Where in the World are the Beans Going Next?: Opportunity #2 - “Central Asia”

Apologies for our delay in posting this next installment of "Where In the World are the Beans Going Next?", as we have been away for the past week on our third and final vision trip to consider the needs and opportunities in Prague, Czech Republic. We visited the team and IPC church in Prague, and preached for them on Galatians 3:26-4:7, but before our trip to Prague, we had the privilege to visit our organisation’s team in “Central Asia” from late March through early April. It was absolutely amazing! However, we can’t say the city and country name online for security reason as it is a Muslim majority country.

This city is the capital and by far largest city of its country with a population of over 2.5 million, and is an absolute study in contrasts. It is both European and Asian, Muslim and secular, ancient and modern, rich and poor, and absolutely in need of Jesus. The people who we encountered were so incredibly friendly and kind, the food was amazing, and the city was very impressive with a widely eclectic mix of both and ancient and modern architecture, Central Asia has at different periods in history been part of the Greek Macedonian Empire, Roman Empire, Persian Empire, Mongol Empire, Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire, and finally the Soviet Union before becoming an independent nation after the fall of the USSR in 1991.

Since it stands at a strategic crossroads between Russia, Europe, the Middle East, and eastern Asia, between the Black and Caspian Seas, as well as along the “Silk Road” (an ancient and highly prized overland trade route connecting Europe and Asia), this region and its cultures have seen various powers fight over it for centuries. As part of the Persian Empire prior to Persia’s (Iran’s) forced Islamisation in the 7th Century AD, this country was a multicultural region where religious freedom was valued, and Zoroastrians (the religion of ancient Persia prior to Islam), Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus lived together in relative harmony until it was conquered by Islamic Arabs who forced them to submit to Islam, which the Ottomans (Turks) later reinforced. They were later conquered by the pre-Soviet Russian Empire and then became part of the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution, following World War I.

Needless to say, Central Asians have seen a lot of war and a lot of different beliefs forced upon them over the centuries, and the cultural impacts of all of these past cultural and religious influences have continued to shape and have influence on their spirituality (and often their lack thereof), art, architecture, language, and cuisine, however, this country and its surrounding region have been relatively peaceful for nearly 100 years with some small exceptions in history. Luxury goods such as silk Persian rugs and caviar are relatively cheap here compared to the Western world, as this is where they come from. In the 1800’s (like Norway in the 1960’s) oil was discovered, one of the earliest discoveries of petroleum in the world where it was literally seeping from the ground. Natural gas bubbled up from the ground creating naturally occuring geographic “fire features” giving this land their nickname as the “The Land of Fire”. The oil industry was, quite literally, born here.

Today between 97-99% of this country’s residents are “culturally Muslim”, and while the vast majority are not particularly devout Muslims or religious, and their government is officially “secular” (a legacy from their time in the Soviet Union), the majority people group and 25 other people groups within their borders are considered “Unreached People Groups” with little to no access to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and very little indigenous Gospel witness within their cultures. The majority of Central Asians are Muslim, simply because they don’t know of anything else and have probably never met a Christian or seen a Bible. While statistically and culturally muslim, the vast majority are quietly atheist/agnostic, do not see Islam as being particularly relevant to their daily lives, and only interact with Islam during Muslim holidays. If nominal Christians can be called "Christmas & Easter Christians", then most Central Asians might be considred "Eid Al-Fitr & Eid Al-Adha Muslims". As an officially “secular” government, they allow for certain things that are not commonly available in much of the Islamic world (such as alcohol). As a result they have become known as a fun place to vacation and as the “Las Vegas of the Muslim World”.

The majority of people of Central Asia are tremendously open minded, welcoming, and curious about what visitors believe, particularly westerners. When they meet a westerner who is not there as part of the oil industry, they want to know why in the world you are there. Telling them that you think that they have a beautiful culture and that you think that it might be an interesting place to live will often earn you smiles and very special kindness from them. They want to know who you are, why you are there, what you believe, and why in the world you might want to live there if you’re not there to make money off of their natural resources. They are accustomed to feeling used by other cultures and even their own government have become rich off of them without them having much to show for it themselves. In spite of their relatively high quality of life and the beauty of their surroundings, Central Asians tend to be self-effacing about their own culture, and desire to be seen as more western/European than Middle Eastern/Muslim.

While there has not been an “indigenous” christianity in this particular country of Central Asia for over a thousand years since becoming Islamic, there are small numbers of Eastern Orthodox Christians who are mostly ethnically Russian, Armenian, or Georgian migrants. Most remaining signs of Christianity here were destroyed during their time as part of the Soviet Union, including most church buildings. One exception is a large historic Lutheran church building dating to the late 19th Century, which was not demolished because the communists found the height of its ceilings useful for constructing tall statues of communist and Soviet figures such Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin. This usefulness providentially preserved the building for future use, and now a handful of different Christian churches use it as a meeting space for worship, including an IPC congregation that was planted in their capital city about 18 years ago. Today, the IPC church is led by a pair of bi-vocational indigenous pastors, and an American missionary pastor who has worked here with our organisation for the past 15+ years, who now leads a small mission team that is being rebuilt after the Covid-19 pandemic sent many western missionaries back to their home countries.

Where in the World are the Beans Going Next?: Three Opportunities!

Last week, we mentioned in a post that we have some major decisions in the weeks ahead regarding the future of our ministry. As many of you have already known, our commitment here at IPC-Ealing from the start has been a 2.5 year “short-term” assignment in a healthy IPC church as a soft place to land, learn, grow, and experience cross-cultural ministry firsthand with a lot of different kinds of people from all over the world. We are grateful to have now been approved by MTW for a long-term assignment, which we anticipate moving to this summer.

From the start, we came to the United Kingdom with the intention and understanding that we would be launched out from London and IPC-Ealling to another international context with even greater needs for the Gospel, while not knowing for sure whether that might end up being somewhere else in the U.K., or someplace even “further afield”. As much as we have loved London and IPC-Ealing, we have agreed with IPC-Ealing’s and MTW’s leadership that there are much more pressing and strategic needs that we can help fill to take the good news of Jesus to the nations in places with less access to the Gospel. Even with as secular and “post-christian” as London has become, each of the opportunities that we are now considering moving to long-term this upcoming summer have very little existing Gospel witness within their cultural context. They are all either “post-Christian” or “pre-Christian”. Because we so value and need your continued prayers and support, we’d like to tell you a bit more about the three options that we are considering to help inform and fuel your prayers.

In the past few weeks, we’ve visited MTW teams serving IPC churches or church plants that are each even “further afield” for us than London, each with unique needs particular to their context and team, and we have one more trip coming up later this month. All three opportunities are in major cities that each serve as the national, cultural, and economic capitals of their respective countries where establishing a Gospel-centred church can have far reaching effects on the rest of the country and region, similar to the effect that we have seen IPC-Ealing have througout London and the U.K. Each of the teams in these three cities have invited us to come for a visit to see how God is at work, and to consider with them whether the Lord might be calling our family to come and join them there.

Our trips so far have been to:

• a church planting team in very secular and internationally diverse Oslo, Norway. The dominant people group, Norwegians, like the British, are classified as “nominally Christian” and “partially reached”. Because of an influx in recent years of immigrants from Asia and North Africa, like London, Oslo is now a strategic location for reaching members of unreached people groups living within the city and planting Gospel-centred churches which have a heart for reaching them and their secular European neighbours. The team have been in Oslo for just about a year and a half, and have begun the work of planting Grace International Church of Oslo (IPC), https://gracechurchoslo.org.
• a mission team supporting an established national partner church (though still very much “church-plant-ish” feeling in its development) in a major city in a “post-communist” Muslim majority county in Central Asia that was formerly part of the Soviet Union. It is in that central part of the “Eurasian” continent that is something of a “cultural crossroads” that is both European and Asian, Western and Eastern, Muslim and secular, and both wealthy and poor. For security reasons, it would not be wise for us to tell you the name of the city or country over social media, but statistically the population is 97-99% "Culturally Muslim", and the majority people group and about 17 other people groups that make up their population are classified as “Unreached”. The team leaders have been in the City for nearly 20 years and helped plant the IPC church that is there before handing leadership over to a pair of indigenous pastors who they trained and who continue to lead the church.

Our upcoming trip later this month will be to:

• a team leading a church planting movement in very secular and “post communist” Prague, Czech Republic (also known as “Czechia”, but not to be confused with "Chechnya"), which we are very familiar with from previous visits to the team and churches there. While less diverse than London or Oslo, Prague is both one of the most secular Cities in Europe, and a very strategic location and has significant cultural and economic influence in Central and Eastern Europe. Considered by many to be "The Heart of Europe", Prague has a diverse international population of secular native Czechs and other eastern and central Europeans from formerly communist block countries including Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland, and Germany. Though they once would have been considered a majority Christian nation, after centuries of religious wars, Nazism, communism, and secularism, the dominant worldview of Czechs today is “non-religious” (atheist/agnostic) and are classified as “minimally reached”, just one notch above “unreached people group” status. The Prague team has been in the country since establishing Faith Community Church IPC as an international church plant in 2007 (www.faithcommunity.cz), and planted their Czech speaking daughter church “DoSlova” IPC (Czech for “into the word”, www.doslovapraha.cz) in Old Town Prague in 2017. At this time, neither church is fully self supporting and are both reliant on international missionaries to provide preaching, teaching, worship leadership, evangelism, discipleship, and other critical roles.

Each of these opportunities are unique and have particular needs that we would be trusting the Lord to help fill for them and the communities who they are reaching out to. Each team is healthy and we could see ourselves fitting very well with each of them in terms of our own personalities and gifts. All three locations have English speaking school options for our two younger children, Caleb (16) and Mary (14), and our oldest son Joshua (18) will begin university in the U.K. in September.

This is going to be a very tough decision between three really good options for us and our family, and we would so appreciate your prayers for wisdom and continued support as we launch out to take the Gospel to one of these new locations. Like London, the need for the Gospel in each of these locations is very significant, if not more so, but each of them lack a strong, well established Gospel-centred church like IPC-Ealing and like so many of us enjoy in the U.S. This summer, Lord willing, we will move in faith to one of these locations long-term, trusting the Lord to use us (yet more than anything, trusting in God's faithfulness to His covenant promises, the effectiveness of His Word, and the power of His Spirit) to see His church established and His Gospel to go forth to the nations.

Over the next few days/weeks, we'll be posting some of our thoughts, observations, research, and of course more pictures(!) for each location to help fuel your prayers. Thank you so much for your prayers, support, and care for our family. We could not possibly take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations without you!

Central Asia

Here’s a really great and helpful video from our organisation about the region of Central Asia that we recently visited our team on the ground there. Really beautifully done. 

What Is Missions Like in Central Asia? from MTW on Vimeo.

Our Friend Naiyesh Has Trusted in Jesus

We were so happy to learn that one of our friends from Central Asia, Naiyesh, has come to profess faith in Jesus on Good Friday while we were in the Middle East. Naiyesh and her husband Davood first began coming to Free English Classes in December just a few days after arriving to join their college aged son Amir in the U.K. We have had several conversations about Jesus with Naiyesh and Davood over the past few months and have been so encouraged by their curiosity about the Gospel. Please pray for Davood and Amir that they might come to trust in Jesus as well. It is a great privilege to get to be a part of their lives and story of coming to trust in Jesus.

Seeing some of the local sights in this beautiful city as the “Adhan” (Islamic call to prayer) begins to sound in the background. We find many of the sights, sounds, and tastes of the Muslim world to be very beautiful, yet broken and in need of the Gospel of Grace, just like so many things in the Western world. Please pray that the people of this city, country, and region would know Jesus, who the Qur'an calls “Isa al-Masih” (Jesus the Messiah), and instructs Muslims to learn about Him from their Christian neighbors, and tells them that “you will surely find the most gracious (to Muslims) to be those who call themselves Christian.” While the Qur’an’s understanding of Jesus and Christianity is far from perfect, there are many clues in Islam that point our Muslim friends and neighbours to Jesus.

This is What 2.5 Million People Who’ve Never Heard the Gospel Looks Like

When missionaries talk about UPG’s (Unreached People Groups), most of us as Americans think of people living in huts on an island in the south Pacific, or deep in the heart of sub-Saharan Africa, and sometimes that’s true. But just as often as not, members of UPG’s live in some of the largest and most beautiful cities in the world.

This is a city of 2.5 million that most westerners have never heard of, that is the capital of a country that most have never heard of. It has unbelievably ancient roots, historic palaces, modern skyscrapers, incredible food, and wonderfully warm and friendly people, who not only aren’t Christians themselves, but who have probably never even met a Christian and have certainly never heard the Gospel of Grace. It is ancient yet modern, culturally and financially rich yet spiritually poor, European yet Asian, beautiful yet gritty, Muslim yet secular. And over 99% of its residents are lost and have no one to tell them about Jesus. 

What are we going to do about that?

MTW Giving Website Being Anonymised For Upcoming Trip to Muslim World

Hi Everyone, 

After having to jump through a few more hoops than we had anticipated, our MTW giving page is now "anonymised" in order to protect our colleagues and those they serve in the Middle Eastern country we will be visiting later this month. As part of that anonymisation, the link to our giving site has been changed to remove any photos and information that would identify us with our organisation publicly. Our new giving link only contains our MTW ministry account number, 400513, and until further notice will be found at https://www.mtw.org/missionaries/400513. Thank you all for your prayers and support!

Upcoming Trip to Muslim Majority Country, Please Pray

Hello friends, I just wanted to let you know that our public giving site, which has been located at www.mtw.org/bean since joining MTW staff a few years ago, is going to be “anonymised” sometime in the next few days (we’re not sure when exactly), with the removal of our family picture, names, and any personally identifiable details. But don’t panic, it’s not because we are leaving MTW or the mission field. We will be traveling to visit a team in a Muslim majority country in late March to encourage them and learn from them in hopes of becoming better equipped to reach our friends and neighbours from the Islamic world.

While we can't tell you the name of the city or country we'll be visiting, we can tell you a little bit about it. We can tell you that it is statistically "97-99%" muslim, and that the majority of Muslims there are Shia, with a large minority who are Sunni Muslims. With the exception of westerners who have moved there to do business in their growing economy, over 96% of its citizens are are members of Unreached People Groups and the number of Bible believing Christians in the country is only about 0.2% of the population. The good news is that Christianity is slowly growing there at a modest growth rate of just less than 4% per year, and they border another Muslim majority country where Christianity is growing faster than anywhere else in the world. (For comparison, Christianity's global annual growth rate for all countries is 2.6%, in the U.S. it is 0.8%, and the U.K. is 0.0%)

For security reasons, in order to keep the team we're visiting and the folks they are reaching in their host country safe, we can’t really say much more than that right now, and that is why our giving site will be changed soon in case any government officials or others may do a web search on us as part of our visa application, or other interactions that may happen while we’re in country. We’re also in the process of trying to remove anything from our social media that may be publicly accessible with a web search that would associate us with the organisation that we and the team we are visiting work for, including our Facebook group, which I have now changed the settings for to private and hidden except for people who are already members of the group.

We would be encouraged to have your prayers for this trip, both for us and for the team we will be visiting, and if you may feel led to give toward our travel expenses to learn from our colleagues there, we would be so grateful. For now you can still give online at our www.mtw.org/bean website, but we hope to have a new secure link soon that will be considerably more “bare bones” that may have not have any more information on it than our personal MTW ministry account number (400513).

Finally, if any of you tech gurus out there want to “snoop” for us with a search and let us know if find anything out there on the “World Wide Web” that we need to shut down, including mentions of us on church websites, newsletters posted online, etc. that could be helpful as well!

Bible Study Prep For Home Group in Multiple Languages

This is what my prep for Home Group Bible Study on Ephesians 2 looks like for tonight, and no, I don’t speak Farsi or Arabic. Why do you ask?

Please Pray for Asylum Seekers from Iran

Hey folks, would you please pray for our friends Bijan and Najme and their daughter Artemis? They came to London as asylum seekers from Iran just a couple of months after we arrived here in the U.K. ourselves, and yesterday at 3am they were evicted from the hotel near the church that the U.K. government has put them up in for nearly 2 years now. They recently received their approval for asylum status and granted the right to work in the U.K., which is good news, but that also meant that they were now put into a different category and no longer qualified under the contract the government has with the hotel for housing them and countless others of our refugee friends here in London from the Muslim world, Ukraine, and Russia.

Unfortunately, we have seen this as a common theme with asylum seekers in the U.K. After spending the night and most of yesterday in a homeless shelter, thankfully, a couple from church has stepped in to take them into their home for a couple of weeks while they try to find a place of their own to live nearby, and the church’s deacons and others are also stepping in to help as well.

Bijan, Najme, and Artemis arrived here with almost no English in 2022 and have been very faithfully attending church at IPC-Ealing, Persian Fellowship, and our English classes for the past 2 years, and Bijan’s need to learn English was actually one of the driving forces behind us starting an English class at the church that men could participate in. They are strong (though new) believers in Jesus coming from a Muslim background who have been through a lot and fled persecution for their faith in Christ, first from Iran, and then Turkey before landing here in Ealing.

Please pray for them to find a home near the church and Artemis’s school that they can afford so that they do not have to completely lose the community of care and support that they currently have around them in the church, and have to start from scratch with a new church, new school, and new community far away. Please also pray for their job search as they now finally have the right to work here in the U.K., but their job prospects will be slim as they continue to learn English.

Also, we have quite a number of our friends who come to our Free English Classes, the Persian Fellowship, and who we encounter every day here in Ealing who are in very similar situations and live in this same hotel and others like it nearby who are asylum seekers. Many of them are either new Christians, or very open to talking about the Gospel, especially as they experience care and friendship from Christians and the church. Often they had very good and successful careers in their home countries and then find themselves stripped of everything, including even the ability to communicate and work after fleeing for their lives to find safety in western nations like the U.K. and U.S. Your prayers for them would be so appreciated.

**This is not a picture of Bijan, Najme & Artemis, as it would not be safe for us to share a picture of them with you. This is a picture of another Iranian family who were denied assylum status in Sweden several years ago because they had become Christians, and were sent back to Iran. Right now the Christian faith is growing faster in Iran than in any other place on Earth (https://www.persecution.org/.../the-worlds-fastest.../). If you would like to read more about their story, you can click here:

https://www.persecution.org/2013/03/27/iranian-christians-denied-asylum-even-though-arrest-torture-and-death-await-back-in-iran/

https://www.charismanews.com/world/38808-sweden-denies-asylum-to-christians-facing-persecution

https://www.christianpost.com/news/iranian-christians-fleeing-severe-persecution-being-denied-asylum-in-sweden.html

Please Pray for Parham

Would you please pray for our friend Parham from Iran? I’ve met with Parham probably 4-5 times now over the past several weeks to answer his questions about Jesus, and we began reading the Gospel of Matthew together today. Parham came to London to pursue a master’s degree in renaissance art, and first began considering the Gospel after his dissertation research led him to a book called The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by the German political economist Max Weber.

Weber argued in his work that it was Christianity (and specifically the Protestant Reformation) which has led to the progress and prosperity of the western world, which to Parham, seemed to stand in stark contrast to what he has seen in his homeland, dominated by Shia Islam and Sharia law which have led Iran and other predominantly Muslim nations mostly to inequality, poverty, injustice, and systematic oppression. So Parham sought out a Reformed Protestant church like IPC-Ealing that might be able to help him understand the message of Christianity better, which is how we met.

In God's amazing providence, Parham came to IPC-Ealing for the first time in the middle of a Sunday afternoon after the morning service had ended, and the only thing going on at the church at that time was our Persian Fellowship Bible Study as we discussed that morning's sermon in English and his native language of Farsi. Since that time, Parham has been coming regularly to our Free English Classes outreach, our Home Group Bible Study, and to the Sunday evening church services. In his own words, Parham is at a place right now where he is no longer a muslim, but he's not sure yet if he is ready to trust in Jesus.

Please pray for Parham to trust in Jesus, and not merely in an intellectual or pragmatic way, but so that he might repent and be saved.

Please Pray for the Lord's Work Among Persians in London

Hello friends, please pray for us and our Persian friends here in London. Our long serving MTW colleagues David and Marcia, who've led the ministry to Persians here at IPC-Ealing for 13 years, had to leave to return to the U.S. permanently and quite suddenly last week when David was diagnosed with some significant medical concerns, after 40 years in the mission field.

Shanna and I have been helping David and Marcia with this ministry to Persians over the past year and gaining their friendship and trust, but they are absolutely gutted and feel that they have lost their spiritual parents. Many of them come to us already quite traumatised from their experiences in Iran and Afghanistan and their journey here to London, as well as the loss of loved ones and severed ties from their families and communities as part of the cost of following Jesus as saviour out of Islam. So this loss brings up quite a lot of unresolved past grief and trauma for many of them. We are deeply saddened by David and Marcia's departure as well.

We are trusting the Lord to continue this ministry to Persians now in David and Marcia’s absence. Some have said that they will no longer come if David and Marcia are not there, but we were very encouraged on Sunday to have a small group of about a dozen Persians come to church and our Persian Bible Study after the service, and even welcomed a new young grad student from Tehran named Sam, who just moved in down the street from us. We were also really encouraged to have two new Persian ladies come to our English class last night and invited them to join us for church and Bible study this Sunday.

Over the next couple of weeks, we hope to meet with as many of our Persian friends who are already Christians one-to-one as possible to care for them, as well as to encourage them to continue on in trusting the Lord together with us at IPC-Ealing. We also hope to meet with those who are still learning about Jesus to continue with us in investigating the Gospel.

Thank you so much for your ongoing prayers and partnership in bringing the Gospel to the nations here in London.