/watch/nP9iX7Sv
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