Student stories from 2011

Erich Bridges
IMB

My son wants to go to school next year in New York City.

In midtown Manhattan, no less — the Big Apple, the belly of the beast, the postmodern Babylon.

“Are you crazy?” a few friends asked (or implied) when I told them we would be visiting a school located there. No, I’m not crazy, although I had a few second thoughts driving through the Lincoln Tunnel into New York’s frantic traffic.

If my son ventures there, the big, bad city will present quite a challenge for him — more challenge than I could have handled at his age. But I envy him. He will attend an exciting Christian college that prepares young minds to confront the world as it is.

And he will experience the world as it is rapidly becoming: urban.

Five cities in two years
Over the past two years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit and profile five great cities on four continents: Buenos Aires, London, Nairobi, Mumbai and Jakarta (combined population: up to 70 million people). The purpose of the project was to grapple with the realities of declaring the Christian Gospel to a global population that is now more than 50 percent urban for the first time in history.

To review some of the numbers:

* A projected 88 percent of population growth over the next generation will occur in cities in the developing world. Half of India’s billion-plus people will live in cities by 2020.

* Urban dwellers will double to 6.4 billion by mid-century — 70 percent of humanity — according to United Nations forecasts.

* Nearly 80 percent of South America’s 380 million people live in cities. A third of Argentina’s population, for instance, lives in greater Buenos Aires.

Whether cities fit into the fast-multiplying category of 500,000 to 1 million people, “mega” size (1 million or more) or “super-mega” (above 10 million), they tend to share common characteristics. They attract the young, the rich, the poor, students, job seekers, minorities, immigrants, refugees. Cities speak many languages and encompass many cultures and religions. Sometimes different people groups within cities mix and meld. Sometimes they form distinct, exclusive communities — cities within cities.

Each city unique
In London, called “a world in one city,” you can hear more than 300 languages spoken. The city is home to at least 50 non-indigenous communities of 10,000 or more people each. Mumbai, approaching 20 million people, plays host to India’s Bollywood movie stars, its richest business tycoons — and Dharavi, reputedly Asia’s largest slum. Hindus dominate Mumbai, but 2 million Muslims live there, as well as members of nearly every caste, religion and people group in India. Nairobi is a hub and magnet for all of east Africa, attracting immigrants and refugees from every major people in the region. One area of the city, “Little Mogadishu,” functions as a kind of capital in exile for Somalia, Kenya’s anarchic neighbor.

Cities are aggressively secular — and zealously religious.

“Secularism is the predominant ‘religion’ of the city, but every other ‘ism’ is here in strong force,” says a Southern Baptist missionary in London. “The largest Sikh and Hindu temples outside of India are in west London. London is the Islamic capital of Europe. Satanism and all kinds of mystic practices are also alive and well.”

Cities are hectic, fragmented and violent. Despite their large numbers, city dwellers often live in isolation and fear. They are hard to reach — physically and spiritually — in their locked offices and high-rise apartments guarded by vigilant doormen.

People disconnected
“In a big city, the spiritual strongholds are loneliness and fear,” says missionary Randy Whittall, Southern Baptist team leader for Buenos Aires. “It may seem crazy to think about being lonely when you’re surrounded by 13 million people, but they are.”

How are Christians responding to the challenge of postmodern cities? Not very well, at least so far.

Responding with fear
Local churches in the cities I visited tend to be tradition-bound, fearful of reaching beyond their comfort zones, overly dependent on buildings and property (prohibitively expensive in major cities). Mission organizations and other Christian ministries talk about “reaching the cities,” but struggle to find effective ways to do it. Missionaries in many countries have focused for generations on reaching rural regions untouched by the Gospel. While they have toiled in the hinterlands, cities have mushroomed.

“We still have the mindset of rural missions,” observes Whittall. “But the mission of the 21st century, however much we don’t like it, is going to be in the Beijings, the New Delhis, the massive, polluted, crowded urban areas where billions of people live.”

The secret to success
What works in such places varies, but smaller tends to be better.

The effective urban Christian workers I met cultivate global prayer networks and pursue city-spanning “seed-sowing” (Gospel distribution), to be sure. But they follow up with focused community ministries among specific people groups, winning hearts and minds for the Gospel — as in Jakarta, London and Nairobi. They start small cell groups and house or apartment churches that multiply over time, as in Buenos Aires and Jakarta. They intensively train committed local believers to make disciples, who in turn train others, as in Nairobi.

In Mumbai, the faithful discipleship of just two Muslim-background followers of Christ by a Southern Baptist worker has sparked the beginning of many worship groups among Muslims in the city.

“I wouldn’t say so much that we’re failing [in the cities] as that we’ve never tried,” says the worker in Mumbai. “We can talk about the problems, the poverty and corruption and politicians. But it all goes back to the darkness they live in. They need Jesus Christ.”

Whatever it takes, it’s time to try.

View coverage in the five cities:
Jakarta
Mumbai
Nairobi
London
Buenos Aires

Dea Davidson
International Mission Board

Forfeiting a starting position on a professional soccer team didn’t make sense to the parents of Mihail Stoica, a talented young Roma believer from the mountains near Buzau, Romania.For Stoica’s Roma Gypsy people – an ostracized, poverty-stricken people group dispersed throughout the world – his chance to rise above his status was a rare opportunity too good to pass up. Yet for Stoica, being influenced by the professional sports lifestyle came at too great a cost to stay in the game.“I was playing soccer, my personal idol,” Stoica says. “I didn’t think it was a sin to play soccer, but then I realized the price that came with that. So I left playing soccer and just followed Jesus Christ.”

In the summer of 2006, Stoica obeyed God by joining eight other young believers from across Romania to travel to a foreign city and country – his Samaria – to tell others about Jesus Christ. These growing disciples are the result of the International Mission Board’s most developed work with the Roma.

Hope for the Roma
The end result of Roma reaching Roma is the hope of other Gypsy work that spans Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East and just recently into South America.

The Roma people made their way to Europe in the 14th century after being evicted from their native India. As early as the 1500s, many were removed from parts of Europe and relocated to South America. Others traveled into parts of Northern Africa and the Middle East by force or by choice.

These staggered diasporas have caused the Roma to put down roots among people who despise them not only for their dark skin, but also for their poverty, illiteracy and poor
living conditions.

Wherever their travels take them, Gypsies tend to adopt the local language and beliefs while still maintaining their own. The Romani language, strong family relationships and lifestyle characteristics unite the more than 10 million Roma worldwide.

Tight family circles
Best known for their wagons, fortunetelling, colorful clothing and parties, the Roma are a proud, passionate people who fight against the loss of their culture and family circles.

To share with Roma, IMB workers and national partners reach out through literacy education, teaching job skills and using Bible storying to evangelize and disciple new believers.

Today, although this scattered people group may vary in dialect or location, IMB workers are able to minister along family and cultural lines to bring the Roma to Christ and train them to reach their own people.

“We hope to have our own leaders, our own missionaries,” says Jim Whitley, an IMB worker who recently transferred from Romania to work among the Gypsies in South America.

“When the Roma begin to do their own evangelism, they begin to cross barriers so quickly. A real indigenous church-planting movement. For me, that’s the ultimate goal.”

Act
Learn more about opportunities as a missionary, volunteer or prayer warrior among the Roma people – and find for more stories, photos and sounds of the Roma at European peoples and imb.org .

(Printable version)

Caroline Anderson
International Mission Board

Sixty modern-day Pauls singing on Mars Hill draw a crowd of Athens tourists snapping pictures and shooting video of the impromptu worship circle. As the students’ voices rise over the city of 4 million, a Persian man on the fringes presses forward to ask for a copy of the lyrics.“Do you understand what’s going on?” Jerry Southern asks. The man replies: “Yes, you are Christians.”

As Southern segues from the song’s lyrics to the story of Christ, the Persian interrupts. Motioning to his daughter, he instructs her to tape record their discussion for later review.

“God sometimes takes me from America and a guy from Iran and we meet in Greece,” says Southern, who is Baptist Collegiate Union minister at Georgia Southern University. “That’s God’s timing.”

Proclaiming ‘the unknown God’
The Persian man is among one of more than 43 people groups that heard the Gospel through a weeklong International World Changers missions trip this past spring. Abandoning typical spring break plans, students from Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi converged in the Mediterranean, ministering alongside Southern Baptist workers to proclaim a God as unknown to Athenians as He was in the Apostle Paul’s days 2,000 years ago.

In Athens, past meets present and biblical meets secular. The city is the home of Socrates, the Olympics and Greek salad. It’s also a modern metropolis with pockets of its history remaining as renovation work on the Acropolis can be seen from McDonald’s and the subway runs beneath ancient ruins.

Churches dot the downtown skyline of this historical city. Their bells chime daily. But faith is not personal for most modern-day Greeks. Many identify with the Eastern Orthodox Church — a connection sustained through Easter and Christmas masses.

“They need to experience God,” Athens worker “Scott Wicker” told the student missions volunteers. “We need you to help us do that.”

Through trash collection, drama, movie production, basketball, English lessons, Gypsy ministry and a coffeehouse, the IWC ministry teams answered that call to help Athenians — Greek and immigrant — experience the God still unknown to many.

Street sweeping for souls
Donning orange vests and carrying trash pickup tongs, one group of IWCers took to the streets to draw conversations about their faith. The team filled a need for targeted neighborhoods as Athenian city workers held a trash, metro and bus strike the week of the mission trip.

Many conversations took place over black garbage bags. One woman asked IWCers: “You came all this way to tell me about Jesus?”

Curiosity was an entry point as the short-term trash collectors handed out Bibles to shop keepers and residents. Holding open the Book’s cover, IWCers pointed out the Orthodox Church’s seal of approval to avoid being seen as Protestant heretics. For many, it’s the first modern Greek Bible they have read.

Driving through Athens’ winding streets, trash pick-up claws also became a distribution tool as team members passed Bibles through car windows using the mechanical hands. Getting dirty through trash collection and later through pick-up basketball games, the ministry team gave “trash talk” new meaning in reaching Athenian neighborhoods.

Actions, then words
Guitar riffs from Lifehouse’s song Everything filled town squares throughout Athens as IWC drama teams traveled the city performing the “Redeemer” drama. The skit is an 11-minute wordless portrayal of man’s relationship with God. As the music faded, students fanned out into the applauding crowd to start conversations about the drama’s meaning.

Despite the language barrier, students used high school and college studies in Spanish, French and German to share God’s love with Athenians. In one setting, students found a native French speaker with tears trickling down his face. Calling over another IWC French major to interpret, they shared the message of the cross.

Worship leader Sam Banfield also crossed the language barrier using his German language skills.

“God continues to show me how He uses us,” Banfield said. “I never thought I would use German (after college), and here I am speaking to an Iranian man in German.”

Mission to minorities
A single light bulb illuminates the crowded cement-block room where Roma (Gypsy) families and their newfound American friends watch a Greek version of a film about Jesus’ life.

Children’s attention spans are notoriously short, but tonight all eyes watch the film. The group celebrates the moment of Jesus rising from the dead with a round of applause.

One worker who focuses on Gypsy ministry has seen six Roma make decisions of faith in several months’ time. All six have agreed to be baptized soon.

Throughout the week, IWCers assisted the worker’s mission by playing baseball, singing and dancing with the children. The youth returned the love with flower petals and slips of paper inscribed with the word agape (love). These Roma children are illiterate; one child wrote the word for others to copy.

Most Roma make a living selling produce and flowers. Many live in poverty, but their greatest need is hope through salvation in Christ.

Vision casting
Hundreds of immigrants find refuge from war, poverty and injustice within Greece’s borders. One IWC team spent the week handing out food and clothes at a refugee center.

The last two nights of the trip, IWCers transformed the center into a coffeehouse — converting the florescent-lighted, tiled room with floor lamps, throw pillows and square tables. As other teams ministered during the week, they invited newfound friends to come for an extended conversation and free coffee.

The games, songs, testimonies and movies shared over coffee deepened the students’ relationships with Greeks and immigrants. The first night, a man accepted Christ. The other contacts provided fertile ground for future IWCers.

“IWC is our top strategic partner,” Wicker says. “Every year they give us a push.”

Through annual trips to Athens — first through the 2004 Olympics outreach and now through ministry-building efforts — IWC teams strengthen the ministry in Athens. This past summer an IWC team served through refugee youth camps, soccer camps, a construction project and a nursing home ministry.

“I would encourage a church that hasn’t found its niche [in missions] to use IWC to make strategic partnerships on the field,” Wicker says.

Name is quotation marks has been changed.

Act
• Go: International World Changers is a ministry of the International Mission Board, providing student groups with packaged missions opportunities. Check out upcoming opportunities.

• Learn more about ministry in Central and Eastern Europe.

(Printable version)

Erich Bridges
International Mission Board

On a crisp October day in London’s Trafalgar Square, the solemn marble monuments of Great Britain’s former empire gaze upon a curious scene:It’s “Simcha on the Square,” a celebration of 350 years of Jewish life in London. Thousands gather — and not just English Jews and gentiles eager to enjoy kosher food and traditional music. The crowd includes people of nearly every conceivable appearance: turban-wearing Sikhs, Indians, Chinese, Africans, Rastafarians, hipsters, bikers. They dance or tap their toes to the beat of performances by “the Jewish Elvis” and “K-Groove,” a Klezmer-reggae-jazz band.

Multicultural bliss, at least for an afternoon.

Welcome to the new London. Bowler-hat London no longer exists. Nor does the London of Shakespeare, of Charles Dickens or even the 20th-century London of the Beatles. Sure, millions of tourists still visit the great sites of the old city. They still ride the double-decker red buses and flock to watch the queen and the changing of the guard.

But London is no longer really an English city; it is a world city. Set to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, it now proclaims itself the “capital of the world” — and for good reason.

‘A world in one city’
With a population of some 8.5 million people (estimates range as high as 14 million for the greater metro region), London vies with Paris as the largest city in Western Europe. Much of the world’s high-powered finance flows through its gleaming office towers and great investment houses.

Population numbers and dollars, however, don’t tell the true tale of London’s global reach.

As a coverage by The Guardian newspaper confirmed in 2005, London has become “a world in one city” (see the stories and maps at www.guardian.co.uk/britain/london/0,,1394802,00.html).

London “is uncharted territory,” wrote Guardian reporter Leo Benedictus. “Never have so many different kinds of people tried living together in the same place before. …

“Altogether, more than 300 languages are spoken by the people of London, and the city has at least 50 non-indigenous communities with populations of 10,000 or more. Virtually every race, nation, culture and religion in the world can claim at least a handful of Londoners.”

Never-ending wave of newcomers
Since its earliest beginnings as Londinium, a Roman garrison town built in 43 A.D., this great metropolis has attracted pilgrims, missionaries, immigrants, traders, colonial subjects and invaders. But the human waves that have washed over London in the last generation or two have brought the greatest cultural change since the Normans invaded in 1066.

A few glimpses:

 Emerge from the London Underground train station in Southall and you’ll think you’re in New Delhi. Temples, mosques, South Asian restaurants and markets dominate the area. On some streets there isn’t a white face in sight. Parts of Hackney feel like Ho Chi Minh City; parts of Wembley feel like Mogadishu. Other areas look and sound like Moscow (at least 250,000 Russians live in Britain) or Istanbul (more than 150,000 Turks and Kurds).

 The largest Sikh and Hindu temples outside India are in London. Hundreds of mosques serve as many as 1.3 million Muslim Londoners.

 An estimated 600,000 Poles have flooded London over the last several years, the largest of successive waves of Russians, Albanians, Bulgarians and other Eastern Europeans streaming into the city.

Some of London’s ethnic communities are insulated, even isolated. Others freely mix and mingle with white Britons and other immigrants. Their children mingle even more, creating new cultural variations.

“When we first arrived in London, you’d see teens from many different nations walking home from school and hanging out — all calling themselves ‘Brits’ — not English, but ‘Brits,’” says missionary “Patrick Sims, ” the Southern Baptist International Mission Board’s city strategist and team leader for London. “Now there’s been a move to forming gangs. Drugs and crime are on the rise. We can’t tackle that issue on a large scale, but we can come alongside teenagers and share the hope of Christ.”

According to the International Mission Board’s 2008 Annual Statistical Report, London is one of 172 urban centers around the world where missionaries such as Sims are working to start churches. Much of the work involves strategic partnerships between Southern Baptist missionaries, local Baptists and other Great Commission Christians. In 2007 alone such collaboration allowed missionaries to begin church-planting strategies in nine previously unengaged cities.

The urban emphasis is critical, because more than 80 percent of the 172 urban centers engaged by Southern Baptists and their partners are considered to be unreached (less than 2 percent evangelical).

Mixing bowl of nations
How did London become a mixing bowl of nations?

Large groups of South Asians and West Indians arrived from England’s former colonies after World War II to rebuild the city and provide labor for its new industries. Friendly immigration policies and generous social services have attracted many more groups from far-flung places. Countless “asylum seekers” have come seeking safety, sanctuary or economic opportunities. More recently, the European Union’s open-border policies have encouraged hordes of job-seeking citizens from EU member states.

Changes: Thrill or threat?
Some Anglo Londoners love the exploding cultural diversity and see it as an exciting rebirth. Some are indifferent. Others worry about increases in crime and poverty that have come with massive immigration. They resent the pressure on England’s social services — and fear losing jobs to foreigners.

Many Londoners express deep concern about homegrown Islamic terrorism, which showed itself most violently in the 2005 Underground train bombings that killed hundreds of innocents.

Others see London quickly losing whatever is left of its heritage to enforced political correctness and unchecked multiculturalism. They fear London is becoming “Londonistan” — a shiny, Disneyesque collection of tourist attractions surrounded by separate, increasingly radicalized ethnic “no go” zones.

Reaching the city of the future
The siege mentality even seeps into London’s churches, where Christians already contend with one of the most secularized societies in Europe. While 58 percent of Londoners claimed to be “Christian” in the 2001 census, here’s a more realistic estimate: 80 percent have had no personal encounter with Jesus Christ, and only a small minority follow Him as Lord.

The reality is that London has changed forever. In a globalized world, former mayor Ken Livingstone observed, “This city is the future” — for better or worse. You can embrace it, deny it, fear it or fight it.

Haunted by voices of London
Patrick Sims, the IMB London strategist, embraces it. London’s new reality is why God called him there. Passing through the city one day on the way home from an overseas trip, he visited a friend who lived there.

“As we walked the streets of London, I bet I heard 65 languages,” he recalls. “When I got back home, I was waking up at night hearing those voices and seeing those faces from all over the world. It was as if God said, ‘You don’t have to go to the world; the world has come to you. The world is in London and that is where I want you to be.’”

Sims and his wife, “Sarah,” followed the divine voice back to London. Today they lead a team of missionaries dedicated to reaching the lost people of the city — particularly members of the least-evangelized people groups with populations above 100,000.

“We want to create forms of church that are relevant, reproducible and multiplying for every people segment of London — and beyond,” he explains. “We say ‘and beyond’ because I’m trying to start a rumor that London is the final frontier. The whole world is here, and we can openly share the Gospel. London has five airports, one of which is the largest in the world, sending and bringing people to and from every corner of the globe.”

Topple the strongholds
Their strategy: first and foremost, fervent and ongoing prayer to topple the old and new spiritual strongholds of the city — secularism, exhausted state religious institutions, competing faiths, paganism, Satanism, New Age mysticism.

Next, they’re reaching into communities by making friends and meeting needs through services such as teaching English. They’re working with local partners such as Boyd Williams, a visionary Baptist pastor in Southall and Mark Melluish, evangelistic Anglican vicar of St. Paul’s Church in Ealing, west London.

Melluish, in his mid-40s, belies the stereotype of the doddering vicar left behind by changing times. He grew up a typically unchurched modern Brit, but when he gave his life to Jesus as a young man, he wanted to make a difference. Arriving at St. Paul’s 15 years ago, he found a dying parish of 60 people — all over age 60. Today the church attracts more than 1,000 regulars, including hundreds of children, by proclaiming and demonstrating the saving love of Christ.

Teasing apart the tangle
How did they do it in a jumbled-up community of middle-class Anglo workers, jobless poor people, Poles, Hindus and Muslims?

“We meet people of all different backgrounds and faiths,” Melluish says. “Not only do we minister to people in poverty; we’re able to reach them with a language school. We do job fairs. We help put people in jobs. We go into the schools. We even bought the coffee shop down on the high street so we’ve got a ‘front door’ to ensure people have got a way in. And it works.

“(London) is a diverse community. The church has to see that and adapt to it, not be fearful of it. We’ve got to be all things to all people so that we might share Christ. How can we reach them? By being absolutely outrageous with the love of God, we can cross all boundaries. Get out on the street and do stuff.”

That’s the attitude that will reach the new London and — as new disciples of all creeds and colors there are won to Christ — the world. One missionary even likens the city to heaven, where, as the Book of Revelation says, members of all tribes and tongues will one day worship before God’s throne.

“They’re gonna be there,” she says. “So living in London is a chance to practice heaven on earth.”

Names in quotation marks have been changed.

Pray

• for influential leaders in many of London’s unreached communities to become followers of Christ and lead others to Him.
• for wisdom and discernment for IMB workers and their partners as they seek the most effective ways to reach the lost of London.
• that Southern Baptists truly called by God to serve Him in London will answer His call.
• for protection from spiritual oppression for Christian workers. Many struggle with discouragement and depression because of spiritual opposition from many directions: secularism, paganism, unresponsiveness and hostility from others, hectic schedules, conflict and confusion.

Act
Interested in serving in London or mobilizing your church to partner with the IMB mission team and London Baptists? Contact Brittany Conner at bconner@imb.org.

(Printable version)

Project Northern Lights in depth

Don Graham
International Mission Board

Jonathan Hillman needed a miracle. God sent him a porta-potty truck.

The 25-year-old from First Baptist Church of Guymon, Okla., watched as police waded through cars bottlenecked at the mouth of one of Europe’s busiest seaports.

Hillman was among a team of Southern Baptist volunteers handing out packets of Gospel materials to cars passing through the port’s gates. Most of the drivers were North African Muslims headed for countries across the Mediterranean. Backups like this were an answer to prayer because they bought volunteers time to offer the packets to every car.

Unfortunately for Hillman, the police were making headway. Traffic had started to move again, and cars were close to speeding past volunteers. He knew it might be the only chance for some to ever hear about Jesus.

That’s when Hillman says God showed His sense of humor.

Surprising answer to prayer
From nowhere, a porta-potty truck lumbered into the circle funneling cars through the port’s gates and came to a dead stop. Horns blared. Within minutes, the truck had undone more than an hour of diligent traffic direction by the police. Packets in hand, volunteers went back to work.

“Everything backed up even more, so we could continue hitting every car that went through there that day,” Hillman says. “To see God specifically answer prayer is just amazing. … It’s as if He said, ‘You can count on Me to get these packets out. You can count on Me to bring in a porta-potty truck if you need it.”

Hillman is one of hundreds of Southern Baptists who’ve taken part in Project Northern Lights. Its purpose is to spread the Word of God across North African nations where sharing the Gospel is a criminal offense.

“Very often we take for granted the availability of God’s Word in the free world,” says “Dave Webber,” the Southern Baptist worker who runs Project Northern Lights. “The Muslim world has a very high wall around it.”

Webber should know. The 39-year-old former pastor from Florida has spent several years serving in Northern Africa and the Middle East with his family. Home to the world’s second-largest desert, the Sahara, for Christians North Africa also ranks among the planet’s most spiritually barren places.

Criminal genius
“Governments across North Africa absolutely prohibit the distribution of the Bible,” Webber explains. “It is not illegal to own one, but it is illegal to give someone else one.
The sentence for a first offense [in one North African country] is five years in prison and over $300,000 in fines.”

It’s no surprise, Webber adds, that such threats make the Bible and other Gospel materials virtually impossible to find in-country. Enter the genius of Project Northern Lights’ approach.

Instead of risking life and limb to distribute God’s Word inside North Africa, volunteers focus on the more than 18 million North Africans living and working in Europe. Every summer, hundreds of thousands of these immigrants flow through southern Europe’s ports — most returning to North Africa to visit family. Ferries carry the travelers, their cars and hopefully, the Gospel, across the Mediterranean.

Thousands of New Testaments
But the project’s strategy hasn’t gone unnoticed, partly due to the sheer volume of material it distributes. More than 20,000 Gospel packets are given away at the ports every summer. Each includes a green, pocket-sized, French-Arabic New Testament, a JESUS film DVD and other evangelical literature. Distribution totals over the project’s 11-year history top 200,000 packets, making it the single largest source of New Testaments in North Africa.

“This project makes the front page of newspapers in several North African countries,” Webber says. “There is often instruction for people not to receive the packet.”

He adds with a grin, “That usually makes them want it all the more.”

Receptivity at the port ranges from 20 percent to 60 percent day to day, a difference Webber credits to spiritual warfare rather than the stereotype that Muslims are “hostile” to the Gospel.

“Americans have this perception that they’re taking their life into their own hands when they reach out to Muslims, and that underneath every one of those robes is an AK-47,” he says. “Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Typically the response at the port is far more favorable than people would imagine. … Even if they disagree with what we’re doing, they’re usually very polite.”

Success stories
One of Webber’s favorite success stories involves a North African man considered a hajj, which means he fulfilled one of Islam’s five pillars by completing a pilgrimage to Mecca. What’s more, the man had traveled to Mecca not once as required by the Quran, but four times — even bringing his wife along for the journey — a mark of esteem among Muslims.

Several years ago, this man passed through the ports and was offered a Gospel packet by a Northern Lights volunteer. He took it home where he studied the New Testament and watched the JESUS film.

“His testimony is that after two years of examining the claims of the Gospel, he prayed to receive Christ and was baptized,” Webber says.

“One of the reasons I love this project is because we see the hand of God on it. And the testimonies are in the thousands of how God specifically moved people in time and in space to get them to where they could receive the Word of God.

“When I travel across North Africa, I hear, ‘A family member was going through the port and brought me a gift. They had no idea what it really was, but they gave it to me … and I began to look into it and discovered that this is the truth of God’s love for me.’”

Kids, tears and changed lives
Angie Jackson,* 26, is an IMB journeyman from Florida who serves on the Northern Lights’ staff. She remembers offering a packet to a North African woman who surprised Jackson by telling her she was already a Christian.

It turns out the woman received a packet at the port the previous year. She didn’t pay much attention to it until one evening while cooking dinner. Her children were bored and needed something to occupy them. She remembered the DVD (the JESUS film) that came with the packet and, on a whim, decided to play it.

As the kids watched, she cooked. But they kept calling her to come watch with them. Eventually she gave in.

“It got to the part where Jesus was being beaten and was about to be crucified,” Jackson says. “Her children were weeping and screaming at the television, ‘No! Don’t hurt Him — don’t hurt Him!’

“But she kept watching and looking at her kids, back and forth. Finally, she noticed that she was crying, too.”

When the movie ended, the woman and her children prayed to receive Christ.

“It’s because of this video, because of this packet, that my [children] are believers today,” she told Jackson. Then the woman asked if she could have another packet.

“This time she was giving it to a friend,” Jackson explained.

There are even stories of North Africans being led to the Lord right in front of the port’s gates. According to Webber, team members have witnessed some 225 decisions for Christ at the port since the project began, starting with the very first person ever offered a packet.

Boldness not required
But none of this would be possible without the sacrifice of Southern Baptist volunteers.

Project Northern Lights depends on a steady stream of volunteers to drive its massive Gospel distribution effort. Teams are needed for each of the eight, 10-day sessions scheduled throughout the summer. Webber and his staff provide training.

“Before volunteers ever go out to the port they spend a day tuning up their hearts and learning how to do distribution,” Webber says. “So they’re prepared spiritually and they’re prepared in distribution techniques and strategy.

“We teach them to say four very simple phrases: ‘Hello. This is a gift for you. It’s free. It is the Gospel.’”

Boldness isn’t required, but a broken heart is.

“The most important thing for volunteers is that they’re broken to the will of Christ — to be who God wants them to be and to do what God has called them to do.

“Volunteers are what make this project go,” Webber says. “God is calling people to come. And as people are obedient to go, not only will they be blessed, but the lives of many others will be blessed as well.”

Name in quotation marks has been changed.

Act

• Go as a volunteer to be a witness to millions of North African Muslims. No language skill or prior evangelism experience required. To learn more, call (800) 999-3113.
• Pray
  • For freedom for Southern Baptist volunteers to distribute God’s Word unhindered.
  • That Muslims will receive and explore the Gospel packets.
  • That Christ’s message of love and grace will go out with great power.
• Give to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, which along with the Cooperative Program supports “Dave Webber” and other personnel involved in outreach around the world.

Reaching the ‘culture shapers’

Erich Bridges
International Mission Board

Deep in the bowels of a converted factory complex in Moscow, Denis and his band mates crank up the volume.

The window into their dingy, cramped practice room vibrates as the rehearsal gears up. The drummer, bassist and keyboard player find a pulsing groove with Denis, who lays down rhythm chords on his electric guitar. He sings harmony as Aina, the gifted lead vocalist, sings the haunting melody of one of his songs.

They’re all committed Christians, but they aren’t a “Christian” band – at least not like the groups that play in churches around Moscow. They want to be heard by a wider audience.

“I have been playing music since I was 13, so when I became a believer I started to play in the church,” explains Denis, now in his 20s. “But then I understood that God can do a lot more. It says in the Bible that the sick need a doctor, not the healthy. I want to use this band to share the Gospel with people.”

Band plays nightclubs and cafes

That means playing in Moscow nightclubs, cafes and other rowdy venues. That’s fine with Denis, as long as people listen. He became a believer after encountering a Christian pantomime group in a park.

“We’re trying to become more professional, to earn respect with the quality of our music,” he explains. “We also can minister to musicians that aren’t Christians. We’re hoping this will start some sort of chain reaction – that we influence them and they influence others. We know there’s going to be a lot of temptations and pressure, but the No. 1 thing we’re seeking is to bring glory to God, not ourselves.”

Denis’ vision for reaching other Russian musicians has the enthusiastic support of David,* a Southern Baptist worker in Moscow with the same goal.

Artists an influential ‘people group’

David and his Russian/American team (Denis is a member) see Moscow’s artists – from the pop realm to members of the high-culture music, theater and fine arts communities – as one of the most influential “people groups” in Russia.

“When you look at Russia – and Moscow in particular – they are one of the culture-shaping components of society,” David says. “Some say artists merely reflect culture. I disagree. I think they shape culture. And hardly anybody was doing anything to reach them.”

Artists have long wielded power in Russia, where people still read poetry and argue about big ideas. This is the land, after all, of Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov, of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Solzhenitsyn. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and his henchmen feared writers and musicians enough to imprison or shoot many – and closely control others.

Pop culture and iPods now rule among young Russians, just as in the United States. But the typical Russian youth remains more serious-minded than his or her American counterpart. That goes double for young artists.

From ballet to garage bands

“How do we engage this community?” David asks. “Because it is a culture unto itself, and within it are multiple subcultures. There’s pop music, there’s classical music, there’s drama, there’s ballet, there’s garage bands, there’s rock ‘n’ roll, there’s visual arts and on and on.”

One thing’s for sure: Artists aren’t walking into Moscow churches asking to hear the Gospel – and they aren’t likely to do so anytime soon. So David and his team are going to them.

That involves a variety of means: a production company that enables them to promote artistic events, an English club for musicians, acting workshops and an informal monthly gathering where Christian artists can invite their nonbelieving artistic friends for music and conversation.

American sacred music touches one musician

One event brought orchestral players together with hundreds of visiting musicians and singers for a program of American sacred music in one of Moscow’s finest concert halls. More than 1,000 listeners attended, but the main “audience” was the musicians themselves.

“When I play classical music, some of it moves me,” one of the Russian musicians told David after the concert. “But I didn’t think I would be moved like this.”

An atheist, he has since attended the monthly gathering for artists, where conversation sometimes turns to the Gospel. How to steer it in that direction in the right ways is the challenge. David asks for prayer that he and his team members will discern God’s wisdom.

“We’ve got the answers to life’s ultimate questions,” he says. “But we need to figure out how they’re asking the questions.”

*Name changed for security reasons.