"Strategizing for Church Planting Movements (CPM) in the Muslim WorldArtikel".

Ini adalah petikan kepada artikel oleh Rebecca Lewis mengenai gerakan kritianisasi dunia. Artikel beliau ini adalah bertajuk "Strategizing for Church Planting Movements (CPM) in the Muslim WorldArtikel". Secara ringkasnya ialah artikel ini adalah mengenai analisa mengenai kaedah dan strategi terbaik untuk penyebaran agama kristian.

Pandangan saya ialah tidaklah perlu kita marah, melenting dan melaknat kaum beragama kristian ini. Cukuplah apa yang disebut Allah dalam surah al-Maun (197) itu. Apa yang penting gerakan dakwah islami harus lebih subur dan lebih strategik menangani gerakan kristiasnisasi ini dengan keutamaan kepada pemeliharaan akidah, menguatkan sinergi antara kumpulan agama dengan tidak sendiri-sendiri merasakan kumpulannya lebih baik daripada yang lain, menguatkan juga sinergi individu-individu yang ada, institusi kekeluargaan juga dikuatkan. Tidak salah juga mengadaptasi strategi pergerakan kristianisasi ini.

Semoga memberi manfaat dan peringatan kepada kita semua. Allah A'lam.

"1. Community

"Once during a discussion with the leader of a mosque, the imam said proudly that a Muslim can worship anywhere, praying toward Mecca . . . any rug or piece of cloth can become a mosque. Christians, he said, need a special building in order to have a church. The Christian students I had brought to the mosque protested, pointing out that Christians met in homes for centuries before they were able to build public church buildings. The imam then asked, “So what is it that makes a church a church?” He seemed startled by the students’ answer, “There has to be a group of people, at least 2 or 3.” The idea that community was the basic unit of a church surprised him."


2. Secular education

"While Garrison does not talk specifically about the role of education in CPMs, there can be little doubt that the literacy level of a people group, along with having Bibles in their own language, are key factors. He does discuss the importance of worship in the vernacular, a factor common with the rapid spread of the early church. In Muslim areas, vernacular translations of the Bible for literate populations will enable those who are seeking to have access to holy books, even if they cannot read the classical Arabic of the “untranslatable” Koran."


3. Supernaturalism

"The Charismatic movement has helped de-secularize the Western church and return us all to a more biblical balance on the supernatural power of the gospel. In Muslim areas, the Holy Spirit has been moving through dreams, healings, and other supernatural means. Those being trained to go into Muslim areas need specific training in spiritual warfare and gifts that Christ could use to show that His power is greater than that of Muslim healers. Christianity must demonstrate that it has supernatural power and is not merely another philosophical construct."


4. Open Network

"Just as the early church spread through the Jewish diaspora, spilling over into the surrounding gentile communities, in the Muslim world it is important to work through existing Islamic networks, either ethnic or sects, etc. It is interesting to watch the spread of Islamic terrorist groups, which in some ways are a religious/identity revival movement. They demonstrate a desire on the part of Islamic young people for meaning in their lives, committed community, and international identity networks. They also operate covertly in Muslim countries, where they, like groups of believers, can be perceived as a political threat to the Islamic regime."

5. Cultural Continuity

"Early Christianity retained cultural continuity with the people’s background, enabling converts to continue to form new relationships with non-converts in their society. Stark points out that people do not so much seek a new faith, as encounter one through ties to others who have accepted the new faith. These encounters depend both on keeping open networks with non-believers, and with maintaining continuity with the culture of the non-believers."

"In Muslim countries, reversion to Islam is a common and significant problem. If natural leaders are immediately allowed to fulfill leadership roles within the new believing community, bodies of believers could grow along culturally acceptable lines. Without the stigma of foreign involvement, solutions to major problems (like remaining in the Muslim community for marriage, circumcision and death rituals) could be more easily negotiated. Stark points out that for up to two centuries we still find quite a few Christians being buried in Jewish cemeteries, demonstrating continued cultural continuity."


6.Courage of believers and high cost of believing

"While the Muslim converts often show a lot of courage, modern missionaries from the West are often unwilling to suffer significant material hardship, much less danger to their lives. The credibility of our faith would increase significantly if more missionaries would show a willingness to suffer, and stay in dangerous situations to care for the sick or hurt. Garrison specifi­cally points out in his book that the willingness of missionaries to suffer is a key factor in most CPMs. A recent example of this is the suffering of Mrs. Gladys Staines who remained in India to preach the importance of forgiveness after her husband and two sons were burned to death in their car by radical Hindus. Her words now carry almost as much respect as that of Mother Teresa, according Tim Stafford in a recent issue of Christianity Today. Many baptisms are resulting from her ministry."


7. Women

"When we were in Morocco, I noticed an interesting phenomena. While many men who had become believers reverted to Islam at the time of marriage, those who remained believers almost always had a believing mother standing behind them. In the more oppressive Muslim societies, the women seek power and security through their sons, who serve both as protection and as support once their husbands die. It follows that believing wives, while not necessarily able to win their husbands to the Lord, will have power to win their sons, even if secretly."

"Like in ancient Rome, the women in many Islamic countries feel tremendous insecurities due to easy divorce, the husband’s control over the children of divorce, and infidelity. Some would argue this makes them more likely to hide their faith, which is true. But it also makes them people searching for the kind of relationship with God, and the power and joy it brings, that only Isa al Masih (Jesus the Messiah) can give them. They and their children can become the foundation of tomorrow’s house-church movement within Islam."

"The women of Islam could very well be the gateway of the gospel into Islamic networks, as was true in Roman society. Perhaps we should encourage believing women in Muslim cultures to fulfill their evangelistic potential through strategic marriages and service. Throughout history, women have played very significant roles in introducing Christianity into new areas, even when taken against their will. Winning the discontented women could be our greatest entree into Muslim society. For this to happen, women missionaries and mission societies need to value and make a top priority reaching the women of Islam. With 50% of the population in many Muslim countries under the age of 15, the remaining 25% that are adult females have become even more strategic, because of their influence over the children."


8.  Urbanisation

"As Stark points out, the gospel spread quickly in the crowded cities, which disrupted normal social networks and created a great need for solutions to immorality, family disintegration, and isolation. And Christianity provided answers. The same is true today, where an increasing percentage of the population in Muslim and other countries are being dislocated to the outskirts of cities. David Garrison does not comment on whether or not modern CPMs tend to be more rural or more urban in nature. However many of the same reasons why urbanization gave impetus to the early church movement would still be true today. The Islamic world, like most other developing areas, is increasingly urban in nature, giving us one more reason to hope for many CPMs in Muslim areas in the near future."


9. Moral Vision

"The “moral vision” of Christianity has unfortunately been significantly damaged by the general perception in the Muslim world that all Westerners are Christians. The church and missionaries need to have the integrity to denounce Western abuses and the degeneration of morals in the West. When the U.S. government sides with despotic regimes, particularly those in the Muslim world, American missionaries need to be Christians first and Americans second, even willing to admit that some of the complaints of Muslim radicals are valid. The church in the West keeps quiet on many moral issues to preserve their popularity and immunity from criticism. However, the fast-growing church of Roman times, compared to the slow growing “state church” post-Constantine, demonstrates that persecution is less of a detriment to the spread of the gospel than moral compromise."

Conclusion"Can we expect rapidly expanding CPMs to develop in the Muslim world? If you look at the above qualifications, not only is the answer a resounding yes, but the Muslim world may actually be one of the best places for this to happen, when correct strategies are applied. The most exciting thing to realize is that there may already be many more such movements going on in the Muslim world than we are aware of. IJFM"