ISLAM COLLABORATIVE
Currently, around 25% of the world’s population (or 1.8 billion people) is Muslim. Looking to the Quran for guidance, and believing in the prophetic voice of Muhammed, they are concentrated in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia - but present in virtually every nation on earth. The gospel of Jesus Christ is antithetical to their way of life. In nations where the way of Islam rules, churches are scarce - if not completely absent.
The aim of the Acts 29 Islam Collaborative is to bring resourcing, funding, training, and leadership to the task of seeing churches planting churches in the Muslim world & contexts. As those who were once enemies of God and yet saved by his grace, we do not accept that anyone is too far off to be saved by that same grace. Instead, we press towards them with the clarity of the truth, with love that engages their various cultures, and urgency that drives us to plant churches among them that result in disciples of Jesus Christ.
Those gathered agreed they were overwhelmed by the task, even while being energized by the hope of the Spirit to reach the lost.
The Islam Collaborative has met twice for strategic planning sessions - once in Dubai in March 2018 and then in Barcelona in December 2018. At both occasions, those gathered agreed they were overwhelmed by the task, even while being energized by the hope of the Spirit to reach the lost. Plans are being drafted to create innovative training resources, efforts are being made to generate collaboration among like-minded ministries focused on the same task, and - most importantly - churches are planting churches in the geographic heart of Islam.
1.8
BILLION
Muslims in the world
"Churches are planting churches in the geographic heart of Islam."
5
ACTS 29 CHURCHES
working in these contexts
1
NEW PLANT IN A
MIDDLE EASTERN CITY
currently underway
"A gospel-preaching church in Kuwait sits in a thrilling strategic context to reach Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi, and other Middle Eastern nationalities with the gospel."
PLANTING TOGETHER
In 2017, Redeemer Church of Dubai, an English-speaking multi-ethnic congregation off the coast of the Arabian Gulf, sent out church planters to Al Ain, UAE and to Beirut, Lebanon. The labors of those planters have resulted in Redeemer Church of Al Ain and City Bible Church (Beirut). Cooperating as Acts 29 churches, these churches are now engaged in the intentional sending of one of their own to plant a new church in Kuwait City, Kuwait in 2020.
Kuwait City, like many cities in the Gulf region, is majority expatriate in population. But unlike Dubai and other cities in the region, Kuwait is majority Arab in its ethnic makeup. This means that a gospel-preaching church in Kuwait sits in a thrilling strategic context to reach Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi, and other Middle Eastern nationalities with the gospel and send them back to their home countries to plant churches there.
Jesus is building his church in the Islamic world – both where it began and as far as its creed is found. As the various Networks that comprise Acts 29 work through the Islam Collaborative, by God’s grace we will continue to facilitate and catalyse the planting of churches.