A note about Muslim ministry from the Zwemer Center’s Director,

I was 18 years old when the Lord placed a burden on my heart to bring the gospel to Muslims. A year later, I married my high school sweetheart, who had led me to Christ during my senior year. Two years later, we and three teammates set off to plant a church in a 100% Muslim country.

Needless to say, we were young, ambitious and a little naïve. We were also unprepared, but our youthful zeal carried us onward. Despite our intentions to be like the Apostle Paul and “preach Christ where He was not known,” we found ourselves back home, after only two years, with our faith barely intact. Looking back, I can now see that we had bitten off far more than we could chew. We approached our training for Muslim ministry more like a sprint rather than a marathon. We made incredible friendships with Muslims yet we had little to offer them, regarding a relationship with Jesus. We knew very little about Christianity and almost nothing about Islam. Simply put, we were ill-equipped for the task we were sent out to do. If not for the grace of God, that burden for Muslims knowing Christ would have come and gone as quickly as our missionary service.

After returning from the field, we resigned from our mission organization, and I took a job working as a first mate on a fishing vessel. During that year, I encountered three people who told me to consider going to college at Columbia International University. They said CIU would be a good place to figure out what had gone wrong in our previous ministry to Muslims. We did not know anyone in South Carolina, and neither of us had ever heard of CIU. I also had no desire to go to college, since I barely survived high school and was enjoying my new fishing career. My wife, on the other hand, sensed that we should look into it.

When I reminded her that we had no money to attend college, she replied, “When did we start saying no to things that required us to step out in faith?” She had a point. In our six years of service with a mission agency, we were consistently relying on God’s provision, and now I was reluctant to even pray about going to CIU because it did not make financial sense.

We took a new leap of faith and enrolled at CIU in the spring of 2005. Little did I know that we would still be here 18 years later. It was at CIU that I was introduced to the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies. Although the center was originally established at the US Center for World Missions in 1978, it was moved to the campus of CIU in 2003 because of the shared vision for global missions. It was also at CIU where I met the director of the Center, Dr. Warren Larson. He and his wife Carol had served for 23 years, working among Muslims in Pakistan. We had finally found people who could mentor us and help us make sense of our difficult ministry experience.

After finishing the Master of Arts in Muslim Studies, I wanted to help Warren bring broader exposure to the training that had transformed my life and renewed my passion for Muslim ministry. While I still had a missionary burden “to preach Christ where He was not known,” I also wanted to train people, like our 19-year-old selves, to avoid making the same mistakes we did. Warren apparently had the same idea. In 2009, Warren brought me on board as the Assistant Director of the Zwemer Center, with the hopes of soon retiring and passing on the torch of director.

CIU recently celebrated 100 years of “Knowing Him and Making Him Known,” the Zwemer Center is rejoicing in 45 years of equipping the church for Muslim ministry! Now, more than ever, our training and resources are needed for the many young people preparing for Muslim ministry. Consider supporting the Zwemer Center so we can continue developing free resources for Muslim ministry. Your tax-deductible gift can be given online here.