Life Together: An Integrated Approach to Introducing Muslims to Jesus

Due to the incredible turmoil in the Middle East and elsewhere and the resulting mass migration of many Muslims to Europe and the Americas, the Church has an unparalleled opportunity to build relationships with Muslims and introduce them to Jesus. Many in the Church would like to respond to this opportunity but wonder how to go about connecting with Muslims. Responding to this growing need a number of ministries have stepped up their training efforts to help.

The ministries primarily involved in these training efforts advocate for one of three approaches: Polemics, Apologetics, or Building Bridges. In this post I will take a look at these three approaches and identify some strengths as well as some weaknesses. After doing so I will present a fourth alternative. Let’s call it Life Together….

5 Medieval Strategies for Explaining the Trinity to Muslims

Christian engagement with Muslims today ought to be highly relational and free from the expectation of or dependence on political power. Though an appropriate boldness and winsomeness in gospel proclamation should be celebrated, mission today among Muslims…

A Note from the Zwemer Center’s Director

I was 18 years old when the Lord placed a burden on my heart to bring the gospel to Muslims. A year later, I married my high school sweetheart, who had led me to Christ during my senior year. Two years later, we and three teammates set off to plant a church in a 100% Muslim country.

Needless to say, we were young, ambitious and a little naïve. We were also unprepared, but our youthful zeal carried us onward. Despite our intentions to be like the Apostle Paul and “preach Christ where He was not known,” we found ourselves back home, after only two years, with our faith barely intact. Looking back, I can now see that we had bitten off far more than we could chew. We approached our training for Muslim ministry more like a sprint rather than a marathon. We made incredible friendships with Muslims yet we had little to offer them, regarding a relationship with Jesus. We knew very little about Christianity and almost nothing about Islam. Simply put, we were ill-equipped for the task we were sent out to do. If not for the grace of God…

What Happened to ‘Evangelicals’?

Many Americans today associate the word “evangelical” with white Republicans, especially the large number who voted for Trump in the 2016 election. How did the word “evangelical” become disconnected from vibrant Christian faith and connected, instead, in popular usage at least, to politics and ethnicity? In part, through the movement’s increasing politicization, ethnic misunderstandings between black and white evangelicals, and the rise of polling data tracking religious demographics. The term’s evolution presents a fresh challenge to American Christians, who cannot afford to mistake this-worldly political affiliations with our heavenly citizenship…