SjaakSpier
05-04-04, 19:22
Evangelical Group Spreads Gospel in Iraq
Source: AJC.Com
An evangelical Christian ministry in Duluth is on a mission to seek converts among Muslims in Iraq.
The nonprofit Equip plans to train 1 million Christian ministers and lay leaders outside the United States by 2008.
Group President John D. Hull said his recent trip to Iraq, where Muslims make up 90 percent of the 26 million population, was part of that "Million Leaders Mandate."
"This is an emerging church. Everything there is in its infancy," Hull, 45, said of the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, whose new leaders recently approved a constitution that guarantees freedom of religion.
Equip's mission is part of a growing evangelical movement of U.S.-based groups worldwide, particularly in the Muslim world. Despite the risk of violence, missionaries are flooding what they call "the 10/40 window," nations between the 10th- and 40th-degree latitude north, which spans North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Hull said his group — four Americans and eight Egyptians — was invited to Iraq by Iraqi Christian ministers who knew of Equip's partnership with Kasr El-Dobarah Evangelical Church in Cairo, Egypt.
They met with a dozen or so Iraqi pastors in Baghdad and 144 in the northern town of Irbil. The pastors were members of various denominations, including the Southern Baptist, Free Methodist, Evangelical Presbyterian and Assyrian Evangelical churches and the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Hull said.
"We held what we're told by the locals was the very first pastors' leadership conference in the history of Iraq," Hull said.
During its 10-day visit, the group led sessions at Iraqi hotels on topics such as strategies for growth, the importance of integrity and the call of leadership. They also provided material for a "leadership library," including books by Equip's founder, John C. Maxwell.
Maxwell, a Christian author, public speaker and friend of evangelist Billy Graham, launched Equip in 1996 in Duluth, where he lives. The organization, with 15 staffers and a $3.4 million budget, is funded by donations from individuals, churches and foundations.
Hull said Equip's basic goal is to help the pastors of Iraq develop their leadership skills.
He said he was aware that such missions by U.S.-based evangelical groups were fraught with risk. Just last week, four missionaries were killed and one was injured in a drive-by shooting in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. They were part of the Virginia-based Southern Baptist International Mission Board. And in Uganda, gunmen looted a Christian college and killed two U.S. missionaries teaching there.
The presence of Christian missionaries is particularly resented in many parts of the Middle East, a region whose majority Muslim populations still seethe over the 11th-century Crusades.
"Western Christianity is viewed as an instrument of imperialism, of colonialism," said Gordon D. Newby, a professor of Islamic studies at Emory University. "And so they're going to suspect the motives, just as they suspect the motives of our troops" in Iraq.
Critics also say it's presumptuous for U.S. evangelists to proselytize in Iraq, the area formerly known as Mesopotamia. After all, it is the birthplace of Abraham — Jews, Christians and Muslims all claim him as their patriarch — and its Chaldean Catholic Church has been around since the first century.
"The idea that somehow the Christians in the West are the people to train Christians in other parts of the world is totally misplaced," said Thomas Thangaraj, Brooks associate professor of world Christianity at Emory. "That is assuming that we have the right Christianity and the better Christianity and we need to go and help everybody else."
Furthermore, Thangaraj said, the timing may not be right for such outreach in Iraq.
"We are now in a climate of occupation," he said. "We are militarily occupying, politically occupying, economically occupying. Any religious activity at this point from here to there has an occupation character to it."
Hull is aware of such criticism but plans to return to Iraq in six months for another conference.
"I think there are many people that are there that may not like the fact that Americans are there, that Christians are there, that freedom is there," he said. "But I do believe that as long as there are opportunities for Christians around the world to serve the needs of their brothers and sisters, that the church will respond regardless of the cost."
Source: AJC.Com
An evangelical Christian ministry in Duluth is on a mission to seek converts among Muslims in Iraq.
The nonprofit Equip plans to train 1 million Christian ministers and lay leaders outside the United States by 2008.
Group President John D. Hull said his recent trip to Iraq, where Muslims make up 90 percent of the 26 million population, was part of that "Million Leaders Mandate."
"This is an emerging church. Everything there is in its infancy," Hull, 45, said of the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, whose new leaders recently approved a constitution that guarantees freedom of religion.
Equip's mission is part of a growing evangelical movement of U.S.-based groups worldwide, particularly in the Muslim world. Despite the risk of violence, missionaries are flooding what they call "the 10/40 window," nations between the 10th- and 40th-degree latitude north, which spans North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Hull said his group — four Americans and eight Egyptians — was invited to Iraq by Iraqi Christian ministers who knew of Equip's partnership with Kasr El-Dobarah Evangelical Church in Cairo, Egypt.
They met with a dozen or so Iraqi pastors in Baghdad and 144 in the northern town of Irbil. The pastors were members of various denominations, including the Southern Baptist, Free Methodist, Evangelical Presbyterian and Assyrian Evangelical churches and the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Hull said.
"We held what we're told by the locals was the very first pastors' leadership conference in the history of Iraq," Hull said.
During its 10-day visit, the group led sessions at Iraqi hotels on topics such as strategies for growth, the importance of integrity and the call of leadership. They also provided material for a "leadership library," including books by Equip's founder, John C. Maxwell.
Maxwell, a Christian author, public speaker and friend of evangelist Billy Graham, launched Equip in 1996 in Duluth, where he lives. The organization, with 15 staffers and a $3.4 million budget, is funded by donations from individuals, churches and foundations.
Hull said Equip's basic goal is to help the pastors of Iraq develop their leadership skills.
He said he was aware that such missions by U.S.-based evangelical groups were fraught with risk. Just last week, four missionaries were killed and one was injured in a drive-by shooting in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. They were part of the Virginia-based Southern Baptist International Mission Board. And in Uganda, gunmen looted a Christian college and killed two U.S. missionaries teaching there.
The presence of Christian missionaries is particularly resented in many parts of the Middle East, a region whose majority Muslim populations still seethe over the 11th-century Crusades.
"Western Christianity is viewed as an instrument of imperialism, of colonialism," said Gordon D. Newby, a professor of Islamic studies at Emory University. "And so they're going to suspect the motives, just as they suspect the motives of our troops" in Iraq.
Critics also say it's presumptuous for U.S. evangelists to proselytize in Iraq, the area formerly known as Mesopotamia. After all, it is the birthplace of Abraham — Jews, Christians and Muslims all claim him as their patriarch — and its Chaldean Catholic Church has been around since the first century.
"The idea that somehow the Christians in the West are the people to train Christians in other parts of the world is totally misplaced," said Thomas Thangaraj, Brooks associate professor of world Christianity at Emory. "That is assuming that we have the right Christianity and the better Christianity and we need to go and help everybody else."
Furthermore, Thangaraj said, the timing may not be right for such outreach in Iraq.
"We are now in a climate of occupation," he said. "We are militarily occupying, politically occupying, economically occupying. Any religious activity at this point from here to there has an occupation character to it."
Hull is aware of such criticism but plans to return to Iraq in six months for another conference.
"I think there are many people that are there that may not like the fact that Americans are there, that Christians are there, that freedom is there," he said. "But I do believe that as long as there are opportunities for Christians around the world to serve the needs of their brothers and sisters, that the church will respond regardless of the cost."