Islam and the Geo Politics of the Middle East | Free Online Course by Dr. Nabeel Jabbour

As an incredibly generous gift to the church and the missions community, Dr. Nabeel Jabbour has recently released his training course available for free as a set of 47 lectures and pdf resources, about 45 hours of content. Much more than the title suggests, the course is full of missiology and practical advice for ministry to Muslims, not just simply on politics and Islam. But Jabbour’s handling of politics demonstrates just how necessary and beneficial it is to incorporate political theology into missiology – this is often a glaring blindspot for workers in general and Americans in particular.

Jabbour is also author of The Crescent through the Eyes of the Cross: Insights from an Arab Christian.

From the website for the course https://www.drjabbourcourse.com/courses/islam-and-the-geo-politics-of-the-middle-east/:

The course has been recorded and there are 47 sessions to view at your leisure. They vary in length and each session’s length is stated in brackets after the title. Each session is based on the sessions that came before it. Start with Session 1, and after you finish viewing it, click the button “Mark Complete ✔” and that allows you to go to Session 2 and on and on.

The list of materials alone is worth checking out. Thank you Nabeel!

Review of Undivided Witness: Jesus Followers, Community Development, and Least-Reached Communities (Regnum Books 2020)

I commend to you a new book edited by David Greenlee (who will have a chapter on movements and the “common good” in our forthcoming Motus Dei book), Mark Galpin, and executive director at OCMS Paul Bendor-Samuel (who is also part of Motus Dei), titled Undivided Witness: Jesus Followers, Community Development, and Least-Reached Communities. From the description:

Undivided Witness presents ten key principles linking community development and the emergence of vibrant communities of Jesus followers among the ‘least reached’. Twelve practitioners explore this uncharted missiological space, drawing on decades of serving and learning among communities in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and South, Central and Southeast Asia.

‘Tribalism’ is everywhere, including in the missions community. There are people who are passionate about church planting. Others whose heart is for community development, social justice, and the poor. Then there are those who want to reach the least reached. These different tribes only occasionally speak, and, maybe more than they care to admit- view the other tribes with suspicion.

I remember feeling this tension when I started ministry twenty years ago while I was preparing for ministry in a poor, unreached Muslim country. Books on church planting and discipleship seemed to focus on responsive contexts that already had a local church. Community development practitioners rarely spoke about evangelism. And literature on the least-reached didn’t have much to say about God’s heart for the poor and marginalized. It was as if I was forced to choose my tribe in an either-or dichotomy. Doesn’t God care about all three?

To deal with this issue, a group of practitioners, missiologists, and scholars gathered at the Oxford Center for Mission Studies in 2018 to explore this unexplored space called ‘CDLR’ (Community Development Least Reached) which is the intersection between 1) community development, 2) the least reached, and 3) emerging, multiplying vibrant communities of Jesus-followers. What resulted is a list of ten principles which form the chapter structure of Undivided Witness:

1. Understanding the Kingdom of God is crucial to understanding how and why community development and vibrant communities of Jesus followers among the least reached are connected.
2. Our understanding of how people enter the Kingdom of God will affect how we do ministry.
3. The gospel impacts the whole person and people’s whole contexts.
4. Our motivation is to glorify Christ. We long for people to come to faith in him, but our vision does not stop there. We want to see the Kingdom of God impact people and the communities we live in.
5. Spiritual warfare and prayer are an integral part of community development.
6. Creation glorifies, praises, and witnesses to God. Caring for creation is an act of worship. Our concern for creation is an act of obedience to God and participation in his work of reconciling all things to himself.
7. Community development will only be truly transformational if it brings a vision for vibrant communities of Jesus followers and the renewal of the whole person and community.
8. Community development workers are committed to professional excellence.
9. There is significant overlap between the principles of excellence in community development and working toward the formation of vibrant communities of Jesus followers.
10. The ‘least reached’ are so for a reason, both spiritually and often in terms of poverty and development.

Undivided Witness models some of the best integrative thinking in missiology. Their ten principles of ministry on the overlap between community development, discipleship movements, and least-reached peoples are skillfully unpacked and explained with challenging case studies and deep theological reflection. This is an important conversation on perhaps the most difficult and strategic ministry context in the world today.

In the introduction, the editors share their purpose for Undivided Witness:

Our overall hope and aim in writing this book is that it will stimulate more reflection and discussion on this area of ministry, contribute to a rarely explored theme in missiology, and encourage the discovery and recognition of the links between community development and the emergence of ‘vibrant communities of Jesus followers’ in least-reached settings. By demonstrating the synergy between church planting and community development, we hope to dissolve the perceived tension between these ministry approaches and to encourage organisations that have traditionally focused on church planting and evangelism to recognise the strategic role community development can play in achieving their Kingdom objectives in least-reached contexts—never to be used merely as a platform but as an integral feature of truly holistic mission. 

In addition, we hope that our work will influence and shape the practice of those already committed to the strategy of community development as a ministry approach in least-reached contexts, enabling them to become more effective and transformative in building God’s Kingdom. 

While we have confidence in these principles, we consider them to still be under development. Input from readers is therefore welcome to both refine the principles and to develop a robust explanation and grounding for each. In turn, this will help us contribute to a missiology that guides ministry and service involving community development among the least reached.

Buy the book now on Amazon Kindle or in print from Regnum.

Online Missiological Training: Post-Pandemic Insights and Applications

Based on "Neurobiological Data on What Online Education Could Be Doing to Our Spirituality and Our Brains: Some Augustinian/ Niebuhrian Reflections" (Ellingsten 2019) and "Makeshifting the Learning Management System: Strategies and Tactics in the Digital Classroom" (Smith 2019)  Articles Available Here

* The nature of the online world fundamentally changes the way our brains work. While accessing vast amounts of information is enhanced, "heavier online use is making us more shallow, more caught up in the present moment and its patterns, less transcendent in our thinking and behaviors" (Ellingsten 2019, 10). In short, we are less intelligent, more reactionary, and more spiritually shallow.

* Cross-cultural ministry is always more difficult, both cognitively and emotionally. Over-exposure to the internet and poor approaches to online education can have drastic effects on the missionary who will be less intellectually prepared for complex issues and impaired from the ability to love deeply.

* Increase in social media usage seems to be evidenced by those who are more depressed. Because the internet makes us less empathetic, could this be contributing to the increase in irrational online outrage/anger, the spread of conspiracy theories, and to anti-science rhetoric?

* Whether we like it or not, online training is here to stay. Things are not going back to the way they were before the pandemic.

* Learning facilitators who are more creative and involved in the online LMS (Learning Management System) tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction and also students who tend to have more transformative learning experiences (Smith 2019). Personal touches such as short videos and audio are helpful, as well as face-to-face synchronous meetings when possible.

* Online learning needs to intentionally contain elements that are offline. This includes longer stretches of reading and reflective writing while not connected to the internet. Videos and podcasts are proliferating but immersive reading needs to be maintained. Additionally, intentional offline time for the spiritual disciplines of meditation, prayer, and solitude is now MORE important in an online environment than in traditional formats.

* Online course design also needs to include the context of the learner. Learners are always in a "classroom." Especially for the missionary, the classroom is the ministry setting. Reading and writing needs to be integrated with the complicated classroom of real life. This has advantages to artificial (traditional) classrooms, but it requires more creative design from learning facilitators.