Palestinian Muslims Coming to Christ, Story #6

This excerpt from my dissertation is the conversion-story summary of Respondent Six, a male from Nablus. Feel free to interact in the comments or download my dissertation as a free PDF!

The following is ©2014 University of Pretoria and Craig Dunning, and if used elsewhere, should be cited as:

Dunning, CA (2014) Palestinian Muslims converting to Christianity: effective evangelistic methods in the West Bank. Pretoria, South Africa: University of Pretoria, PhD thesis, pp. 320-322.

Respondent Six – male – Nablus

Respondent Six’s conversion was closely connected to the conversion of his parents, Respondent Four and Respondent Five. His first encounter with the gospel was the result of his parents inviting some Christian men to their home in order to solicit some medical assistance for the respondent’s sister. Over time the men discussed their Christian faith with the respondent’s family and provided him the Jesus Film and the book Glad News! God Loves You My Muslim Friend.

Initially the respondent was unhappy about the meetings with the Christian men, which began when he was about fifteen-years-old. He had two main issues with the visits. First, though not overly religious, he considered himself a faithful Muslim, and he was not interested in becoming a Christian or even hearing about Christians. He was satisfied with being a Muslim. Second, he feared that word may spread that Christians were coming to their home regularly, which might result in some type of retaliation or punishment form the community. The last thing he wanted was for his family to be branded as traitors to Islam.

The respondent said that in spite of his anger about the meetings and lack of desire to hear about Christianity, he also felt drawn to sit with his parents as they met with the Christian men. At the time of his interview, the respondent still was not sure if this desire was the result of actually wanting to know more, though unwittingly, or if he simply desired to protect his family. At one point, he warned them that they were going to turn into monkeys if they continued meeting and praying with the Christians. The longer the Christian men continued to visit, the more he did not want them to visit, and, ironically, the more he wanted to sit with them.

After a few months, he began to secretly watch the Jesus Film. He had received an Arabic version of the film, which was very important for him to be able to understand the dialogue. He had several months of internal struggle, being moved by the life of Jesus and how he was mistreated and punished while at the same time feeling guilty for thinking about Christianity. In fact, he said he regularly asked Allah to forgive him for sitting with the Christian men. While he was drawn to the message of the Jesus film, he also was afraid he would be kidnapped and tortured as Allah’s punishment for his interest in the film. The idea of becoming a Christian was repulsive and frightening, yet each time he watched the film he felt more drawn toward Jesus.

The respondent’s conversion came about in stages. At times he felt drawn toward Jesus, which usually occurred while watching the Jesus Film or after certain visits from the Christian men. At other times the respondent felt shame and remorse for watching the film or asking questions of the men, so he moved alternately closer and farther from Jesus from week to week.

Though it was often upsetting to meet with the Christian men, he now sees how important it was because from the outset they gave a good first impression, and they continued to do so. “They acted like believers by being kind and patient even when I spoke harshly to them,” the respondent said. He sensed a genuine love for his family from these men, and “not because they were trying to convert us.” The Christian men built a relationship with the family that did not fade when the respondent insulted them or his father forbid them to return.

During their visits, the Christian men did not seem to have an organized plan, other than to be patient and show Christ any way they could. Sometimes, they taught something about Jesus from the Gospels. Alternatively, they might simply answer questions about Christianity, or compare the Qur’an with the Bible. Whatever the situation dictated, the men were flexible and faithful in showing patience and love. The respondent also noted that the Christian men were very familiar with the Qur’an and Islamic teaching and culture, which suggested they were not outsiders from a distant land who had come to change the people’s religion.

As a result of the home meetings, the respondent was invited to meet some MBB young people (teens to early twenties) to play basketball and volleyball. He assumed these young people would be social misfits and unhappy because they were living outside the parameters of Islam. But, to his surprise, they seemed normal and happy. After a few meetings he became friends with a couple of the guys and began talking to them on the phone every few days.

A turning point came in his journey toward conversion when his friends invited him to a MBB conference. Afraid that his parents would not approve, he only told them that he was going to visit his friends. He said, “At the conference, everything seemed to come together. My fears were taken away and I became convinced of what I had been learning while listening to the Christian men who were visiting our home. The testimonies that I heard at the conference were similar to what I felt and saw in the Jesus Film. I didn’t say the sinner’s prayer, but I was definitely a believer in Jesus,” he concluded.

Themes that emerged in this interview: Formal Bible studies, being “drawn/compelled,” being “moved,” Q and A, the Qur’an vs. the Bible, evangelists familiar with Islam/Qur’an, the kindness of Christians, prayer, retreats/conferences/special events, Group/Family conversion, the Jesus Film, Christian literature, meeting Christians/MBBs, the “sinner’s prayer,” pastoral/evangelistic visits, satisfaction with Islam, fear or shame as a barrier to the gospel, and negative assumptions about Christians/MBBs.

NEXT: Palestinian Muslims Coming to Christ: Story #7

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Palestinian Muslims Coming to Christ, Story #3

This excerpt from my dissertation is the conversion-story summary of Respondent Three, a female from East Jerusalem. Feel free to interact in the comments or download my dissertation as a free PDF!

The following is ©2014 University of Pretoria and Craig Dunning, and if used elsewhere, should be cited as:

Dunning, CA (2014) Palestinian Muslims converting to Christianity: effective evangelistic methods in the West Bank. Pretoria, South Africa: University of Pretoria, PhD thesis, pp. 305-308.

Respondent Three – female – East Jerusalem

Respondent Three was born and raised in a Muslim family in Jerusalem’s Old City. Her parent’s and siblings were observant Muslims, but not overly religious, as demonstrated by her learning in a Christian school near her home.

In fact, she said that many moderate Muslims learn at private Christian schools based on the idea that Christian schools provide better educations than public, or even Muslim schools. She was quick to point out that her parents allowed her to attend the Christian school for this reason and because “it was well known that none of the [traditional] Christians would speak to her about becoming a Christian.” And they did not. From elementary through high school, no one ever spoke to her about becoming a Christian.

During the respondent’s final year of college, a CBB (Christian Background Believer)[1] classmate offered to help her improve her English. After a short period of practicing English together, the Christian asked the respondent, “Do you have any idea why I offered to help you with English?” Having no idea, the respondent asked, “Why?” The Christian girl’s answer was shocking: “Because I see Jesus on you!” “I am a Muslim not a Christian!” the respondent said to herself, as many questions came to mind. For example, she wondered, “How can she see Jesus on me?” and “What does that even mean?”

Soon after, the CBB invited the respondent to a three-day student retreat. These retreats are designed to allow Palestinian Christian and Muslim students to spend time together in an environment that emphasizes Palestinian culture, though some also include decidedly Christian themes.

At this particular retreat, the respondent became very angry when the host pastor declared, “Jesus is God.” Among Muslims, the idea that Jesus is God is anathema and often one of the primary barriers to faith in Jesus, and it certainly was for this respondent.

Following the pastor’s shocking statement, the respondent spent three hours asking him questions. However, the respondent said, “He could never give good answers. The best he could do was to encourage me to read the New Testament, particularly the gospels.” He also asked to pray for her, and in his prayer he said, “God, please speak to her.” These two things – encouraging her to read the NT and asking God to speak to her – would become the catalysts for her to come to faith in Jesus as savior and God.

After returning from the retreat, the respondent began to read the New Testament and think about Jesus a lot. In fact, for the next year, she read the New Testament diligently, seeking to hear God speak to her. Additionally, she worked for a Christian businessman who had daily devotions with the staff. In those devotions she heard a regular gospel witness, focusing on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Still, the deity of Christ was offensive to her. “A prophet? Yes. God? Definitely not!” she remembered thinking at that time.

During her year of Bible reading, in addition to the staff devotions at her workplace she also attended Bible studies with an Arab pastor, and on occasion, she also discreetly visited his church services.

Toward the end of her year of reading the New Testament, she had several recurring dreams that lasted throughout the night. Jesus continually appeared in her dreams with long hair, brown eyes, a beard and wearing a white robe. In all but one dream, He remained silent. In the one dream in which Jesus spoke, He said a single word: “father.”

Interestingly, that word was spoken in French, a language she recognized but did not speak. This required her to find someone who spoke French, which was a fairly easy task in East Jerusalem. When she found out the word Jesus spoke was “father,” she felt like she was getting close to believing in Jesus, God’s Son. However, rather than be relieved to finally come to this conclusion, particularly given these circumstances, the respondent was quite unsettled by what she thought she now believed because she was the first Muslim that she knew who might believe that Jesus is God’s Son and that He is God. She had never heard of a MBB, which indicated another barrier to her coming to faith: ignorance of the possibility.

Realizing that she may actually already believe that Jesus is God frightened her for a few reasons: 1) she had never heard of a Muslim becoming a Christian, 2) she felt like becoming a Christian might be betraying her family, and 3) she worried what others would think of her. This fear of the unknown caused her to cry for hours each day for one week, asking God to give her the Holy Spirit. Throughout the day she would cry and pray and read the New Testament. Finally, at the end of the week, the words “Jesus is God” finally escaped her mouth, confirming for her that she really believed because those words so closely matched what she read the day before: “. . . and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3 NKJV).

When asked what was the most decisive factor in her coming to faith, the respondent noted several critical factors: The initial contact with her college classmate opened the door. The picnic retreat planted seeds. The devotions at work and Bible study with the pastor gave her information and answered most of her questions. Reading the Bible gave her greater understanding of God’s plan and Jesus’ identity. The dreams confirmed what she had been told and had read. And finally, the confession that “Jesus is God” was evidence in her mind that the Holy Spirit was working in her, which had been her prayer.

Having noted all of those as important, she said that two factors were the most important in her coming to faith. Both were personal interactions with other believers. First, that her boss (non-MBB) was patient, kind, and not pushy while she considered the faith. Second, she added that consistently spending time with older female believers (non-MBB) made an important impact on her decision as they prayed with and for her, studied the Bible with her, and encouraged her to seek God.

Themes that emerged in this interview: Personal Bible reading, formal Bible studies, Q and A, the kindness of Christians, the witness of a friend, prayer, dreams, retreats/conferences/special events, meeting Christians/MBBs, uncertainty, the deity of Jesus, ignorance of other Muslims believing in Jesus, and fear or shame as a barrier to the gospel.

[1] Within the Palestinian Evangelical paradigm, a Christian Background Believer (CBB) is a person from what is considered a “traditional Christian background” (e.g., Catholic or Orthodox) who becomes a “born-again” (i.e., Evangelical) Christian.

NEXT: Palestinian Muslims Coming to Christ: Story #4

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Palestinian Muslims Coming to Christ, Story #1

This excerpt from my dissertation is the conversion-story summary of Respondent One, a male from Bethlehem. Feel free to interact in the comments or download my dissertation as a free PDF!

The following is ©2014 University of Pretoria and Craig Dunning, and if used elsewhere, should be cited as:

Dunning, CA (2014) Palestinian Muslims converting to Christianity: effective evangelistic methods in the West Bank. Pretoria, South Africa: University of Pretoria, PhD thesis, pp. 298-300.

Respondent One – male – Bethlehem

Respondent One was raised in a traditional Muslim home that was not religiously active, which created a general lack of interest in religious issues that was compounded by his negative experience both with religious Muslims and orthodox Christians in the Bethlehem area. One thing he was certain of was that he did not like the Christians; “They didn’t care about the Muslims, only themselves,” he said.

About ten years prior to our interview while living in Bethlehem, he started working in Jerusalem and met a “Jewish woman who believes in Jesus.” She was friendly and began to talk with him about spiritual things. At first he was not interested in such discussions, but because she seemed genuinely interested in him as a person and also “loved Jesus very much” he was provoked to continue the conversations and to begin reading the Arabic Bible at home.

He read the Bible side by side with the Qur’an to see where they agreed or disagreed. In his studies he began to notice some problems in the Qur’an, particularly what he described as “logical problems and errors.” It is important to note that his personal studies were not guided studies; he simply read and compared both texts.

As questions about Islam and the integrity of the Qur’an began to mount, he started to attend a Hebrew language Bible study in West Jerusalem. At the Bible study he learned more and began to see “how the Bible fit together much better than the Qur’an.” The topics of study in the Bible study were the books of Genesis and Daniel. As he continued to read and study the Bible he began to sense a confidence in what he was reading, and he concluded that, “Faith is the natural outcome of honestly reading the Bible.”

The evangelistic stage lasted about three years, when finally, “all the pieces were in place” and he “believed that Jesus is God who died for [his] sins.”

Shortly after coming to faith, he arranged to be baptized a couple of times by different Arab pastors, but for various reasons the pastors backed out. Finally, the Jewish pastor, whose Bible studies the respondent had been attending for three years, baptized him in West Jerusalem. The respondent’s family – wife and five children – witnessed his baptism.

Two days after his baptism, the respondent had a dream in which appeared a man with a glowing face dressed in white. The man told him two things: “You are on the right path, continue on” and “You need to tell others about your faith, don’t stop.” In his mind, this dream served two purposes: To confirm his conclusions about Jesus and to give him a “calling” for his life.

The respondent has spent the last seven years learning more about Jesus and telling all who will listen. His witness has been effective in about fifteen others coming to faith in Jesus. He doesn’t have a planned approach to evangelism, he “just starts talking about Jesus” to people as he visits their homes. His approach is to speak highly of Jesus and encourage others to read the Bible, which he assumes, will be as effective for them as it was for him. Along with printed Bibles he also distributes mp3 players loaded with audio Bibles and other Christian literature.

His conversion resulted in tensions with his family. The respondent’s conversion to Christianity has been an open topic amongst his family – wife, children and siblings – all of whom have remained Muslims. Soon after his conversion, he told his wife that she could choose to let him stay at home or send him away. “But,” he added, “whatever you choose, I will always follow Jesus and tell others about him.”

His evangelistic efforts have also created tensions in his village and problems for him personally. He said that he was arrested, incarcerated, and beaten by Palestinian Authority police because he “would not stop telling others about Jesus.” According to his testimony, telling others about Jesus “is the red line for the Palestinian Authority.” He is currently in exile due to threats on his life as a result of his evangelistic efforts. In this case, exile means that he does not live with his family. Instead, he moves about from host to host – both in the PA and Israel – staying a day here, a few days there, perhaps a week somewhere else.

The respondent said that the most important things for his conversion were Bible reading and an openness to listen. And he added that the latter was definitely the result of Christians showing a true interest in him as a person and being very patient with his questions. Arabic language Christian programs on satellite television also were helpful in building and maturing his faith, as has been his continued contact with believers in Jerusalem.

Themes that emerged in this interview: Personal Bible reading, formal Bible studies, the Qur’an vs. the Bible, doubts about Islam/Qur’an, the kindness of Christians, and dreams.

Download my dissertation as a free PDF!

NEXT: Palestinian Muslims Coming to Christ: Story #2

Palestinian Muslims Converting to Christianity

Palestinian Muslims converting to Christianity: effective evangelistic methods in the West Bank

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This document is my PhD dissertation, which is ©2014 University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.

It should be cited:
Dunning, CA 2014, “Palestinian Muslims converting to Christianity: effective evangelistic methods in the West Bank”, PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria.

Interviews about the contents of this document can be obtained by contacting Prof Craig Dunning at (817) 461-8741, ext. 143.

ABSTRACT
This thesis provides the findings of an explanatory case study that utilized elements of ethnographic research to discover effective evangelistic methods being practiced among Palestinian Muslims in the West Bank. With the assistance of gatekeepers, twenty-four former Muslims were asked to explain how they were evangelized, with a particular focus on evangelistic methodology, the barriers to faith the respondents encountered, solutions to those barriers, and motivations to consider conversion.

This qualitative study follows the research model of Thom Rainer (2001) by asking those who have actually converted to describe the things that were helpful in the process of their coming to faith. For a theoretical framework it utilizes a nuance of McKnight’s (2002) theory of conversion with an emphasis on crisis providing an intersection of the natural and supernatural for the purpose of conversion.

This thesis investigates examples of effective evangelism within the context of the West Bank, giving thorough consideration to Palestinian Nationalism and Islam as overarching cultural influences. It considers fruitful practices being practiced globally among Muslims, comparing those with what was found being practiced in the West Bank. The advocates represented in this report were primarily Palestinians born and raised in the West Bank, with the exception of three messianic Jewish Israelis and an American missionary. Additionally, they were evangelicals who generally utilized a contextually sensitive, traditional mission approach rather than an Insider model.

The end result is a knowledge base that can be helpful for future evangelism of Muslims in the West Bank or other similar contexts.

The Davinci Code in Arabic

I wasn’t surprised to see The Davinci Code in Arabic, but I was a little surprised to see that it was published by the Arab Scientific Publishers. Actually, after further consideration, the publisher didn’t surprise me.

For the record, there may have never been published a less scientific book than The Davinci Code, and the Arab Scientific Publishers has undermined any shred of scientific credibility with their decision to publish this book.

If you are interested in why I would say that, here is one good resource.

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