Stories of Hope from a World in Crisis

CHIP: Well, everywhere in the world that I travel, two things are true, Andrew. One, it's very hard to be a pastor. They've been called by God for a very specific purpose: to take care of the flock of God. And the demands are super high. Most have never been formally trained; most are living in difficult situations. Persecutions in many parts of the world, they're not imaginary, I mean, they're very real, they're daily, they're difficult. Well, you pile on loneliness, discouragement – pastors are human, and it's tough. The second thing is, here's what's equally true, God is working all around the world in the lives through pastors. Satan's disinformation campaign is to discourage us, to make us think that God has checked out. Well, let me tell you, He's showing up in small and some really, really big ways around the world. He's using pastors in powerful ways.

ANDREW: That's right, Chip. God's on the move. We just need to pay attention to what He's doing. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to spend some time hearing from pastors in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and one more pastor in India. But let's start off today by heading to the Middle East.

For security reasons, we're not going to mention his name, but I'd like for you to meet a church leader in the Middle East. His bio includes being a missionary in North Africa, which is just as dangerous as it gets. I mean, he's done a stint in jail for his faith, but he loves the Lord and is committed to helping His people. You know, a little earlier I sat down and recorded a conversation with him. Let's listen in.

ANDREW: So let's start off with just understanding more about the Church, the life of believers in the Middle East. Can you tell us more?...

MIDDLE EAST PASTOR: In the Middle East and in the Arab and Muslim world, there are two kinds of churches based on the countries that have these churches. The first kind is the formal churches that have national Christians. For those pastors, it is usually not too difficult. It's very challenging for them to evangelize and proclaim the good news for people from other backgrounds, but usually the freedom of worship itself is granted.

But for other pastors, basically, in the countries that don't allow national people to become Christians, and the church is basically an underground church. They cannot come together in big numbers. It's too risky for them to come together. There is usually fear of security. There is usually for fear for government spies. There is usually fear that all of them will be arrested at the same time. There is a very high cost for persecution on the family level, social level, as well as the government level. We try to invite them to come outside the country to a country that has, you know, some kind of freedom where the people can come together once a year to receive training, to be refreshed, to be prayed for, and to be a ministered to.

ANDREW: It's such a difficult place. Can you tell us a little more about why it is so hard to do ministry in the Middle East?

MIDDLE EAST PASTOR: Here in the Middle East, in the Arab and in the Muslim world, it's too difficult for a person to convert to Christianity because, especially people in the West sometimes think about religion as just a belief or something that you do once a week, but, Islam is so much of a culture. It's a socio-political system. It penetrates, the, the daily life. So it's not easy at all for a person to separate themselves from Islam. Because when they change their faith, they are considered traitors, traitors for their cultures, traitors for their family.

ANDREW: In light of all this danger, Living on the Edge has focused part of its work in the region around digital discipleship. Why are you convinced this is a good approach to reach and disciple Muslims?

MIDDLE EAST PASTOR: I think it's a very important strategy in the Arab and Muslim world to use the online media and the digital strategy for reaching out to people for two reasons. The first reason is that people, they want to interact and this is such an effective way to communicate whatever message we have.

And another reason is that on social media, there is the possibility to being anonymous. Some people they have a desire to get to know Jesus, to get to know the gospel, but they are too afraid to go to a bookshop and ask for a Bible. They just want to keep answering their own questions, remaining anonymous. The social media and digital strategy helps us to do that.

Sometimes that's not easy. People get hostile at us when we put some posts they feel it's offending. They start reporting our pages or our platforms, and we have the follow up teams that try to correspond with the people who have questions.

One of the beautiful incidents that happened was that a lady got in contact with one of the team and started asking them. All the challenging questions from Islam to Christianity. After like one hour of conversations, the Muslim lady became so furious. You have answers to every question. It seems that you know everything, but your religion is false, and you know what? I am blocking you and blocking your page. I don't want to listen to this anymore, but what happened after one day was, was very encouraging. This lady removed the block and she contacted the team again. She said, I had a sleepless night. I could not sleep. It kept all the questions that you answered me, kept coming back, and I kept feeling that something was wrong about doing this block. I want to know more about the Lord, and guess what? After a long conversation, she gave her life to the Lord.

This is the kind of people who seem hostile at the beginning, but as you start offering them love, as you start offering them, answers, they start, you know, to open up bit by bit we've been blessed by over 120 conversions in less than 1 year. People who interacted, who received the message of the gospel and decided to commit their lives to Christ and prayed with us. We've been able to present over 1000 gospel full presentations to people who listen to us, who received. Biblical materials. We are grateful for this, but we feel there is so much, much more.

ANDREW: You've been in the ministry for a long time in the Middle East. You know, what is your dream for your people there?

MIDDLE EAST PASTOR: My dream and my prayer is actually that the spirit of illusion and confusion and false religion will be exposed by the light and by the truth. It's difficult to fight the darkness, but when you turn the light on in some place, the darkness immediately disappears. And this is the dream that the people will see for themselves what is the truth, and when they do that, they will come to the Lord. The second the dream is for the church that the church may rise up, rise up against the spirit of fear, rise up against the spirit of intimidation, rise up against the spirit of being cold and indifferent, and carry her own mission to reach the people with the good news.

ANDREW: Lastly, how can we pray for believers in the Middle East?

MIDDLE EAST PASTOR: We in the Arab and the Muslim world, we need prayers for so many things. We need protection, protection from persecution, protection from fear. We also need to pray for a spirit of power and encouragement for the people who are in the persecuted church, the people sometimes suffer so much they feel helpless. So we need to pray for power from the Holy Spirit that God may continue to use them to glorify his name in spite of any challenges or persecution that they are facing.

ANDREW: You know, Chip, what's fascinating to me is the impact that our digital discipleship ministry has in other parts of the world. In fact, Living on the Edge has a larger social media presence in the Middle East than we do here in America; the growth is just so rapid. I don't know what God is up to, but we now have open doors in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, UAE, and many of the Gulf states. And in fact, just a few days after this program airs, we'll be training Syrian pastors in Turkey who have come across the border to learn how to disciple their people. That's just amazing stuff.

CHIP: Well, as I hear that, I remember, getting the report that they put up something on social media about who God really is, some content that we developed here in the U.S. And, like, in a couple of weeks, they already had a million hits. And that brings me back to, 2017. I remember you and I were talking and we made the decision with board approval that we really needed to do something internationally because God was working. The needs were so great, so we decided to invest in China, and then also in the Middle East to get it moving. And in China, by God's grace, we've seen, I mean, miracles happen in the last few years that are stunning. I mean, they're just beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Then there's this whole other story. We decided to go to the Middle East because it's the ideological center of the world. There's a reason why there is a war there right now. And the battle isn't just with rockets; it's a spiritual war. We want to be in the thick of that spiritual battle. And as you said, God's hand of favor is opening the doors like never before.

ANDREW: Yeah, that’s very true. And, you know, the next stop after the Middle East, let's take a brief visit down to Africa. You know, and this story starts with a terrorist attack.  To set the stage for this, we established a partnership with a network of churches in Burkina Faso in West Africa, and it's a very poor country. According to the UN, Burkina Faso ranks a hundred and eighty-fifth out of a hundred and ninety-three countries in its development index. It's poor. Our partner enthusiastically brought together sixty pastors who were trained by the Living on the Edge team, and then those trainers went out to teach their fellow pastors in villages around the country. So here's just one story of the impact of that training.

PASTOR AGUSTIN SANOU: I am Pastor Augustin SANOU. I would like to confess. If I hadn't come to this training, my ministry would have ended. Because everything was going against me and I had resolved to give up at worst even to end my life. I was blaming everyone: God first, myself and the members of the church I was leading. Due to the terrorist’s attacks in my area, I was obliged to displace to another locality where I am lacking everything currently and even sick. Not knowing how to go about it, I was even ready to end my life.

As I listened to the facilitator as the training progressed, I realized that my attitude towards problems was very bad and I was really not praying the right way. All the time, I'm complaining to God that it's because of Him that I'm in this problem and He doesn't listen to me. I really lacked God's wisdom. I have read the book of James several times, but I did not understand the richness and depth of his teaching.

I am pleased that this training has restored me, and I am willing to use this resource to train my church members and rethink how I run the church. Today my thinking has totally changed with regard to God, I will henceforth praise him and rely on His joy to persevere in these difficult times where there is no human way out.

ANDREW: This is happening all over Africa, Chip. In 2024, we trained about eighty thousand pastors live - that means face-to-face in Africa. So here's some quick math. The average church size around the world is fifty people. So that means that the pastors we were able to train are teaching about four million people each week in Africa.

CHIP: Wow. You know, sometimes I'm asked, “Why exactly do you focus so much on pastors, Chip?” Well, here's the reason. The greatest need in the Church today is discipleship. We have a glaring discipleship deficit. We have a lot of believers, but not many disciples. And those who take seriously the call of Jesus to follow Him, to do life as He did it, well, pastors play a pivotal role in discipling people in their churches.

We're called to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. And when pastors are healthy, when they're growing, when they have a vision, the Church changes. So that's why we focus on pastors today. But it's not just China. It's not just the Middle East. Andrew, tell me little bit more about where God has opened doors and what we've been able to do across the world.

ANDREW: Well, now let's go to Latin America and specifically Puerto Rico. You know, several years ago, if you remember in the news, a few hurricanes tore through the island. I mean, it was devastating. It caused about ninety billion in damages and about three thousand lives were lost. And they're still rebuilding. It's tough. But there is hope. Listen to this story from Pastor Ezekiel.

PASTOR EZEQUIEL TORRES: Puerto Rico is a beautiful island in the Caribbean, but this beauty is accompanied with the fury of nature. In 2017 our little world was turned upside down. The force of this tropical hurricane with winds of more than 185 mph were for more than 16 hours destroying everything habitable on our small island. Many church buildings were totally destroyed, including our church where I pastor. And hundreds of pastors were left without their own homes, including mine. We began to ask the Lord to give us some idea how to help all these families who were suffering and God began to help us and brought many people with financial donations to help.

Reading the A.R.T. of Survival book, I realized the need that many pastors in Puerto Rico have to receive encouragement to be able to face this incredible crisis. This book also develops the character of each pastor to continue doing the work in our country. And the despair that came from fellow pastors, the discouragement that they had in them to throw in the towel or stop being what they were doing, gave me much encouragement to say that no matter what I was experiencing, I could help them.

I really like the part of the book that talks about how to sustain ourselves theologically and how to keep believing without doubting, to keep trusting in the Lord without doubting, which is the part that we are most moved by. Because of this, we now believe in the Lord when we are tempted to doubt.

CHIP: Wow, that is an amazing story. You know, I had the chance to meet Pastor Ezekiel at a recent High Impact Church conference that we hosted in the Dominican Republic. The guy is a humble leader, he's hungry, he's thirsty. He came to learn even more. He wanted to take what he was learning back to Puerto Rico. And I heard the story of his life as a pastor. How he partnered with people all around the area, and that he just has the confidence of the pastors in Puerto Rico. And just driving in the van, eating a few meals with him, seeing his heart, he even brought a young man that he was discipling that became a part of the church staff.

All I want our listeners to know is there are pastors who are giving their lives in ways and at levels of sacrifice that is hard to imagine, that are godly, that are literally, not a metaphor, making it through the storms of life in ways that not only do they survive, they're thriving, and God is using them to bring many to Christ and then discipling them in a very specific way. They're becoming Romans 12 Christians.

ANDREW: You know, that just reminds me that we all go through difficult things, all of us. And my mind goes to this one final story in India. And yesterday we focused on India when we talked about persecution that pastors were facing. But just like you and me, pastors also deal with a lot of personal challenges that we all face. And so I felt like we should end today's program with just one more story that really gripped my heart.

INDIA PASTOR: I'm Pastor Bhaskar. I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior at the age of 14. At the age of 22, I dedicated myself to proclaiming the gospel in many Because of that many people believed in Jesus Christ and came to salvation, and a community was formed.

In the year 1997, I married a Muslim convert. God blessed us with a son. When my son was one year old, he was diagnosed with blood cancer. It was a great agony for us. For 11 months we were visiting hospitals and spend a lot of money, but eventually, our son died. It was very painful for us and we could not do the ministry. Through the life of Job in the scripture, I was strengthened and encouraged to resume my ministry.

On 7th December 2022, my wife and I went to the hospital with a lump in her chest to be examined. When the doctors informed me that she had cancer it made me very depressed. Having lost my son, I was worried what would happen to my wife when I went to the hospital in Hyderabad to take my wife for chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

I was invited by a pastor for the ‘Art of Survival’ training. I attended a one-day seminar and I benefited greatly, the message given in the training was very useful for me in my life about the attitude I should have in my trials. I have learned to embrace trails with joy. When trials come in my life, I can choose a way to draw closer to God. Only God’s wisdom is the answer to any problem. When I was facing death disease and financial problems in my life, I saw many pastors around me in the same situation.

So I organized about 95 trainings through the Art of Survival. And today more than 16,000 pastors have received that training. Amen! In this year-and-a-half period, these 16,000 pastors were encouraged in their times of tears and trials. Seeing the lives of thousands of pastors who have walked in tears like me, wiping their tears, has given great courage and hope.

The Art of Survival has been a great blessing in my life. But we need more of this training among our tribal pastors and rural pastors. It will be beneficial for the lives of the servants of God who are broken due to financial struggles, sicknesses, weakness, and who stopped their ministry.

 CHIP: Andrew, as I listened to that last story, what we see is the power of God's Word in a human heart energized by the Holy Spirit when someone perseveres, when they consider it all joy, and they get God's wisdom. And he's not only a disciple in the midst of pain, but he's a disciple-maker.

And I don't know where most of our listeners are at today, Andrew, but this is what I know: Most of us have not experienced anything close to this, but when we help pastors like this, we literally change the world. This is first century stuff. This is how God really works. Whether it's India or China or the Middle East, whether it's in South America or the Dominican Republic, there are men and women that for reasons that are beyond our understanding that God has allowed us to partner with, to love, to equip, and to give resources.

But we need financial resources to extend it, to keep these kind of men and women in the battle, give them the tools and the resources so they can help people that are in the same kind of pain that they are.

As we close today's program and as this is Giving Tuesday, There's never been a better time to sacrificially give to help men and women like this all across the world, Would you pause today? Would you think about the stories that you've heard? And would you allow your heart to be moved?

The Scripture says that when Jesus saw the multitudes, He saw the pain, He saw the hurt. He had compassion on them. And the word compassion in the New Testament always leads to action. Would you consider prayerfully of sacrificially giving to Living on the Edge so that we might help these pastors here and all across the world? And thank you very, very much for acting on whatever God shows you to do.