“If Jesus is the truth and the way, then I want to follow Him,” the Saudi student responded.
“Do you understand what that could mean for you,” Gary asked.
“If Jesus is the truth and the way, then I am willing to die for Him.”
This conversation took place between my friend and a student studying in Birmingham, Alabama.
As we engage the strangers next door–particularly students–and the Spirit brings them into the Kingdom, what will we do next?
What will we do next if they are from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Qatar, or Mauritania where the death penalty could await them after graduation?
What will we do next if it is likely that parents, brothers, and sisters will abandon, threaten, or abuse them as they did to my Indian brother? Tuition, housing, and food costs money, you know.
How much of our teaching (over the past five years) has addressed a theology of persecution and how to live when we are expelled from the synagogues? If we reach the unreached peoples around us, then we need to reconsider what it is we are teaching when it comes to teaching new believers to obey all that Christ commanded.
Besides, this study and revision to our teaching will be good for us too in light of what is coming.
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To the Edge: Reflections on Kingdom Leadership, Mission, and Innovation is now available. Check it out. For being on the edge is being at the frontiers of Kingdom expansion.
