TENTMAKING DREAM OF A MUSLIM BACKGROUND PASTOR

Discipleship + apprenticeship for Mohammed’s youth

When his family discovered that Mohammed had become a Christian, his father threw him out of the house. He had brought great shame to them. His mother cried inconsolably, and his siblings refused to talk to him for two years. At age 17, Mohammed left home. He prayed to God and managed to survive for a year doing odd jobs and living out of a car. Eventually, his father let him come home, but was still pressuring him to give up his faith.

Unwilling to yield, Mohammed left home again. This time he went to the capital city, where he made a living by fixing cars. As a child, he enjoyed taking apart clocks and radios and putting them back together again. Curious and gifted, he was soon repairing bicycles and tinkering with car engines. Mohammed went from repairing cars to buying, fixing, and reselling old cars. He started to make some money. He attended a small church, where he met his wife, who also converted from Islam and was working in a Christian school.

Mohammed has another gift. He shares and explains the gospel well. His pastor encouraged him to consider full-time ministry. Being a Christian was hard enough in a Muslim country. Becoming a pastor was unthinkable, especially when Mohammed’s life was finally becoming comfortable and stable.

Nonetheless, as serious believers, he and his wife agreed to pray and seek the Lord. Mohammed remembered how God had heard his prayer when he was a confused teenager. His wasn’t even a prayer but a cry of protest. When he was ostracized and homeless, he prayed, and God sustained him. Like Hagar in the desert, Mohammed had experienced God as the One who sees and hears (Gen. 16). So, he and his wife prayed. When they felt that it was indeed God’s calling for Mohammed to pastor, he wrestled with God for a year, but finally obeyed and enrolled in seminary.

Today, Mohammed is pastoring a small church. While house churches there are often made up of a few families, he has ten students who worship in his home. Now that he and his wife have a baby, the apartment is too small for the church to grow. Finances are tight too because his wife no longer works. But caring for their baby boy and the baby church is giving them much joy.

Mohammed has a dream for his church. He is talking to God about it. In a country where many young people are underemployed, Mohammed wants to give his young believers job skills by teaching them how to fix cars. He hopes to eventually have a small garage that offers quality repair and honest customer service because there is nothing like that in the city.

He imagines combining discipleship and apprenticeship, bringing together faith and work so that his young people do not have to go the way of many young people in the country, who leave home to work overseas doing menial work.

Mohammed had never heard of bi-vocational ministry. But by aspiring to become a self-supporting preacher, he is following the example of Apostle Paul, the tentmaker. And by aspiring to give his young believers biblical teaching as well as marketable skills, he is joining the faith-and-work movement of the Holy Spirit around the world.

Pray for:

•      Mohammed’s dream to disciple his young people and train them in a trade

•      Local Christian leaders to understand the OT concept of avodah, where work, worship and service are one

•      More local pastors to become bi-vocational like Paul in places hostile to the Christian faith

•      Missionaries in Muslim countries to resource and train local believers to join the global faith and work movement

"I believe that one of the next great moves of God is going to be through the believers in the workplace."  Billy Graham

Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others. (1 Th. 4:11-12, NLT)