Not the End of the Story: When Workers Must Leave Before a Church is Ready

by Tiffany

When cross-cultural workers are forced to leave a community before they feel that the local church is ready, it can be an anxious time. Will the believers stay strong in their faith? Will the church continue to grow?

These were questions Christar workers Jonah and Rachel* asked when they needed to exit a large, predominantly Muslim city in Central Asia. It’s a place that confronts the senses with a clash of modernity and traditionalism. Contemporary shopping malls and neon signs stand facing open bazaars where people from the countryside come to sell their wares. While its people technically have freedom of religion and are legally allowed to become Christians and attend church, leaving Islam is considered cultural treason. Many have been fired, divorced, kicked out of their homes or beaten for choosing to follow Jesus, or even for simply investigating Christianity.

And yet, amid a culture marked by widespread distrust, nonbelievers often come into local churches and are amazed by the love they see among Christians. Many comment that they have never seen people love each other as they do in these small congregations.

It is in this context that Jonah and Rachel served. Through decades of faithful ministry, they were able to plant a church, which began meeting in 2008. In 2013, they turned over the leadership of this fellowship to others and then moved to another neighborhood where they gathered a small group of believers into a second church in 2016.

While believers in this city possess strong faith, their spiritual growth is often very slow because they came to Jesus with no prior biblical knowledge. Many new Christians do not know how to distinguish false teaching that they hear on the internet from what is in the Bible. Jonah and Rachel spent years patiently teaching believers how to look to Scripture for truth using Bible study materials translated into the local language. They even wrote a book to help local followers of Christ understand the broad story of Scripture and how to study it.

But in 2023, Jonah and Rachel were told by the government that they had to leave the country. Though members of the second church were growing in faith, none of the local believers felt spiritually ready to take on leadership, and so this small congregation merged with the first church plant. While Jonah and Rachel had seen much good in their 21 years of ministry in Central Asia, they were saddened that they were not able to appoint elders for an independent congregation before they had to leave.

Recently, however, they received a phone call from a member of this church, whom Jonah had led to the Lord 13 years ago. After two more years of discipleship and teaching, he and another man felt confident enough to branch off from the combined church and start a separate congregation in a different neighborhood of their large city. They are sharing the gospel and teaching the Word and have already seen two people come to faith and request baptism. The enthusiasm of these new believers is so strong that they want to be baptized outside in the winter, rather than waiting for a more comfortable time to express their faith publicly.

As they reflect on how God has helped this small congregation mature, they echo the words of John: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”   (3 John 1:4 ESV)

Rachel also references Ephesians 3:2-21: “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (ESV) She adds, We are overjoyed and in awe as we see God’s hand fulfilling his promise … If the Lord wills, we would love to fellowship with them again in Central Asia, but if not, we look forward to spending eternity around His throne together.”