One of the great things about our little house church family
is that we’ve had numerous opportunities to host Muslim students in our
gatherings together.
It all began a few years ago when one of our members – who was
an ESL [English-as-a-Second Language] teacher at UCI – started inviting a few
of his Muslim students to join us on Sunday mornings. Eventually a few others
in our house church – who also taught ESL at another local school – began to
invite students, too. Pretty soon it became a fairly common thing for our house
church to welcome Muslim students from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and other
Middle Eastern countries. We’ve also had Chinese students join us who were part
of a Healing Light cult, and occasionally a few Buddhists here and there.
Traditionally, our idea of church isn’t about outreach.
Primarily we tend to see the gathering as something that committed followers of
Jesus do to see and experience Him in their midst. But as we started to welcome
students who were Muslim into our fellowship we started realizing that we didn’t
need to change very much about what we do. We still sing about Jesus and focus
on Jesus and share scriptures and testimonies about what Jesus is doing in our
lives. All of that is exactly the same.
What we do change in the event that we have Muslim guests
that morning is to not serve pork, and we avoid placing our Bibles on the
floor, and we try to respect their sensitivities whenever possible. Of course
we know that they don’t believe that Jesus was crucified, but we do. So, we don’t
abandon talk about the cross, but we might shift our emphasis more on the
resurrection life of Jesus we’re enjoying, or focus more on the teachings of
Jesus that are all about forgiveness and mercy and compassion for everyone.
This past Sunday morning we were very blessed to have
Abraham [Ebrihim] and Mohammed join us, both from Saudi Arabia.
They sat quietly during worship, and even recorded a few of our worship songs on their iPhones. They listened as we each took turns sharing what the Lord
Jesus had been showing us during the week, and they observed us as we shared
scriptures for one another and how we prayed over one another for specific
things. Then they allowed us to pray for them. Mohammed had recently injured
his shins in an accident. We asked if we could lay hands on him and pray and he
agreed, so we did.
The best part, honestly, was when we shifted to the meal
time. That’s when we sat down on the floor together – “Saudi-style” – around the
coffee table and shared the meal. We listened to them share stories about their
homeland. We talked about where to find a good Saudi restaurant in Orange
County. We laughed together, shared videos with one another, and then we
listened as they played drums for us in their traditional style.
It was a simple, yet beautiful testimony of shared life
together. No one tried to argue theology. No one compared religions. No one
attempted to say that their version of God or of Jesus was the right one. We
just enjoyed being together and we shared a sweet time of human connection
where Jesus was honored, and welcomed, in our conversation and fellowship.
Hopefully we’ll see them again soon. But if not, we are
still blessed to have been given the opportunity to show them the love of Jesus
in a very tangible way. We let them know they were loved and accepted and
welcomed – not because they agreed with us on theology – but because they were
beautiful people who were dearly loved of God.
If they do return, we might have to carefully navigate a
discussion about Jesus. If so, my hope is to begin by asking them to share with
us what they know of Jesus from their scriptures and to take the time to listen
and affirm those things we have in common about Him [which is way more than
most of us realize].
We might need to meet one-on-one with them, or in smaller
groups, where we can have a more thoughtful dialog together, but again,
agreement on theology is not our requirement for fellowship or love. Our main
goal is to take hold of Jesus with others who are seeking to know Jesus more
fully.
Our hope is that we can keep our eyes on Jesus and continue
to place our hope in Him to introduce Himself as we remain obedient to Him.
I’ll keep you posted!
-kg
1 comment:
The secret of evangelism is what the Church is practising. God of all will continue to reveal Christ the more within you and among you. Amen! Continue ti feast on Christ alone and you will enjoy the companies of heaven continously. Amen!
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