Planting Churches in Muslim Cities

Gregory Livingstone

Description

A biblically and culturally appropriate blueprint for church planting in Muslim cities anywhere in the world. The experiences of one hundred missionaries provide a guide to evangelizing and discipling.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 février 1993
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441231543
• Langue: English

Extrait

© 1993 by Greg Livingstone
Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or any other without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3154-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.
To George Verwer, Jr., my mentor and friend of 34 years who was used by God to get me to “give up my small ambitions,” and gave me in their place a magnificent obsession: to change church history in the Muslim world!
and
the pioneers of the 1990s who are, or soon will be, harvesting on the last frontier for the Great Commission. Also, with deep gratitude for past pioneers who have struggled to see Muslims rescued from the Kingdom of Darkness since Henry Martyn laid down his life in Turkey one hundred years ago!
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
Part 1 The Challenge of Planting Churches in Muslim Cities
1. One Billion Muslims: What Does God Have in Mind?
2. Past Failure and Future Prospects
3. Instances of Church Growth among Muslims
Part 2 The Prerequisites for Planting Churches in Muslim Cities
4. The Change Agent’s Role
5. Making Critical Choices
6. Establishing Significant Relationships
7. Proclaiming the Message
Part 3 The Task of Planting Churches in Muslim Cities
8. Characteristics of a Church Planted
9. Two Case Studies
10. A Proposed Urban Church Planting Strategy
11. Finishing the Task
Appendix A: Interview Questions Put to Church Planters in Muslim Cities
Appendix B: Steps to Conversion
Bibliography
Index
Preface
A mong many societies of the Muslim world the church of Jesus Christ has become extinct. Or it is a tiny group in isolation. Among many Muslim peoples, it has been prevented from ever getting rooted! Hostile governments and influential Islamic leaders blockade Muslim peoples and cities from learning about or taking the claims of Christ seriously. Wherever a commitment to Islam is more than a veneer, congregations of former Muslims are extremely few.
Why is this so? Why are the Muslims the exception to the success the church of Jesus Christ is experiencing worldwide? What is the God of the Bible intending to do about it? How is it possible to establish the first congregations of redeemed Muslims where today they do not exist?
This book seeks to answer these questions. It will explain how several Muslims, as part of a personal network, can be baptized at the same time, creating an immediate support group for such a radically unpopular behavior. It stipulates how Muslim seekers will become followers of Jesus as Messiah when they become acquainted with an already on-going fellowship of former Muslims whom they respect and who whet their appetite.
You will learn what it takes to develop, nurture, and be a catalyst for such voluntary associations. Also, the requirements for church forming, demands placing, and the supervision of a team of appropriately gifted adults in the same area of a Muslim city, for probably at least a ten-year period. This book may help you find your part in this God-glorifying endeavor.
In my own mission work I have absorbed information from over one hundred missionaries who work in the cities of Africa, the Arab World, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, the Indian subcontinent, China, and Central and Southeast Asia. Based in Uttar Pradesh, India, Beirut, Lebanon, and Brussels, my wife Sally and I have been associated with nearly everyone directly identified with church planting among Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East since 1963, and in Asia since 1983. I have a wide awareness and sense of partnership with Muslim church planting efforts. We spent years among Muslims in cities as diverse as Brussels and London in Europe, Beirut and Cairo in the Middle East, and Allahabad, Bombay, and Hyderabad in the Indian subcontinent. From those bases, we advised work in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Israel, and Afghanistan.
As the General Director of Frontiers, I continue to “coach” (as field advisor) missionaries in North Africa, the Middle East, the Arab Gulf, the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union, China, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. Since 1977 I have been a participant-observer of over 400 missionaries, tent-makers, and nationals seeking to plant churches among Muslims in the dominantly Muslim cities of the world.
Both on site and in their sending countries, I have focused on solving the problems described in this book with God’s servants: missionaries, tent-makers, and nationals. Through my Islamic studies at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon, and doctoral studies at the School of Intercultural Studies at Biola University, I have sought to integrate theological, sociological, historical, and anthropological insights with the church planting task.
I have sought to illustrate my theories with the work of practitioners who have been working in 30 Muslim cities over the last 25 years. As I continue to receive reports from these church planting efforts every month, I realize this study can have only tentative conclusions. Hopefully it will, however, amplify and accelerate exploration until vital congregations of transformed Muslims become a reality in every city of the world with a significant Muslim population.
This book has taken over five years to produce. During that span, Mrs. Ginny Williamson and Mrs. Betty Ann Stevenson were incredibly patient and persevering to squeeze in the typing of bits and pieces from dictation, as I sought to put it together while serving as General Director of Frontiers.
I must also express gratitude to Drs. Judy Lingenfelter, Marguerite Kraft, and Phil Parshall who as my doctoral committee were a constant “reality check”!
Introduction
T he church of Jesus Christ has been triumphant in the sense that it is at least the nominal faith of 1.7 billion men and women worldwide (Barrett 1988). Tragically, we have until recently failed to detect that, in fact, the church of Jesus Christ among large segments of the world’s population has become nearly extinct, a tiny group in hiding, or has been prevented from ever getting rooted.
Commonly known as one of the world’s great religions, Islam blockades many hundreds of people groups from ever taking the claims of Christ seriously. Where a commitment to Islam is more than a veneer, congregations of former Muslims are extremely few.
Some congregations constituted by former Muslims do exist among rural peoples in East and Central Java, Bangladesh, Burkino Faso, Malawi, and some other sub-Saharan African states. Closer observation, however, would likely reveal that these former Muslims were 90 percent animistic and very nominally Muslim before becoming “Christians.”
Yet it is a foundational premise of Christianity that its adherents are to establish communities of believers among every ethnos (people group, cultural grouping) on earth (Matt. 28:19–20). In recent years, missiologists have identified major ethnic groupings, such as the Kurds, the Malays, the Berbers of Morocco, Albanian Muslims of Yugoslavia, and even entire Muslim countries including Mauritania, Egypt, Syria, Malaysia, and Iraq where established congregations of former Muslims with their own national leadership still do not exist! Nor are there significant numbers of former Muslims in existing churches of minority people with a non-Muslim background.
This study focuses especially on the approximately 400 million Muslims who are living in Muslim dominated cities across North Africa, the Middle East, and Central, South, and Southeast Asia, whose people are still without their first church, and how we can change all that!
Assuming Jesus Christ’s prognosis as recorded in Matthew 28:19 (i.e., that his disciples in turn will “make disciples of all nations”) infers these would-be disciples should be gathered in congregations with their own national leadership, then it is fully within the purposes of God to see such congregations come into existence also among Muslims in the cities where Islam is the dominant worldview.
Why are churches still extremely few among Muslims, especially in the urban areas of Muslim countries? What is preventing it from happening? What variables are relevant to seeing congregations of Christ-loyal Muslims become reality?
These critical issues demand relevant research by missiologists and field workers who will identify the human factors. God’s wisdom will lead to the conversion and congregating of urban Muslim people into the church of Jesus Christ. Since 1975, there has been an encouraging rise of interest among Christians to establish new indigenous congregations in the growing dominantly Muslim cities from Agadir, Morocco, to Agra, Uttar Pradesh. But whether mission-minded volunteers become effective change agents among Muslim people who historically have been resistant to conversion may well depend on them having access to information that will guide them through the process of church growth.
This textbook proposes to help fill that information gap. In any given, dominantly Muslim city there exists a l