Central Asia (MNN) — The church in Central Asia has seen great growth recently. Evangelical Baptist Missions is helping train church leaders in Central Asia, where there’s a younger generation of leaders actively ministering and being trained further in ministry.
Bill (name changed for security reasons) is an EBM missionary in Central Asia and recently finished EBM’s first training sessions. He is excited because in that first session, 30 nationals were trained, and all but two of them were under the age of 30, and all of them were leaders of house churches in Central Asia. Bill is praising God for the great opportunity to help train such young leaders in ministry work there.
The training programs are sensitive to what the nationals want. The idea, says Bill, is to “go in, train and get out of the way,” so that the nationals can do the ministry work without any encumbrances. “If we’re not invited to a certain location, we don’t go. But if we’re invited, then we come and walk beside them, actually we serve under them, in order to help train them to be involved in ministry.”
Bill stressed the importance of prayer, especially for the church in Muslim-dominated Central Asia. “Those believers who are there, they’re willing to stand up to unique pressures. But they just really – they need us to stand with them in relationship to praying for them. I think that’s the key.”
A story Bill told illustrated the power of prayer. During a prayer meeting he attended in Central Asia, a woman raised her hand and asked if he would pray for her husband to come to know Christ. He said he would pray, and that he would tell his prayer supporters to pray also. After saying that, several other people asked for prayer for relatives and friends who weren’t Christians. While home visiting, Bill’s prayer supporters told him they were praying for those people. And upon his return awhile later, people greeted him with smiles telling of at least 7 of their friends and relatives who had come to know Christ.
Christians often wonder how to be part of God’s work, but Bill says “We can be involved in helping missions in a profound way, by prayer.”
