LeadershipConnexion SPRING2023

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR | DICK BROGDEN
SAY YES TO MISSIONS
JESUS CALLS US TO THE DIFFICULT PLACES
It’s never been easy to spread the gospel. The spread of the
gospel has never waited for a smooth path. God has never
been dependent on Roman roads or a trade language.
DICK AND JENNIFER BROGDEN
have served among Muslims for
the last 29 years; Mauritania (1992),
Kenya (1993-1995), Sudan (1996-
2011), Egypt and the Arab World
(2012 – 2018), and Saudi Arabia
(2019 - Present). They helped
found the Live Dead movement
and now serve on the Live Dead
Global Leadership Team. They
serve now as Area Directors for
AGWM for the Arab World. Dick is
the author of Loving Muslims, The
Live Dead Joy, his Gospel, Abiding
in Jesus, Abiding Mission, The Live
Dead Journey, Missionary God,
Missionary Bible, and is the editor of
The Live Dead Journal. Dick has his
PhD in intercultural studies. Dick and
Jennifer have two sons, Luke and
Zack.
Are you not glad that the Father did not wait until it was safe to send His Son? “Now, just
wait a minute, Jesus. Romans are restless. If I send you now, Herod will kill thousands of
babies, and you will have to flee to Egypt. Just wait a minute, Son. It is too unstable. It is
too unsafe to send you as a missionary now.” Are you not glad that was NOT the discourse
of heaven? Are you not glad the Father sent His son to a dangerous place knowing He
would die?
You ask on what authority, by what audacity, I dare to stand before you and ask you to
send your own sons and daughters to places like Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, where they
might suffer and die! It is not daring or courageous; it’s not even foolishness. It is merely
obedience. We send our children to suffer and die because that is what God did with His
only Son— and aren’t you glad He did?
And so, we send our best, our children to dangerous places to join Paul in filling up the
sufferings of Christ, not in a salvific way, but by testimony and by the glad song of the
martyrs that says Jesus is worthy of it all, that says eternal life is worth temporary death.
Jesus calls us to the hard places because He already came to one and He simply asks us
to follow in His steps. The Arab world was thirteen percent Christian in 1900. Today, it is
four percent and declining… We would need to lead 1,000,001 Muslims to Jesus annually
just to gain an inch of ground. Never before in history, since the launch of the church 2,000
years ago, has the Middle East been less Christian.
Jesus is still calling to the difficult places.
We have a Live Dead team in the area of radical Muslims. One Muslim came to Jesus and
works in partnership with our team. Recently, he met with a fanatic, long bearded Muslim,
and immediately afterward, the secret police arrested him. They covered his head with a
sack and treated him roughly. He was told to stop that activity and leave the city. In fear
he left, but felt convicted, so he returned to the city and the militant Muslim contacted him
again. The Muslim asked to meet again, but in a village south of the city. Again, fear entered
the believer’s heart, but he prayed and felt led to go. He entered the villa and to his surprise
found a whole room of militant Muslims. They were all long bearded radicals, and again,
fear mounted up within him. Then the Holy Spirit came upon this man, and he began to
preach. For two hours, he preached the gospel to those radicals, and they sat in stunned
silence listening to every word. When he left the villa, the radical that brought him said: “I
want to tell you something that you should not repeat. I am actually not a Muslim. I
work for the secret police. My job is to infiltrate all the radical Muslim groups in the
area. This group brought you down here to kill you, but what you shared astonished
them! I have never heard anything like that in my life. It is
the only hope for this area. I want you to come with me
to the other radical cells I have infiltrated and share the
same message with them. Furthermore, I am a powerful
person. I know your activities. I know the names of the
missionaries you are working with. I know where you
meet and when, and if you ever have any trouble, call me
and I will help.ˮ
Friends, our security is not in the safe places. Our security
is not in our silence. If this man would have stayed silent,
he would have been killed by the radicals. If this man
stayed silent, the whole team would have been considered
sympathizers with radicals and would have been thrown
out. Because this believer went to a dangerous place with a
dangerous message, not only is he alive today, not only is the
team still there proclaiming, but whole radical Muslim groups
will now hear the gospel!
Jesus is calling us to difficult places.
Samuel Pollard, a missionary to China, had seen no fruit after
several years of language and culture learning. He became
desperate. He began to seek Jesus and to be filled and
empowered by the Holy Spirit. After a week of prayer and
fasting, he writes: “I shall never forget it. Our room was
filled with glory, and I had a manifestation such as I had
never realized before. The glory came down and so filled
me that I felt the Holy Ghost from my head to the soles of
my feet. It was about as much as I could stand and for a
minute I thought I should faint or die… I had the promise
at that meeting that we are going to have thousands of
souls… I believe that from the bottom of my heart.ˮ
[W. A. Grist. Samuel Pollard: Pioneer Missionary in China
(NY: Gassell and Co., 1920), 43.]
No soul is won quickly or thoughtlessly. No
great work of God is easy. Haste does not make
disciples. Rush does not plant the Church. In this
age of instant media, instant gratification, and
instant results, missionaries will have to accept
difficult processes in difficult places, and if this
world is to be reached, we must commit to a long,
painful and stubborn fight.
Pollard’s biographer goes on to say: “When a soul yields
himself completely to his Master, then He (the Master)
undertakes to give the grueling training necessary to make
him His yielded servant.” Pollard had his thousands, but this
is how they came. He endured seven more years of weary
toil before he could baptize his first two converts, and then
nine more years of weary toil—sixteen years after believing for
the thousands— and the Holy Spirit broke through. The Lord
began to move among the Miao, a remote people group, and
numbers swelled to 100. They invaded his home and slept
on his floor. He tried to escape them and locked himself in
his upstairs bedroom. Ten of them climbed the wall outside
and into his bedroom window; they sat all around him on
his bed and listened to him teach, pleased that they had the
missionary all to themselves. The movement grew into the
thousands. Sixteen years after the promise, sixteen years
of diligent, resident, linguistically fluent, culturally relevant,
back-breaking work, sixteen years of oppression, resistance,
trouble and difficulty, sixteen years of being called to a difficult
place, and then the breakthrough came.
Jesus Calls Me. Jesus Calls Us.
Jesus calls us to Himself. Jesus calls us to die to self. Jesus
calls us to glorify Him in the difficult places and peoples. If you
are willing to say “yes” to the call of Jesus, before you even
know the specifics of the question, will you
make an altar wherever you are right now
and pray?
(Edited from This Gospel, sermons
by Dick Brogden)
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