“But then on the other side: you’re seeing, really, brother against brother, ethnicity against ethnicity, tribe against tribe – both of whom are calling themselves Christians but are not living it. And so this has to get worked out,” he says. 

Wesley recently returned from Juba, South Sudan, where his team and ministry partners held a theological training on persecution and discipleship. 

“I heard some of the leaders from South Sudan speaking at our conference and basically calling out the South to say, ‘If you name the name of Christ, then you cannot kill your brother,’” he says. 

Wesley notes there were several testimonies of people impacted by the teaching, including a high ranking army official:

“[He] heard the teaching and wants to take [it] to the government and show them that what they’re doing is the opposite of what they should be doing.”

Wesley says a transformative idea for warring believers is an understanding that our identity should be in Christ. 

“And where the world’s culture has infiltrated the church, it needs to go out,” Wesley exhorts. 

Instead, we need to usher in Christ’s kingdom, one that works together in unity. 

As lessons from this training continue to take root, please pray that people will continue to respond to the messages they heard, and pray for an end to the growing violence. 

“My confidence is that there is a number of key leaders that God is raising up in that land right now, in the midst of it, that are going to be influential to benefit both the church and society no matter what’s happening in the culture or the country,” Wesley says. 

Sudanese combatant with G3 rifle, courtesy of Steve Evans via Wikimedia Commons. Header image courtesy of Ahmed Abubakar via Pexels.

Voice of the Martyrs Canada supports persecuted Christians and helps them to remain firm in their faith. Stephen Wesley explains their needs today.

“What we’re seeing happening is that in the persecuted church, there is a need for understanding why persecution is happening, what they are going through, and how God has used persecution to bless and strengthen the church,” says Wesley.

“Where there’s persecution, it’s primarily for the reality of their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.”

Last month, Chinese authorities raided Beijing Zion Church and arrested a dozen people. Most were released the same day, but one church elder was charged with “organizing illegal gatherings” and kept in custody for a 14-day administrative detention. Similar stories regularly occur in countries with limited religious freedoms.

Persecution is more common and severe in some areas of the world, but it is a shared experience of all disciples of Jesus. On the last night with them before his death, Jesus told his disciples, “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours” (John 15:20).

Wesley says, “We have to recognize that if I’m going to look like Jesus in the world, all those who live godly in Christ Jesus, will suffer persecution.”

So how do we respond and support fellow Christians enduring persecution? Wesley says we can start with prayer. Jesus set the example when he prayed for his followers and for all those to come:

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:20-23).

“We need to pray for unity,” says Wesley. “We need to love one another as Christ has loved us.”

Jesus gave this same command to His disciples the night before He was crucified (John 15:12).

Wesley says, “The world is looking at us. They are hearing our message. But then they’re saying, ‘Am I seeing in your activity the reality of what you’re teaching?’”

To pray further for the persecuted, use this resource from VOM Canada. Want to learn more about what the Bible teaches about persecution? Read this book.

Header photo courtesy of VOM International.

This year marks the 507th anniversary of the day Martin Luther is believed to have nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. 

One result of the Reformation was that the Bible became more accessible to ordinary Christians, not just the clergy. Stephen Wesley with Voice of the Martyrs Canada sees how this continues to impact the world today.

(Photo courtesy of Voice of the Martyrs Canada)

“Whenever Christians go in mission, they not only start churches, but they start schools, and they start hospitals and they start universities,” Wesley says, “because with the Word of God comes enlightenment and truth, and the opportunity for that to transform people’s lives, their societies and their cultures.” 

Local churches deal with unique cultural and theological challenges in different parts of the world. For the persecuted church, Wesley observes that faith in Christ alone is enough to bring difficulties and opposition into their lives from their cultures. (More on this here.)

For believers in other contexts, the challenges are less obvious and more insidious, such as materialism, compromise and syncretism.

The Reformation today

But no matter where you live out your faith in Christ, what God called Christian men and women 500 years ago to do still reverberates today: hold to God’s Word fiercely and follow where His Spirit is leading faithfully. 

“Our churches, our pastors and our leaders need to have that spirit of reformation,” Wesley says. “Whenever we’re looking at the church, we have to ask the question, ‘Are we attached to a monument, or are we living in a movement?’ The church is never meant to be static.” 

He delves into Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:18, where He says the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.

“Gates are not offensive. They’re defensive. It’s not that the gates of hell are attacking the church, [it’s] that the church is moving against, that the gates of hell holding people in darkness and seeing them destroyed because of the power that we have bringing life and light,” Wesley says. 

Wesley points to Pentecostalism as one illustration of the advancing of God’s kingdom. “We’ve seen in the last 100 years this massive movement from zero to 700 million people around the world now [in Pentecostal churches],” he continues. 

“You have to have orthodoxy and orthopraxy. You have to have truth and the Spirit. You have to have them moving together in the life of the church. If you have one or the other, you’re not going to have a healthy church.”

(Representative stock photo courtesy of Andrew Stutesman via Unsplash)

Pray for the global Church

There’s a mosaic of different denominations, expressions and facets of the global Church today. As we remember just one chapter in church history, Wesley points to Jesus’ prayer in John 17 as a call to action. 

“We need to pray for unity. We need to love one another as Christ has loved us,” he says. 

“We talk about the love of God, and we teach about the love of God, but then we have a great difficulty coming together in oneness, blessing one another, honoring one another, serving one another and loving one another.

“[As the church lives that out,] then the world will come knocking on our door. They will come knocking and say, ‘I see in you something I’ve always wanted to see in you, what you’ve always said, but now I’m actually seeing it. I want more.’”

Header photo of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, the site where Martin Luther is believed to have posted his Ninety-Five Theses. (Photo courtesy of Deny Hill via Unsplash)