A (Russian) Orthodox view of Mission to Muslims

I found a great website, through a link on my friend Abu Dawud's blog Islam and Christianity, about an Orthodox view of Islam and mission to Muslims. The site contains testimonies, histories, patristic views of Islam, etc. Really worth a looong visit to download lots of their articles. I am so interested to find out about a truly Orthodox view to mission among Muslims! Here the website of our brother-in-mission Yurij Maximov. And how interesting to see that they also have an article by our regular writer Rev Bassam Madany!

Jordanian campaign against evangelism

On 21 February, Jordanian parliament slammed media reports that the country has increased pressure on expatriate Christians. ‘We categorically condemn and reject the false report which is aimed at damaging Muslim-Christian relations in Jordan’, the 110-member lower house of parliament said.

This statement of parliament came a day after Jordan’s foreign minister explained that he had eight expatriate Christians expelled for proselytizing activities under the cover of humanitarian aid operations. He explained that 'some foreigners arrive in the kingdom under the pretext of charitable activities, but break the law and carry out missionary activities'.

In the previous week, the Council of Churches in Jordan, which represents most Churches in the country, warned of the presence of about '40 sects'. It is likely that the Council of Churches distanced itself publicly from these groups fearing that the present government campaign against Christians may also hurt them. They condemned the actions of these movements, saying that they 'create discord within Christianity itself and with the Muslims'.

For the Council of Churches to distance itself from the actions of other Christians is divisive and unwise; it strengthens the government's campaign against churches and missionaries in Jordan. For independent mission agencies to ignore the views of the major local churches is also divisive and unwise. It obviously puts the local churches in a difficult position in relationship to the authorities.

On 6 February, the Free Evangelical Church in Aqaba was closed by the Jordanian authorities. The same church had had a series of problems at the hands of the authorities during the past year. On 29 April 2007, its Pastor Mazhar Izzat Bishay, an Egyptian national and long-time resident of Aqaba, was deported to Egypt after being questioned. No reason for his deportation was given. A few months earlier, Wajeeh Besharah, Ibrahim Atta, Raja Welson, and Imad Waheeb, four Egyptians living in Aqaba, were also deported, after being questioned about their affiliation with the church.

Mission in the Arab World

This blog will focus on the Church and its mission in the Arab World. The Church comes first, mission second, and Islam last. Many missionaries that I meet have another sequence. They begin with their own mission, and focus on Islam, hoping to maybe create a Church.

My belief, and I think that this is Biblical, is that our missiology can never take precedence over our ecclesiology. Since ancient times, our Lord Jesus had his flock in the Middle East. The Churches of the Arab World are His body, his people. How dare we do mission in the Arab World without being deeply attached to the existent Church, and as if we have the freedom to create new 'methods' apart from the existent Church.

How we suffer from our own Western individualism. How we distort the Gospel of Jesus Christ by making ourselves the center of mission, as if we have the right to ignore the Church of Christ that has been present in Arab lands since the inception of Christian history.