Theology in the Raw - Why is Christianity Growing Among Muslims? Dave Coles

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Join the Theology in the Raw community on Patreon for as little as $5/month to get access to premium content. Dave Coles was a pastor for 10 years in the US before he served in Indonesia for 24 years. He is now an Encourager and Resourcer of Church Planting Movements, primarily through writing and editing. Dave is the author of many books, including his recently released: God on the Move: Making Disciples Among the Nations.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our best research says that right now, there are over 2,000 movements, church planting movements, disciple-making movements, by which I mean disciples making disciples, churches planning new churches, planning new house churches. This is the amazing part. The vast majority of those 2,000 movements, and over 100 million believers, are among Muslims or Hindus. It's mostly in Asia and Africa where these movements are happening,

and mostly in places where there are. aren't many churches around. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology. My guest today is Dave Coles, father of the amazing great Coles, who was a pastor for 10 years in the United States and served in Indonesia for 24 years. He now is an encourager and resourcer of the church planting movements, primarily through writing and editing. Dave is the author of many books.

including his recently released book, God on the Move, making disciples among the nations, which forms the backdrop of our conversation where we talk about various movements of the church around the globe in unexpected and hard-to-reach places. Greg is, or sorry, Greg.

Greg's dad, Dave, is a seasoned missionary, an exquisite writer, and also is very, very thoughtful when it comes to the concept and theology of missions. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only, Dave Coles. Dave Coles, welcome to Theology and the Raw. We tried to do this a month ago.

We had tech problems, so this is long overdue, but I'm glad to have you on the show. Thanks. Great to be here. All right. So you are a seasoned missionary. Tell us where you have lived overseas. I know Indonesia or in other places. We were based in Indonesia for 24 years.

Okay. So I visited other places, but Indonesia is the place that we really lived, knew the language, the culture, all that stuff. Well, it's a big question. What was that like? But give us an elevator description of what it's like living as an American in Indonesia for 24 years. It was really eye-opening. I mean, the big thing, we moved there in the early 90s. And back then the stereotype was that, you know, Muslims are not friendly people. They're not open to the gospel. you know, they're just hard to be around, all that kind of stuff. And we lived in the midst of a majority Muslim neighborhood in the world's largest majority Muslim country for all those years. And Muslims, by and large, they're quite friendly people, very hospitable. And most of them are not fanatics.

And most of them are just trying to get through life and, you know, raise their kids and get along, okay. And some are open to spiritual things. What's it like for a Muslim in Indonesia to be converted to Christ? Is that a, does that put their life at threat? Does their family kick them out? Or what's that like? It depends a lot on their situation, their family, and also how they convey that information to folks. We usually don't use the word converted.

Okay. Because that's kind of a trigger word. Because, you know, you've changed your socialite. You've become a traitor to your people. So we talk more in terms of choosing to follow Jesus. And, you know, Muslims are aware of Issa al-Masi as a prophet and all that. He's talked about in the Quran, all that. And so depending on their situation, generally, they find that there's some reaction.

Sometimes it's mild. Sometimes it's strong. Often their immediate friends and family might have some. openness, especially if they bring others along on the journey. If they are exploring spiritual things, perhaps doing some discovery Bible studies, and they invite family or friends along in the journey, then very often you'll find a whole group. You know, it might be three people, five people, 10 people will come on a journey to faith together, which greatly decreases persecution. In some cases, in many cases, there's some kind of persecution, some threats, sometimes,

kicked out of the house, sometimes losing the inheritance, that kind of thing. But we found very often, unlike some other parts of the world, Indonesians don't tend to like violence, especially long-term sustained. So if a person can hang on, endure, stay in the relationships, if possible, stay in the neighborhood. Generally, they'll eventually be accepted as, you know, weird, we don't like you, whatever it is. But it's not like they're likely to get killed.

some do honestly but it's not frequent frequently it's other kinds of persecution which if they endure god will often use them to bring many others to faith okay i was just reading this morning actually in a in a book i'm reading on american foreign policy over the last hundred years i didn't realize that the that that that there was um a u.s-back dictator back in the mid-50s that was brutal, brutal towards his people. And this is, I mean, I think the U.S. seems to have a hobby of supporting dictators that brutal rallies a country for financial interests. But I didn't realize that Indonesia and East Timor was wrapped up into that as well. Is that well known there?

Or do you, I mean, oh, yeah. Is that that that's standard history in Indonesia. Does that tarnish their view of America? I mean, if another country supported some dictator in America that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people, I would, I mean, I think people would hate that country. Do people hate America because of this? You know, a lot of things have colored Indonesians' perspective on America, starting with Dutch colonialism for 350 years. So, you know, they see a tall white guy. It raises some questions. But honestly, it's very much a love-hate relationship. we found that generally Indonesians like America

they would like to be in America, they'd like to be American, they'd like to learn English, they'd like to be around Americans. At the same time, there are some reservations, some historical resentment, some irritation. So, yeah, very much positive, negative,

and a lot depends personally on how you connect with them. I would connect with a smile and nobody ever harassed me. In Indonesia, I got to say, we had a fairly fanatical mosque just down the street, like two-tenths of a mile from us. And, you know, I'd see the guys with their hat and their beard and all. I'd just smile at them, and they'd just, the worst I ever got was kind of a sour look, kind of, you know? But honestly, we were treated well in Indonesia, very well as Americans living among Muslims.

The folks that get the worst of the harassment are those who change. from Islam to following Christ and so much so that you know sometimes even when they try to do the official process like they have an identity card that says your religion on it and I knew of one case a guy who came to Christ he was following Jesus he went to the local neighborhood leader and said I want to change my card my identity card from Muslim the Christian and the leader said no you don't he said yeah I do he said no he said yes I'm following Jesus I'm And the guy said, no, we're not going to change your card. And so those issues of Muslim versus Christian, it's partly a political thing, you know, how many on our side, how many on your side, that kind of, you know, sociological attitude warfare stuff.

So we try to avoid that, talk in terms of following Jesus, you know, to focus on hard issues rather than who is signed up for which political party. Okay, okay. Tell us the percentage of Christians in Indonesia. I must be really small, I would assume. I think the official stat is maybe about 10 to 12% Christian, although a lot of those we would consider liberal or nominal Christians. So maybe about 4% evangelical Jesus following Christians is the official, last I knew. That's higher than I was expecting.

Yeah, so it's a minority, but there are, are other minorities as well Buddhists and so on well Dave I wanted to have you on because you have just such a great knowledge of kind of what God is doing around the world you've written books on this well I want to talk about your book in a little bit but can you give us a big picture view of specific movements of Christianity that stand out to you in particular ones that would be unexpected you know where you would not expect the gospel to really take root and where it's not only taking root, but it seems to be really growing

against all sort of natural odds. Yeah. Our best research says that right now there are over 2,000 movements, church planting movements, disciple-making movements, by which I mean, disciples making disciples, making disciples,

churches planning new churches, planning new house churches, more than four generations of churches planning more in a few years' time. So we're talking, rapid growth, and the vast majority, this is the amazing part, the vast majority of those 2,000 movements and over 100 million believers, most, the vast majority are among Muslims or Hindus.

There are a few movements among Christians, among nominal Christians, but the vast majority, and this is the amazing thing. It's mostly in Asia and Africa, where these movements are happening, and mostly in places where there aren't many churches around. You might find an occasional church building or something, but very often the church buildings that you would see in those areas are people from outside, not the indigenous people. And so these movements are taking place very often where 10, 20 years ago, none of those people had heard of the gospel. None of those people were following Jesus. And now people are going in, sharing the good news in very appropriate contextual ways, and they're seeing groups, families.

whole groups coming to faith and raising up indigenous leaders. And that's one of the key issues is it's not outsiders saying, okay, I'll lead you guys for a while and try to hand this thing over to somebody. It's raising up indigenous leaders as part of the process of planting churches so that it really feels, looks, smells, tastes like the local culture, but in a way that is following Jesus and biblical commands. And many groups are finding that's attractive. They like it better than what they grew up with, better than what their religious leaders are telling them, better than what they've experienced.

It's an experience with the living God. Can you tell us about some specific countries where this is happening? Yes, I can tell you some and I cannot tell you some. Okay. Otherwise, you'd have to kill me. Okay. It is clearly happening in Iran. And obviously the people in Iran where that's happening, they're not.

not advertising, but there's a whole book that came out recently talking about that. It's entitled The Forgotten Manifesto of Jesus. And it's all about these kinds of movements happening in Iran, where it is happening an amazing way. And that's a unique situation. You know, the Islamic government there has been in control for decades now and has managed to make the vast majority of the populace hate Islam. And so a lot of people are becoming unbelievers, atheists, Just, you know, they're called Muslims, but they don't believe it anymore. They don't even like it anymore. And so many are becoming just non-believers, but there's openness to the gospel there.

Is that because of the way the political leadership has led the country? Or why is there a growing distaste for Islam there? It's oppressive. People don't like living under oppression. You know, the women don't like wearing the veil. bales not being able to show their hearing, they don't like having to be accompanied by a male to go anywhere outside. You know, the men don't like being required to say all the right prayers at all the right times. It's just, it's an oppressive environment. So that's one

example, Iran. Stuff is happening in Indonesia. And again, the world's largest majority Muslim country, stuff's happening there. In India, we can talk about movements both among Hindus and Muslims, and that's an amazing context with still so many diverse groups that need to hear the gospel. In East Africa, we can talk about some nomadic Muslim groups coming to faith in northern Kenya. We can talk about groups in Uganda, some Muslim groups, a handful of other countries around East Africa where we can specify. And some countries that I can't specify. But amazing stuff is happening in a lot of places. And like I said earlier, it's very often in the places you wouldn't have expected where you'd look and think, surely it will happen here. And

some stuff's happening, but it's not these explosive movements. Those are, again, happening in some of the very most challenging contexts. I've heard about the movement in Iran. I heard that it is largely led by women, or at least women are playing a significant role in the spread, which is really unexpected because it's such a, I guess, patriarchal kind of culture. Is that true?

Or can you tell us a bit more about the leadership and the House Church movement in Iran? Well, I only know the details that I've read in the book that I just mentioned. That's not my area of expertise, but I will say that one of the things happening in recent years is people have realized that instead of, say, 40 years ago, when I started thinking about this whole Muslim thing, people assumed that if you reach the men, they controlled everything, and it would trickle down to the rest of the family, the women, and all that. what many people have discovered is in a lot of Islamic context

there's so little communication between men and women about anything significant that you could reach a whole bunch of men and the women would never hear the gospel and so there have been distinct strategies to intentionally reach women and people have discovered you know women are really good at reaching people they're not only good at reaching women they're also good at reaching their children and sometimes they're even good at reaching their husbands. And so women are playing a key role in many Islamic societies in the spread of the gospel, as well as in the Hindu societies.

In a place like India where traditionally women are not treated very well and are not looked on as having much authority or much clout, they are becoming amazing evangelists among Hindus. And it's partly the power of God, and it's partly that the gospel spreads through a relationship. And typically, women are better at handling relationships than men are. If I could offer that generalization, there's one man to another. So the holidays are right around the corner,

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Exclusions to apply. this is i mean on the topic but slightly off i keep seeing or hearing and reading about the massacre of christians in nigeria do you have you followed that much or it's not on a lot of mainstream news it doesn't seem to but sounds like really horrific what's going on it is horrific and actually for a very long time for decades now there's been a lot of tension across West Africa between the southern part, which tends to be more tribal and Christian, and the northern part of not only Nigeria, but also Benin, Togo, and other countries there, Ghana, where the north part is Islamic, and as the Sahara Desert is moving down because of, you know,

climate factors, the herders and the people up in the north, the Muslims, especially various ethnic groups there, are looking for more land for their grazing. And so they're tending to move south. And so there's tension. And it's partly just who's going to use this land? Who owns this? It's partly political. It's not all religious stuff, but it is partly religious.

So you have groups like Boko Haram and others that are just fanatic, radical Islamic groups that want to make sure nobody's getting an education. Make sure especially women are not getting an education Want to make sure that Christianity is not advancing And to their frustration, Christianity is advancing The gospel is advancing But also Islam is trying to advance And so that's an ongoing tension all across the Sahel of Africa Just below the Sahara

Between those two groups So it's partly fanatics And it's partly just politically related tension But yeah, the attacks are horrific. And I was just reading some prayer requests this morning from a group in Burkina Faso about the tensions there and dealing with refugees and some church planners that have had to leave their area because of attacks by the militants. So the amazing thing is in the midst of that kind of horrific persecution, threats, unrest, and so on, people are still following Jesus and some Muslims are still coming to saving faith in Jesus. And that's glorious. So in Nigeria, I've always kind of known, or at least last couple decades, the tensions you're talking about.

I didn't realize that the weather changes have pushed people down and it's become kind of a land grab has become part of the issue. But I always knew that kind of north-south, Muslim Christian tension and stuff would always flare up. And I would see on the news, you know, different killings and stuff. Is this particularly massive and heightening, or is this kind of part of the cycle of violence that we've been seen over the last several decades there? Yeah, my sense is it's been going on and, you know, it'll flare up. There will be significant events here and there that are worse than usual, but it's an ongoing tension. It's a chronic problem. One of the great things, the Fulani people are among the herder groups, the Muslim groups,

famously across 20 countries, believe it or not, across the Sahel of Africa. And marvelously, we are seeing Fulani people come to faith now. Great stuff happening, some movements among the Fulani. And it's great what God is doing there in the midst of the challenges. Yeah. All right. Tell us about another country where the gospel is moving in unexpected ways that get you, that wake you up in the morning.

Can I tell you a story from a country that I can't say what country it's in? Sure, yeah. I don't get you in trouble, so we can always edit out if you say something you should have. No, that's fine. I've gotten used of speaking cautiously. This is from the book Living Fire, which we don't specify in there what part of Africa, but one of the stories there was of a church planter who went into a totally unreached area. It was all Muslim.

Nobody knew the Lord. and he was quite effective. He was sharing the gospel, and a couple of hundred people had come to faith in Jesus, and were following Jesus, which is thrilling. Some of the local fanatics didn't like what was happening, and so four guys chased him. They chased him with machete,

cut his head open, and left him for dead, but he didn't die. He was hospitalized, he managed to recover, and over the course of time, while his head was still bandaged up, he went back to that area and to encourage his disciples. And when he got back there, he gathered some of the disciples, shared with them. Sixty of them decided, well, we've not yet been baptized, but we're going to take a step of faith. Your boldness is inspiring us.

So we're going to be baptized, confess openly, publicly that we're following Jesus too. Not only that, but he knew who his attachment. attackers were. And because obviously what they'd done was illegal, if he had named them in court, they would have gone away to jail for a very long time. So the local leaders, the religious leaders and village leaders, wanted to have a public ceremony, a traditional ceremony, to try to resolve this issue. And at the ceremony, the guys who had attacked him knelt down and begged for forgiveness. And he raised them up. He hugged them. He said, the Lord Jesus has forgiven me, so how could I not forgive you? You don't owe me anything for this. And they were, obviously, they were quite relieved. The village leaders were also very relieved that this has been resolved because of the love of Christ shown so concretely.

And they said, because you've not demanded any recompense, any blood, money, anything, you're free to share the gospel with anybody you want, and nobody can stop you. And so, yeah, so now we have a chart of, as of a couple years ago, when I got the information for the book, there were eight generations of churches that had planted more churches that had planted more churches out of that brother's ministry. Even while he still gets some headaches from this wound in his head, but God's using him. And that's the kind of stuff happening in that part of Africa, in that country. I mean, I'm assuming the countries that you can't talk about are so quote unquote closed to any kind of like missionary work. And yet there's still Christians able to get in and embody Jesus, maybe share Jesus secretly or whatever. I had to have a cousin who spent a couple decades in North African country.

and it got it got so bad that I mean he was like you can't just come in as a missionary and show the gospel he had to start like a he ended up starting like a small business like a coffee shop and it was just highly relational zero you don't talk about Jesus for a long long long time until you've established like you know yeah deep relationships and even then he's like in this country you can't do a business honestly everything's corrupt everything's corrupt everything's corrupt. So it's like you're taking bribes here, dishing out money here, and you're just feeling a little like, is this okay? But I mean, it's just, yeah, you have to kind rethink your mission strategy in some of these countries. Is that, have you experienced like that where you just kind of have to throw the textbook out the window a bit and get creative and how to embody Jesus? Yes, absolutely. You know, as you said, in other countries, things work differently. And so in Indonesia, there were something, we didn't have to take bribes or we didn't take

bribes. But there were many areas where in the U.S., we often tend to feel like, you know, there's right, there's wrong, there's legal, there's, it's clear. And we as Christians try to not do the illegal stuff, you know. But sometimes, you know, when we'd been there for a few years at a time before coming back to the states, we'd look at each other and say, I think you. been here a little too long. We need to get you back to America. You know, there are some gray zones. And as the gray starts expanding, you kind of have to check yourself. But one of the interesting

things that we're seeing happen in our day is those issues are, I want to say less. They're also different for people who are from a near culture. You know, when I show up as a white guy, a lot of the world has feelings about white guys, you know, and that affects everything. I'm a head taller than almost any Indonesian, and so when we were in a crowd in Indonesia, it was always easy to find my family, you know, my sons are tall, my wife is blonde. Nobody else looks like that around. But whenever Indonesians would see me, there were always questions in my mind. You know, what's this guy doing here?

Yeah. Is he a businessman here to make money? Is he here because the women are accessible cheaply, or is he here to convert me? Whichever of those three it is, I'm not sure I like this guy. That's not good, yeah. And so we as honestly, as white-skinned people have challenges in some of the hardest to reach places. But what's happening is most of these movements are not being started by people that look like you or me. Sometimes we can play a role as a catalyst or an encourager, but the vast majority are near-culture people going to the next tribe over, the next language group over, you know, a couple hours away, maybe over a country border.

But number one, they have some experience with navigating all of those complicated dynamics. Number two, even though they might speak a different language or have a different accent, they look kind of similar to the way. those folks. And it's easier for them to make sense of, why are you over here? Well, you know, I had a business and now I'm doing that same business over here. And so they are doing things in ways that make sense. And again, this morning, I was just praying through some prayer requests of a group training people to go to other unreached groups. And it was, here are the kinds of businesses we're training them in. And so it makes sense. They come in town and they have have strategies that make sense. And people might be curious, but before long, they're like,

oh, well, this is nice. We didn't used to have vegetables so accessible now. This guy's selling vegetables, and we don't have to go an hour and a half to the city to get any vegetables, you know, or whatever it might be. They're providing something useful. You know, we didn't have any teachers for a local school, so our kids had to choose no education after third grade or, you know, travel an hour away. Now we've got somebody that's here to teach. teach kids. Those kinds of things where they make themselves useful and they're close enough culturally that it's not a huge jump and it's easier for them to fit in, to be accessible, and to know how to present the good news in a way that actually sounds like good news.

On that note, what does contextualizing the gospel look like in a Muslim context? And I know there's debates about how much contextualization you can do before you start to not be preaching the gospel. Yeah. And maybe, yeah, tell us about, yeah, what that looks like and maybe some of the disagreement among missionaries on what contextualization looks like. Sure. Yeah, as you can imagine, starting cross-cultural work back in the 90s, I've been in the middle

of those debates for a while now. And one of the really encouraging things that I've found in the last couple of decades now, since these movements are happening, I've found that contextualization happens best when it's done by local people. So to give you an example, when an evangelist or a church planner comes into an area, he's not looking to just try to convert everybody. What he's looking for is some people who are uniquely open to talk about spiritual things. They're hospitable, they're friendly, but they're also open to talk about spiritual things. And he probably won't start talking immediately about Jesus as the Son of God. That's a turnoff for Muslims.

What he might start talking about is the earlier books that God revealed. Because Muslims believe God revealed four books, the Torah to Moses, the Zabur to David, the Psalms. The Ingeal to Jesus, they think that's one book, and then the Quran to Muhammad. So in theory, they have four inspired books, but they've been taught that the Quran covers everything you need. The Jews and Christians corrupted the other books, so don't read a Bible. That's just been corrupted. But sometimes they're interested to take a look at what those earlier books said. And so his goal is to find somebody who's open to let's sit down and take a look at part of Genesis and see,

about what God said about creating the world. And he doesn't have to try to convince Muslims that their teachings are wrong and the Bible's right. All they have to do is study it because Muslims have heard of Adam. They've heard of Abraham. They've heard of Noah. But they don't have interesting stories about those folks. The Bible has interesting stories. And many unreached peoples love stories.

And so when they take a look at these stories and they, study it together and just talk about, what does this tell us about God? Well, we learn that God talks to people and he communicates and we can talk to him. That's news to Muslims. God cares. Just one example. And so then the goal is through a series of Bible studies, discovery studies, we allow a Muslim to discover who God is, why they need a savior, what sin is, all of those things. And so through that process then of maybe 7, 15, my favorite is about 30 Bible studies. It's not until maybe study 15 or 20 that they even start to look at who Jesus is. And again, it's just exploring.

They read the story. He calms the wind and waves. We want a response like the disciples have. What kind of man is this that can calm the wind and waves? You know, he forgives sins. What kind of person can forgive sins? And so instead of preaching at them, it's a matter of them discovering just like the people in the Bible discovered step by step bit by bit. Oh, so this is what it's about.

And so then in the end of that process, then we hope, and this is what's often happening, they come to faith. And so that's a process that can work in all kinds of places and is working in many, many places. is to bring groups of people, not just to reach one individual who then gets extracted or kicked out of his family, out of his neighborhood, but to reach groups that can then stay embedded and become a light. So back to contextualization. The goal in this process is not for the outsider to figure out what it should look like in this context, which is kind of what was happening with contextual thought in the 80s and 90s, like, okay, I need to understand Indonesian culture or in my case, Sundanese culture well enough to figure out,

What? How is it going to look? That's not the goal. The goal is to not present stuff that smells and looks so American that they're like, yeah, this is not for me. Just get them into the Bible and let them figure out what it looks like. So that's kind of the secret sauce of contextualization in these movements is you allow the local people, the indigenous people, as a group, discussing it, wrestling with it together to figure out. Okay, Jesus said to, love your neighbor. What does that look like in our context? The Bible says to not lie anymore. What does that look like for us? And their answer will probably look different than my answer would look because they know what they've been lying about. I don't. They're good at hiding it from me.

And so that's the good news of contextualization is as much as possible, the indigenous people, the local people are figuring it out in their context. What will the gospel look like? as it's lived out for our culture, for our people. Is one of the tensions trying to sort out which practices are intrinsic to Islam that are incompatible with Christianity versus which practices, customs, clothing, whatever, are more cultural than intrinsic to Islam in a way that's incompatible with Christianity? Am I wording that right? I mean, if a woman gets saved, does she still wear a burqa?

Does she still, or if a Hindu woman, does she put it? I don't know. This might be bad examples showed by ignorance, but like the dot on your forehead. You know, like, are these religious symbols? Are they cultural? Are they both? And what if they're religious but not incompatible with Christianity? Yeah.

Teets that out a little bit. I would love to, yeah. Those are both really good examples. In fact, I'll start with. the dot, the bindi that many Hindu women wear. Some folks said, yeah, you shouldn't do that anymore. But in some areas of North India, the believers said, if a woman doesn't have that dot there, people will think she's immoral.

Right. It shows that she's married, right? Yeah, it shows that she's married. You know, she's doing the culturally appropriate thing. And there's no idolatry involved in having that. red dot on her forehead. And so that's one example where the more contextual approach said, yeah, wear the contextual clothes, you know, put on the appropriate makeup, the appropriate jewelry, whatever it is that's not directly involved in idolatry. So that's one example. You mentioned

the burqa thing, the veil thing. In some approaches to reaching Muslims, it's like that's seen as a symbol of the oppression of women, you know, that they're under the domination of Islam, so they take off the veil. And if that's how God leads them, that's up to them. But I can tell you that in most of these movements, when the women come to faith, they still dress the same way they always dressed. Okay. Jesus didn't command them to make sure they never put a veil over their face. That's not the issue. The issue is what's happening in the heart.

And so very often, the folks in these movements, these disciples, they look and dress and eat and act very much like the folks around them. So much so that some people say, hey, I've lived there and I didn't see this movement happening. Well, that's because all you saw was people that looked and ate and act this whole. like the other people, except they were kind, you know, they were following Jesus, but you didn't see that when you walked past and just saw them dressed the same way as everybody else. And so those are key examples of what the contextualization looks like. And I hasten to say,

especially among Muslims, different groups will make different decisions. So you'll have some groups that are like, oh yeah, now we can eat pork. Yes, bring on the bacon. And others that are like, No, my stomach doesn't care for it, and I don't want to turn off all my neighbors, so I'm still going to eat the same way I've been eating. I'm not going to, you know, fire up a pig. The Exiles in Babylon Conference is happening again, April 30th to May 2nd in Minneapolis, and this one is going to be spicy. We're talking about mental health and the gospel.

How should the church respond to immigration? We're also having a dialogical debate about Christians and war with Shane Claiborne and Paul Copan. And we're also having another dialogical debate between Peter Ends and Sandy Richter over the historical reliability of the Bible. We also added a pre-conference addressing how Christians should think about artificial intelligence. We have several experts coming to lead us in that conversation. Other speakers include Dan Allender, Matthew Sorens, Liliana, Reza, Joshua Smith, Chinway Williams, and several others. And of course, worth the price of admission, Street Hymns is coming back as well, folks. Most of all, the in-person experience at exiles is just super unique.

I mean, it's, I don't know. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. It's hard to describe. You just got to go and experience it for yourself. Right now, we're running an early bird discount of $30 off registration. So I encourage you to sign up soon to take advantage of this discount. Just head over to TheologyNorah.com to register. We also have a heavily discounted Gen Z price.

Don't lie about your age. You've got to be Gen Z. And also discounts on groups of five or more. Again, that's April 30th to May 2nd in Minneapolis. Register at Theologyintheirah.com. Do Muslim converts still use the term Allah to refer to now God, the God of the Bible? Or is that another debated issue? It's somewhat debated.

And I'd say for the people who would say they've converted, would sometimes more likely stop using that term. However, in many places among Indonesians, Malays, some Arabs, the term Allah was there

before Muhammad ever came along. It's an Arabic word for God, right? Yeah, it just means the God, the real God. So if you open an Indonesian Bible, it's all full of Allah. Oh, so, okay. That is who Indonesian Christians were worship is Allah, you know, all the, and so it's a silly debate in many ways. The point is, are you

worshipping the God of the Bible or the being described by Muhammad? And to say, Allah or not Allah, that's just, that's not the right way to frame the debate. So you can even, I'm just, yeah, thinking on the fly here, and I don't know Arabic. So, but I mean, there's probably several phrases that they could still say in in Arabic that when they're a Muslim meant one thing, but now they could say the same thing. It's the same terms, but now they mean something different. Like, what's the greeting? Oh, yeah.

Aslamu alaikum. Yeah. Like, could a Christian say that same thing and just mean something slightly different? I mean, that just means peace be upon you. Yeah. It doesn't even have the name Allah in it. Oh, right. Yeah.

Okay. But, yeah, lots of things like that can be used, can still be applied by Christians. And that's helpful. The goal is not to change the way you talk and everything. To put a fine point on it, in Indonesia, there is a difference between how Muslims say the name Allah and how Christians say the name Allah. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, it's pronounced different.

It's spelled the same. It's the same word, but they pronounce it differently. And so contextually, people are like, okay, the Bible doesn't command me how to say this. I'm not trying to be deceptive, but I want to use language that people can relate to and understand. Can you explain why you referring to Jesus as the Son of God is problematic in Muslim countries? Yeah. There are a couple of verses in the Quran that say that it's blasphemous to. associate anyone with God, with Allah. And so since, according to the Quran, Jesus was just a prophet. He was a created being. It's blasphemous to equate him with God. It's like equating you with God, even though you're a great guy. And so it's framed as blasphemy. So that's one of the worst sins a Muslim can commit, is to associate any created being with God. It's a kind of idolatessen.

So that's baked into their theology based on verses in the Quran. So it's offensive to them, but there are ways around that as people come to understand who Jesus is, but that's a process. It's a process of unlearning some stuff and learning who Jesus is before they realize. Like I mentioned earlier, the response to the disciples, what kind of man is this who can command the wind and waves? What kind of person can forgive sins? Only God can do that. It's got to mess with a person's head for a while before they can realize the truth.

It's not the kind of thing that you just say it, and they're like, oh, okay, now I get it. It's kind of like the Act 17 where Paul kind of strategically met them where they're at in categories they're familiar with, but he didn't just drop the whole Trinity on them or, you know, like, he kind of was like playing with things. I mean, as you were talking, I was like, but wait a minute, this is a fundamental part of the

gospel that Jesus is supreme, that is not just a created being. Like, why not just lead with that? And that is the offense of the gospel. But you're saying that's going to unnecessarily shut, that's going to too quickly shut the door that may have been kept open if you had more slowly introduced them to Jesus in ways that their psychological, religious, mental walls didn't just immediately go up. Right. Yeah.

Islam has, and this is one of the challenging things, it has some very specific things that are barriers to the gospel. And so rather than confronting those directly, I mean, some people do that and they argue about it and, you know, they'll put their arguments on YouTube, but almost nobody ever gets saved from those arguments. If our goal is to see people come to faith, you know, you think about the fact that in the Old Testament, God spent over a thousand years helping people understand who he was before he revealed Jesus. You know, Jesus could have shown up in Genesis and been done with all that mess.

But that's not how God did it. Over the course of thousands of years, God revealed his nature, his character, what the same thing. would be like, what the Messiah would be like, it was a long, long, painfully long process. And I figure, if God could take a couple thousand years to do that, we can take, you know, maybe 30 weeks to help people. Obviously, the goal is that people understand Jesus as the divine son of God, the only Savior, his blood takes away sin. But there's a lot of barriers in Islam to overcome, a lot to unlearn as well as a lot to

realize about the nature of God, the nature of sin, et cetera, so that they can come to a biblical understanding and be saved. I mean, God didn't even tell Israel what his name was until Moses, right? Yeah. Exactly. 500 years after Hebrew. God doesn't mind taking his time with this stuff, apparently. Yeah, that's interesting.

What have he found is some of the biggest, like, is there a main hurdle where a Muslim, is exploring Christianity, they're interested, but there's just that one hurdle that if they can just get past that, then, you know, there's a much more likely chance they'll fully embrace Jesus. It depends partly on the person and their context and what they've been taught, but I'll say a couple of main ones, one of the biggest ones, and this is embarrassing, is to the extent they know some Christians or some, people that call themselves Christians, or to the extent they've seen Christians in movies, they don't want to be like that.

They don't want to be beer drinkers, pork eaters, immoral people. They don't want to be like what they've seen of Christians, especially what they see of Western Christians in movies. That's a huge stumbling block. And sadly, the kind of Christianity that's been extraditioner, ported to other parts of the world, to the extent it's not changed hearts and changed lives, it's a terrible testimony. And, you know, one guy said he lived on the border between Kenya and Ethiopia.

And in Kenya, where he was from, the people were Muslim. Over the border, there were Christians. And he knew guards who would go over the border for drinking and womanizing, and then he'd come back. And those were the Christians. And he said, I definitely did not want to be like that. So it took a while to overcome that kind of prejudice. And that's probably one of the biggest. And it's not the only reason, but I think it's one of the reasons why these movements are happening most effectively, most rapidly, where there's little contact with Christians. They don't already have a picture of what church should be like of you just, you know, go on Sunday, sit in the pew,

listen to a talk for half an hour, and be done with it. If they think that's Christianity, that's not going to multiply. They go to the Bible and they read Acts and they read the epistles, they read about Jesus, and they realize, this is amazing news. I've got to tell people about this. Jesus said to make disciples, he said to live a holy life. And because nobody told them they didn't have to do that, Nobody told them, well, first except Jesus's Savior and then, you know, Lord's stuff, that's optional. They saw in the New Testament, Jesus is Lord. I've got to live like Jesus is Lord. And so that kind of radical faith in Jesus, radical discipleship is all they know of Christianity.

So they do it. They live it. They share it. And more people come to faith. So one of the greatest hindrances to Jesus is modern Christians or they're all. or the perception of Christians who aren't representing Jesus well. Yeah, yeah. And if you look at current news in the U.S.,

we provide lots of examples of that. Yeah, yeah. Well, especially do they, do they, when I say they, I mean, this is a broad day, but in my experience, I would say in my experience, when you go overseas, especially in majority world countries, like a lot of, or majority world countries that are predominantly not Christian, And there is this blend, when they think of Christians in America, it's kind of one of the same.

Like American Western people are Christians and Christians are American Western people. And so it seems like it's that blending of church and state from their perception, which is kind of a reality in some parts here as well. Yep. They don't want to become Christians because that means becoming Western and becoming, yeah, like you said, immoral looking like a Hollywood star, you know. So does it take, going back to contextualizing the gospel, do you have to do some work and disentangling their view of the West from Christianity? Yeah. And part of that process is to not have people from the West be the forefront,

the primary face they see of the gospel. And again, that's partly why the near neighbor culture approach is much more effective. than sending somebody that looks like me. When I was in Indonesia and working with a church planting team, there were four Indonesians and myself, and we met weekly to discuss what was happening, what was effective, what was not effective. And I went out sometimes with them to do evangelism kinds of stuff,

but in the villages, I usually didn't, just because, as I said earlier, when Indonesian folks in the village looked at me, it was a huge I mean this was an event and the big thing that the event amounted to was not the gospel it was

you know I felt like when I smiled they saw gold sparkling in my teeth they're like there is some benefit here how do I get part of the benefit that was foremost in their mind and one time one of my guys said you can come to my village

you know, it's fine. It won't. And I took his word for it. I'm like, okay, I'll go to the village with you guys. And it was, it was true. It was just, I mean, it wasn't a disaster, but I was clearly a hindrance to anything the spirit would have liked to do during that visit.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, last five, ten years. And I, and I'll admit, I've probably erred on the side of missional nihilism. or cynicism at the very least in terms of what is the place of a white westerner in a non-white majority world country. And I just see so many problems and cons and unforeseen, unintentional bad things that happen that part of me is like, is there any place at all? And that kind of came back a little bit, like you said,

well, there can be coming alongside supporting, submitting to indigenous leadership. I'm like, okay, I think there is a place, a very limited maybe place for white Western, quote-unquote, missionaries in these countries. Is that, yeah, so let me, that's kind of my quick narrative. How would you answer that question? What is the role in place of white missionaries and majority world countries? Yeah, there are a number of things we can do that are helpful. And you really nailed it when you described the, you know, work together with, and submit to, follow the lead of,

because they're the ones who understand that context much better than we do. And there are two articles that I co-wrote with my friend Stan Parks about what we call movement servants. And that is people who come alongside these movements and just say, what can I do to be helpful? Is there any way I can be part of this work that won't get in the way that will provide something you need? And you never know what they'll say.

They might need some data entry. You know, they're like, okay, we got so many people coming to faith. Nobody wants to sit down and write down all that's happening, you know? Nobody wants to sit at a computer and keep track of, okay, we got 50 baptisms here. We got four generations of people coming. You know, they want to do the stuff. They don't want to sit down and write it all down. If somebody would write it down, we could tell you a better report to what's happening here.

You know, those kinds of things. And one of the things we felt, my friend's, he would often quote one of the leaders, that said, we would love to have people come as long as they'll do what we asked them to do and not, after a while, start telling us what they think we ought to be doing. Oh, my gosh. Because, you know, that's the thing. With us as Americans, we always see a way things could be done better. And I saw this in myself in Indonesia so often, you know, you see, now, if you would just do this, it would work better.

We're so full of helpful ideas. And we can't help ourselves, you know, from the best of motives, the best of intentions. It's like, oh, yeah, you could be. And the leaders of these movements, they've seen thousands of people come to saving faith in Jesus. They really don't want to take advice. I mean, they'll listen. They'll listen politely.

They're rarely unkind, but they're just being patient inside because they know why that brilliant idea of mine isn't going to work. Yeah. I think just the difference of understanding an honor, shame culture and how many ways that affects the way they talk and do things and ask questions and don't ask questions. It's so deep into the culture that if you don't understand that, you're just going to be frustrated, right? I mean, or, you know, clock time versus event time. You know, when does the birthday start and party start? Like we say six o'clock and it ends at 730.

there, it's like it starts and people show up and ends and people leave, you know? There's no, like, which might be five hours later than you expected, you know. And so, yeah, there definitely are things that we can do. And anybody that wants to be helpful, there may be some things. Definitely, we can always find something. The very least is to be well informed and pray. Anybody can do that and will not get in the way. You know, God's really good at sorting out these prayers.

He's like, yeah, yeah, this is good. Yeah, that one will ignore. But even in terms of concrete, practical things, you know, people with various skills can train people and all kinds of stuff. But it all depends on the context and the person and the leader. And so it requires a willingness to say, I'm available. Here's what I could maybe do. What do you think? And we try to do some matchmaking and provide help as we can.

In the world of missions, like I know, like decades ago, the whole idea. idea of like raising up, going over, you know, raising up indigenous leaders and powering them and then putting them in charge and then you leaving kind of working yourself out of the job. Like that wasn't really, it didn't seem like it was a big thing. Now it seems like obviously this is what we should be doing. Is it, is that mindset widespread or is it, are there still people that are like, no, we did to make sure we're constantly maintaining, you know, leadership and control over various organizations we're starting or churches or whatever.

So the extent, anybody still thinks that. They don't verbalize it that bluntly. Okay. They put a nicer face on their patriarchal control. And I'm not saying any like career missionary who is still in leadership at some church or organization overseas is trying to maintain control. So there's different. I don't want to oversimplify it. But we've seen, we've seen a disastrous where they never empower and turn over things to indigenous leaders.

Like is that so maybe that's still happening. It's just not it's more frowned upon. so people don't actually say the quiet part out loud. Yeah, I'll tell you the place where I see it happening most clearly still happening. That's in the realm of theology. There are certain groups that have a certain, specifically ecclesiology. They believe a church should have these nine marks, to use one example. And among those is expository preaching of the gospel.

The quiet part is by a male who has been ordained. with proper theology. And so by their definition, most of these churches being planted are not churches. Their theology needs improvement. And so the goal of groups like that is to correct the theology, to improve the theology of these groups that are, you know, they're meeting with maybe 15 people in a circle, and they're preaching Jesus, they're sharing the gospel,

they're taking the Lord's Supper. but they don't have one guy standing up giving a sermon. So by that standard, they're not a church. And so that kind of, can I call it theological colonialism? Yeah, yeah, yes. That reformed Protestant theology is the right teaching, and we need to help these ignorant folks improve their theology because all they're doing is reading the book of Acts

and thinking you can go do it. Oh, theological colonialism. Dave, it was a joy to talk to you. Tell us about your book that, I mean, at the time of recording, it comes out today. It'll have been a few, a couple weeks ago for people listening. So tell you, tell us about the book you just wrote.

Okay. The title is God on the Move, making disciples among the nations. and that is a popular level version of a previous book called Motus Day describing these movements in some academic depth, all of the questions, the problems, the issues, along with case studies of how God is at work in these movements. And so a lot of folks looked at that book and said,

oh, that's just too heavy, it's too deep. I'm not going to get around to reading that. But I wanted people to be able to catch the stories and really catch some of these ideas. So this book has just eight chapters. It has four case studies of movements. Two of them are in Africa. One's in India.

One's in Thailand. And then it has four chapters giving some background. One is an overview of what these movements are. One is about movements in acts and how we see certain dynamics and principles at work in the book of acts that are happening today. One is a discussion of ecclesia church. What is church and what does that mean? How is it happening in these movements? And then a chapter on some questions, some criticisms of movements, some complaints that people have had, and answering those objections.

And so those are the chapters in this book, God on the Move. The book that we were talking about previously before this one came out was Living Fire, which is about one of the families of movements in Africa and telling how this is. happening in some very challenging places and mainly among Muslims. And so a lot of the dynamics we talked about today, people can see fleshed out if they're interested in that book. Awesome. Thanks, Dave, so much for being out the algebra. Thank you. Great being with you, Preston. I don't know.