Challenges of Disciplemaking in Muslim Contexts
By Don Little
When I arrived in North Africa, twenty-three-year-old Mustafa* was one of the more enthusiastic new believers among the young men being discipled by my colleagues.
Mustafa and I became friends and in my second year he worked with me to start a small cell church in a nearby city. He helped me with my Arabic and served as a cultural informant while I taught him how to lead Bible studies and care for Muslim seekers.
At the end of that year, when I left on a study leave, Mustafa took charge of the tiny cell group of four new believers. It was satisfying to be able to work with Mustafa, and I left encouraged seeing that helping a young believer to disciple other new believers worked.
But when I reunited with Mustafa on our return to his city following a two-year absence, I discovered that he had changed. He was struggling with his faith because of a number of bad experiences with both expatriate workers and local believers.
Three years later he had left town to take a good job, left his new faith, returned to attending prayers in the mosque, married a Muslim girl and cut off all ties with the house church in which he had once been an enthusiastic member
About seven years after first coming to faith in Christ, he was settled back into his Muslim community and into life as a Muslim after his years living as a believer in Christ.
This account of failed disciping of Mustafa illustrates that we who are laboring to plant churches in the Muslim world must learn to disciple more effectively.
Far too many of those who are coming to faith in Christ out of Islam today will fall away from Christ unless workers and believers seeking to disciple them learn to disciple well.
Conversion in Muslim contexts
The conversion experience of [believers from Muslim backgrounds] is as varied as the individuals involved.
Among the men whom I helped disciple, one devout and faithful Muslim man, who had been prepared to follow Christ through five years of dreams and visions of Jesus, came to faith in Christ immediately after having understood the call of Christ in the gospel.
Another believed following a long, slow search and an extended period in a one-on-one Bible study.
Others came to faith through the influence of their believing friends.
Recent years have seen the publication of a number of excellent articles and books examining the phenomenon of Muslims turning to Christ. Muslims are coming to Christ in a wide variety of ways, and there are significant discipleship implications inherent in the different means that God uses to draw them to Christ.
[Dudley Woodberry, senior professor of missions at Fuller Theological Seminary School of Missions] uses the analogy of the five fingers of the hand of God working in the glove of circumstances in drawing Muslims to faith:
- the resurgence of political Islam or Islamism
- natural and human-caused catastrophes
- the migration of Muslims out of their homelands
- the Muslim desire for blessing or power (baraka)
- ethnic and cultural resurgence
Woodberry also notes a number of things that appear to often influence Muslims and draw them toward Christ. He put these influences into two main groups:
- Muslim experience of encountering Christians, prayer answered by Jesus, dissatisfaction with Muslims or Islam, and dreams of visions of Jesus
- finding that their spiritual needs were better answered by faith in Christ
In ranked order those needs are inner peace, forgiveness, assurance of salvation, the love of God, spiritual guidance through the Bible, spiritual fellowship, freedom from fear and loneliness, and deliverance from demonization.
Similarly [Jean-Marie Gaudeul] found five types of influences drawing Muslims to Christ:
- encountering the person of Christ
- a thirst for truth
- seeking a community of believers
- seeking forgiveness and redemption
- seeking a personal encounter with God through prayer
Given the spiritual reality explored above, that the nature of one’s conversion to Christ has enormous influence on the path of discipleship as a Christan, it is vital to stress that the disicpling of [believers from Muslim backgrounds] must take into account the unique conversion experience of [those] one is helping disciple.
*Pseudonym
Adapted from Effective Discipling in Muslim Communities by Don Little. Copyright (c) 2015 by Don Little. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60559. www.ivpress.com
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Footnote: One positive update to this story is that Mustafa’s younger brother came to faith a few years after Mustafa and is today one of the most gifted young leaders in the church in his country. Moreover, it seems that his perseverance in staying connected with his no-longer-believing older brother is showing fruit in that Mustafa’s Muslim wife is asking increasingly serious and probing questions of her sister-in-law about her faith.
Sources: “A Global Perspective on Muslims Coming to Faith in Christ” by J. Dudley Woodberry, From the Straight Path to the Narrow Way: Journeys of Faith, edited by David H. Greenlee, P.I. Barnabas, Evelyne Reisacher, Farida Saidi and J. Dudley Woodberry, p11-17; “Learning From God’s Ways” by Jean-Marie Gaudel, From the Straight Path to the Narrow Way, Ibid, p82-89.