EMQ » July–September 2020 » Volume 56 Issue 3
By Ken Forest
The purpose of this article is to encourage followers of Jesus to be intentional about building relationships with the heavy hitters in Islam and to provide some framework to minister to Muslim leaders in your city. To set the scene, here are two scenarios:
First scenario: Moe meets a Christian and begins going to church with him. The Christian is intentional about inviting Moe to all his Christian activities. Over the next few years, Moe spends less and less time with his other Muslim friends and more time with Christians. By the time Moe makes a decision to follow Christ, typically years down the road, Moe has little to no influence with Muslims.
Second scenario: A Christian meets a Muslim who identifies himself as a Muslim but doesn’t prefer Muslim friends and never goes to the mosque. I call these people “Fringe Muslims.”
We praise God for people like Moe and for Fringe Muslims, but we can also see that the gospel stopped with both of them. Moe lost his social circles with Muslims. Fringe Muslims never had any influence with other Muslims to begin with.
The Problem with Muslims Coming to Christ
How can Christians be proactive about sharing the gospel and discipling Muslims in a way that they will maintain influence within their social circles? If we want the ends of the Muslim world to be reached with the gospel, we need to prioritize methods that keep Muslims in their circles of influence during our evangelistic and discipleship efforts.
Starting from the Top
One theory we are testing is to start with the biggest influencers in order to see the gospel flow through the Muslim community. The way Muslims think about other faiths and worldviews is primarily influenced by the way the leaders at their mosque speak about them. If an imam says, “Christians don’t have to repent of their sins,” the majority of those listening will believe that. Most Muslims in the United States don’t have relationships with Christians in order to ask if what the imam says is true. On the other hand, if an imam says, “My Christian friend takes sin very seriously,” it will impact the listeners in a positive way. If an imam is open-minded, the community will follow. Islamic leaders have substantial influence, especially in groups that highly honor their leaders. If a leader is highly esteemed, his statements are taken as true. This can prove to be a barrier to reaching Muslims or it can be leveraged for the sake of the gospel flowing through the Muslim community.
In my experience in the United States, most of the Islamic leaders I have met do not have relationships with Christians. This results in Islamic leaders forming opinions of Christians based on Christian-Muslim debates, Christian televangelists, or just believing what they have been taught by fellow Muslims. I have also found that if I am not intentional about seeking out relationships with Islamic leaders, it won’t happen. The only way I have built relationships with Muslim leaders is by going to the mosque.
I’m in no way saying that non-influential people don’t deserve our love or to hear about Jesus. What I’m saying is that there are large sectors of Muslim communities that surround themselves with other Muslims. Coupled with the nature of Islamic influence, they’re unlikely to hear the gospel. And this is the group of Muslims who teach either true or false information about Christianity and have a great impact on whether Muslims are open-minded or not. I will share my experience of beginning a relationship with leaders at a particular mosque in my city.
So how do we effect the top influencers in the Muslim world?
Forging Relationships with Islamic Influencers
First, I joined one of the only multi-faith dialogues in the area. What I found is likely the norm in most multi-faith groups. It consists of a group of loving Christians but not evangelistic in nature. The Muslims in the group were devout Muslims who dominated the conversations and had more knowledge about both faiths than the Christians. They had been meeting for years without getting into the fundamental differences of the faiths. It’s almost impossible to shift that culture to be evangelistic in nature.
I decided to start from scratch. From the start, I wanted to model an attitude of exploration and respectful learning. I called a mosque with which I had no previous connection and told them that I could find plenty of Islamic resources written by Christians, but I wanted to read about Islam from their favorite writers. I also told them that I worked with churches in the area to help them better understand the refugees and immigrants that come to our city. This was specifically stated so they knew my intentions and that I wasn’t seeking to become a Muslim. I think they appreciated my honesty and gave me a bunch of polemic brochures, some children’s books, and books written by Ahmed Deedat.
Next, I specifically asked for books that they had actually read. From there, I did some reading and followed up with some questions about my findings from the books they recommended. I desired to take a humble stance of learning and not trying to teach them. The Imam and the president of the Islamic association were both generous with their time. They saw my desire to learn and be challenged.
Over the next year, after a few office visits and giving tours of the mosque with about a half a dozen churches in order to learn more about Islam from a Muslim’s perspective, I began hearing statements that highlighted the leaders’ misunderstanding of Christian beliefs. Their misunderstandings typically came up during the Q and A time. I told my Christian friends to ask any questions, even seemingly offensive questions. I gave the Muslim leaders a heads up regarding the “offensive questions.” The gracious responses to the offensive questions are what impressed me about this group of leaders. I had visited other mosques with groups of Christians and the level or respect varied significantly. Some statements made by the Muslim leaders were, “Muslims take responsibility of their sins. In contrast, Christians believe in original sin.” Other statements include, “Jews believe in the Torah. Christians follow the Bible. Muslims follow the Qur’an.”
Initiating a Bible Study with Muslim Leaders at the Mosque
I am convinced that many of us are just a decent question away from starting something significant. Many of us are highly relational and have built strong relationships with Muslims. My question for you is, “What kind of question would it take to initiate a Bible study with someone or with a group you’re in connection with?” Bible study is the bread and butter of discipleship.
For about four to six weeks, this thought of doing a Bible study at the mosque kept coming to mind. Everything in me was telling me that it was a bad idea. But nonetheless, I prayed about it for weeks and it persisted. I reached out to the president of the Islamic Association and asked her (yes, a woman) if she and a group of others would consider meeting on a weekly basis to study the Bible with a group of Christians. I communicated that they had shared some ideas about Christianity that were not consistent with our Scriptures and that I would like to show and explain what we actually believed. I also expressed a desire to learn more about them and what fuels their faith. She took a few weeks to get back to me but agreed to gather a group of about ten to fifteen Muslims for a monthly meeting. They agreed to do Bible study with us, and, in turn, we would learn the Qur’anic perspective on the topic we’re talking about.
Plan for the Bible Study with Muslim Leaders
My original plan was to do a Discovery Bible Study, keeping it scripture-based, easy to follow, and reproducing. Scripture speaks for itself and it demonstrates the accessibility of our Scriptures. I explained that our desire was to go back to the source with all of our convictions and beliefs and the president agreed. When we first began, Muslims were shocked at how they could open a book of the Bible, read a couple chapters, and have a narrative to draw conclusions. They assumed the Bible was similar to the Qur’an in that fashion.
Modeling diversity in the body of Christ is important. I wanted to have as many ethnicities represented in order to counter the idea that Christianity is an American belief system. Our team consisted of ten people, ages from twenty-two to sixty-five, and ethnicities included Latino, African American, Egyptian, and American. Occupations included pastors, a science professor, a college student, financial analyst, full-time missionaries, and medical professionals. I specifically asked people who weren’t familiar with Islam. The content for them was fresh and shocking. They weren’t calloused like me hearing the same arguments circulated. This also allowed them to not communicate truth in a comparative way.
One downside to choosing a team that didn’t have much exposure to Muslims was their (lack of) patience. They seemed to get impatient when the same issues kept arising from our discussions not knowing that rejection and rehashed problems with Christianity are norms for those who persevere in working with Muslims. Our Egyptian friend also had a difficult time participating because of his familiarity with Islam in Egypt. He was able to discern lies that the group shared about Islam in other countries and also viewed as unfair and rather annoying the arguments about Arabic being a supreme language that can’t be translated. His emotional responses hindered his ability to effectively engage with the Muslims in the group.
My criteria for team members were that they were students of the Word, good listeners, culturally sensitive, had relational capacity to have relationships outside of our monthly meeting, and willing to form a prayer network of at least ten people.
In the beginning, we agreed to goals and principles of the group and also signed a confidentiality agreement in order to protect the identities of the Muslims in the group.
The Muslim team make-up was mostly leaders in the mosque from the Middle East and North Africa. The younger Muslims in the group (in their twenties and thirties) dropped out after a few months because they felt that the Muslim leaders couldn’t be honest enough about their own beliefs. They also included a couple converts from Christianity to Islam. Out of anyone in the group, they had the most skewed information about Christianity.
Measuring Success
In terms of our goals, we have goals such as sharing truth, being the presence of Jesus, and modeling a life committed to God, etc. Here are some questions that we continually ask ourselves:
- Are we building relationships with members outside of our monthly meeting? Fruit is unlikely going to be seen inside the meetings. We should be using our meetings as springboard for further conversations.
- Would they know how to pray, worship, read the Bible, continue pursuing God, if the group dissolved tomorrow?
- Can we repeat to the Muslims what they are teaching and are they pleased with our summaries? Vice versa? Would the Muslim members of our group be able to accurately describe what the gospel is according to the Bible?
- Are we understanding the beliefs of these specific Muslim people (not the orthodox or traditional understanding of Islam) and are able to speak surgically into their specific situations and needs?
The following are not, in and of themselves, measures of success, but important: relationships, content transfer, converts, culture change, building our own churches, and praise reports.
Struggles with the Bible Study and Dialogue
We have found that, in some sense, we need to teach our Muslim friends how to dialogue. Conversation can turn quickly into a “This is our view. That’s your view. Cool. Move on.” That is not dialogue. Dialogue requires interaction with beliefs; asking questions, probing, clarifying beliefs, and finding how beliefs shape someone’s behavior.
When you find a mosque that is willing to start an ongoing conversation with a group of Christians, they may have pluralistic thinking such as, “We worship the same God” or ‘We’re both taking paths to the same divine being.” We’ve learned that we need to clarify from the start that the space we create in this meeting is a space for exploring differences that negate the possibility of taking paths to the same God.
For instance, to borrow Abdu Murray’s statements in his book, Saving Truth, he says, “We confuse engaging in argumentation with quarreling. We confuse disagreeing with someone’s beliefs with disrespecting the person. In fact, we’ve confused the difference between people and ideas altogether. Where we once used to be able to challenge a person’s beliefs without necessarily denigrating that person, we now think that challenging certain beliefs is the same thing as denigrating the person who holds them.”[i]
The Fruit of the Last Two Years
God has grown our love for these Muslim leaders. We’ve talked about so much regarding our beliefs and what our faith means to us. We’ve shared testimonies, meals, and our longings for each other. We’ve learned about their personal lives and have been able to pray with them through difficult issues. We are always invited to their events at the mosque. We have built significant trust. We have not seen any of the leaders come to faith, but the web of connections we now have in the Muslim community because of these Islamic leaders, is impressive. A vice principal at an Islamic school in our area has read through the New Testament multiple times and believes now in the authority of the Christian Scriptures; just not our interpretation of them.
Almost every leader in that mosque has multiple phone numbers of Christians that they trust. Although we do not know of any leaders who have chosen to follow Jesus, we do know that these last two years have significantly influenced the most influential Muslims in our city. We believe this method of working with Muslim leaders, along with broadly sharing the gospel and discipling, will lead to a movement of Muslims coming to Christ in this area.
Ken Forest (pseudonym) lives in Toledo with his wife, two young children, and two housemates from Saudi Arabia. He has a passion to reach Muslims but more importantly, encourage the local church to make disciples that will reach Muslims.
Notes
[i] Abdu Murray, Saving Truth: Finding Meaning & Clarity in a Post-Truth World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 190.
EMQ, Volume 56, Issue 3. Copyright © 2020 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
