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Speaking of Jesus
Nikolas Grosfield on a Pastor's Evangelical Ministry to Muslims
Many headlines about Muslims these days focus on the brutality of ISIS or other terrorist groups. An occasional personal touch may provide some balance.
When Jack Allen asks American churchgoers if they know any Muslims, a minority answers yes. Far fewer actually have Muslim friends. Yet the more he reaches out to Muslims across America and beyond, the more he finds Muslims coming to know Jesus through their Christian friends.
Allen (who requested the use of an alias for security reasons) has visited some ten countries, mostly in the Middle East, and his travels have given him "a growing passion for the nations."
He attended seminary in California in the 1970s, then spent thirty years in various pastoral roles. He had been thinking about retiring from direct church ministry in 2006 when he happened to attend a seminar on reaching out to Muslims. He came home from that seminar confident that God was opening a new chapter in his life. When he told his wife that he discerned a calling to minister to Muslims, she at first replied, "Oh no, another mid-life crisis!"
Nevertheless, she cooperated with him in his mission, and ever since then, the two of them have raised support to allow Allen simply to find and befriend Muslims wherever he feels led to go: local mosques, gas stations, car repair shops, college campuses, restaurants—in America and overseas. Allen stresses patience regarding these encounters, and he notes that Muslims rarely turn him down when he offers to pray with them.
Mrs. Allen keeps the books, picks her husband up at the airport day or night, writes newsletters, travels with him sometimes, and helps answer questions in churches—where they both endeavor to equip and energize Christians to build bridges with Muslims. One way they do this is by role-playing how not to evangelize to Muslims. They'll portray getting into a conversation with a Muslim who works at a gas station, for instance, and at first will talk disparagingly about Islam. Then they'll start over and show how to lovingly and relationally share Jesus instead.
When speaking with Muslims, Allen avoids politics and loaded terms like "Christian." Theology is crucial for him, yet not as a rabbit trail for debate. He prefers sharing who Jesus is and why he came. A friend of Allen's has noticed that Muslims might interrupt discussions about faith, but not stories about Jesus.
Fears & Assurances
Just like anyone else, Allen fights fear, which comes in various forms. Sometimes he grows anxious about being in a new place. At other times he'll be fearful of losing a friendship, or he'll worry about succumbing to the temptation to water down the truth.
On trips overseas, especially to Muslim countries, he must combine courage with caution. Once he visited a family at night in the West Bank, where few other Westerners were around. This was especially intimidating. During a visit to Pakistan, where he spoke at an outside event, his friends refused to allow him to stay in one place for long, as they considered the physical dangers too great—though he smiled at the thought of a walking target being harder to shoot than a stationary target.
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30.3—May/June 2017
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