God is moving in the Muslim world.
It may not seem so from the unrest that unfolds on network news.
Yet those battles and refugee situations create opportunities to tell people about the Prince of Peace, said Paul and Anne, International Mission Board (IMB) representatives.
“Amazing things are happening with the gospel amid the chaos,” Paul said.
A significant percentage of the people in the world who have not yet heard the gospel of Jesus Christ are Muslim, he noted.
Now is the right time for them to be told.
“We can see the beginnings of a movement,” Paul said.
He and Anne see it as they serve in North Africa.
Both Anne and Paul originally are from northern Alabama. They returned to the state for a short furlough to visit family and share about their ministry to Muslims and other nonbelievers.
Prior to their time in North Africa, they were in another African country, operating a refugee project through Baptist Global Response (BGR).
Growing up overseas
“Our children, while born in the United States, grew up overseas,” Anne said. Both their children now are adults and live in the U.S.
In North Africa, Anne and Paul are team leaders, working with four other IMB units in an area about 60 miles by 100 miles.
Paul said their work is undergirded through the Southern Baptist Convention’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, Cooperative Program and BGR.
When the couple arrived in North Africa in 2000, they found in their area about 25 believers, all from Muslim backgrounds. There were no Christian churches.
Currently there are more than 400 believers and 20 to 30 underground churches.
Anne said the people to whom they minister were an unreached group before she and her husband arrived.
Nonetheless, the seeds of faith had already taken root.
Paul said the 25 believers were the result of the work of missionaries from other organizations who had been in the area in the past.
“We were blessed by that,” Paul said.
The IMB representatives call the people group “Sparrows,” a reference to Matthew 10:29–31. Anne said the name is used to protect the identity of the people.
To minister to the million Sparrows, the team uses a multifaceted approach.
One aspect is a ministry that provides goats for poor women and widows.
Other ministries are relief efforts (replacing burned huts), equine clinics (offering vaccines to combat a deadly respiratory virus common among the horses and donkeys the Sparrows rely on for many uses) and instruction in evangelism and the Bible.
Teaching Muslim evangelism in underground churches “is the most important work we do,” Paul said.
Anne said locals are taught Bible stories in a way that is easy for them to remember. Then they practice the stories in order to tell them to others in their villages.
The account of the prodigal son has particular appeal. The locals are drawn to it because it shows God is looking for them and wants a relationship with them.
“There’s no personal relationship with the Allah of Islam,” Anne said.
Many barriers exist to try to thwart the spread of the gospel.
National partners have been jailed for evangelizing; terrorism laws sometimes are used against Christians; and Islam forces Christians into underground situations.
“A believer in our village was beaten to death,” Paul said.
Regardless of the challenges, the Holy Spirit is moving.
One example of this is the “near-tribe believers,” people whose jobs have brought them to the area.
Past animosity
Paul and Anne said this group traditionally has been very private about being followers of Jesus because of animosity directed toward them in the past.
Through God’s working in the lives of these believers, “they are doing Muslim evangelism” now, Paul said. Many house churches have formed as a result of the evangelism efforts of the “near-tribe believers.”
The ability to show movies on cellphones has opened many avenues for evangelism.
Paul and Anne said the “Jesus” film, which the IMB has provided in the local language, can be loaded onto memory cards and shown on cellphones.
People active in sharing the gospel can be equipped with cellphones to show the film anywhere.
Although the gospel is being shared and God is doing miraculous things among the Sparrows, the road for Paul and Anne has not been easy.
Several years ago, a major heart attack took Paul on a spiritual journey.
For 48 hours, he received little more than aspirin as he was taken from clinic to clinic to distant hospital.
On the three-hour ambulance ride to the hospital, a local man used his right arm to hold the semi-conscious Paul securely in place on the gurney.
Once when Paul became conscious during the ride, the man said, “I’m a believer and you’re going to be OK.”
At the hospital, Paul heard someone praying Isaiah 41:10 over him: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.”
Even in his fatigue, Paul made the connection and felt assurance that God is sovereign and in control.
Paul was even more confident that God was going to accomplish something great in their people group.
In March, he witnessed two miracles happen the same day.
During an evangelism training session, some participants reported witnessing to a family whose daughter was “possessed” with a spirit of agitation and disruption. They said they prayed over the daughter and she was delivered from that spirit but did not accept Jesus as Savior at the time.
As the session continued, the daughter entered. Paul said she opened her hands toward heaven, and then bowed down, touching her forehead to the floor as is the custom of Muslims. She declared, “Jesus is Lord.”
Shortly thereafter, her father arrived. He said he had seen the change in his daughter and wanted to experience it too.
“For us,” Paul said, “it was a very powerful moment. God is doing great things among Muslims throughout the world.”
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