Global Gates leader urges Christians to be intentional about loving Muslims

Global Gates leader urges Christians to be intentional about loving Muslims

By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist

David Garrison says if he could write a book about a dozen churches effectively engaging Muslims in the U.S., he would have a bestseller. “It would be quite the story,” he said.

But he says he can’t write it.

That’s partly because people who are effectively reaching Muslims often keep it quiet. It can bring a lot of social pressure, even persecution, for new believers “so those who are winning Muslims to Christ don’t talk about it much,” said Garrison, author of “A Wind in the House of Islam” and executive director of Global Gates, a New York-based organization working to plant churches among unreached people groups in large cities.

But Garrison said the biggest reason he can’t write a book about U.S. churches engaging Muslims effectively is because the number of churches engaging Muslims in a real, life-changing way “sadly is still rather minimal.” In many cases, Christians “tiptoe around them or avoid them and in some cases actively oppose them,” he said.

Because of that, Muslims in the U.S. are still “so surprised” when Christians reach out to them in love and compassion, he said. “A lot of Muslims are just waiting for Christians to reach out to them and show them that they don’t hate them. That’s the default perception.”

Though still “remarkably small,” the number of Christians interested in wanting to obey the Great Commission by reaching Muslims is growing, and that’s encouraging, Garrison said. And small numbers of Christ followers are growing among Muslim populations too, he said.

‘Greatest turning’

“Where we are seeing the greatest turning of Muslims in the Western Hemisphere is undoubtedly among Iranian Muslim background populations, both in Western Europe and in the U.S.,” he said.

Others coming to faith in significant numbers are Bengalis and West African Muslims, Garrison said.

Global Gates is one of the organizations leading out in this, equipping and sending church planters to engage Muslims in 18 urban areas from the West Coast to the Atlantic seaboard to Toronto.

“A big part of success is just trying,” he said. “We’re trying to be intentional and trying to find and use the best practices that have proven to be effective.”

So far love seems to be the best practice, he said, even though many people who are willing to say they’re trying to reach Muslims are doing so through debate and arguments.

“But from our perspective, that method (debate) hasn’t seen a lot of fruit,” Garrison said. “There is a place for apologetics and polemics in engaging Islam, because the truth matters and there is much within Islam that is simply false and needs to be exposed,” he said. “Exalting the truth is an important component, but we have seen nothing approaching a movement from people whose entry point is debate.”

Intentional love that paves the way for truth seems to be the most effective method, he said.
Even though Global Gates has yet to see a movement in the West that’s hit 1,000 conversions, they are “knocking on the door,” Garrison said.

It’s in no way on par with what’s happening in the rest of the world, where movements of Muslims coming to faith in Christ are happening in much larger numbers, he said. “Today around the world we are seeing the greatest turning of Muslims to Christ in history.”

We’re just scratching the surface in the West, he said — but he’s not giving up hope that that could happen in our day. In 1970 the U.S. had more than 100 mosques, but hundreds more have been built since then, as more than 1 million Muslims have entered the country since that time. Alabama alone has more than 30 mosques, according to Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

‘Looking for breakthroughs’

“We’re still looking for breakthroughs in the West,” Garrison said. “Maybe in the future the handfuls we are seeing today will become movements. That’s what we pray for, because we love Muslims, not because we’re trying to best them or defeat them but because God loves them and died for them.”

He said he hopes Christians across the country will join with Global Gates to say “we don’t know how this is going to happen but (we) know that God wants it and we want to be involved.”

“We know God has a plan — every nation, tribe and language. And that includes Muslims,” Garrison said. “Let’s get on with it.”

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