Students engage Muslims with Gospel during Spring Break mission trip

Learning to communicate the Gospel within a Muslim context is what a group of eight Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Texas Baptist College students experienced through a March 9-19 mission trip to the North Africa and Middle East (NAME) region of the world.

Led by Justin Hiester, assistant professor of missions at TBC and director of TBC Missions, the team served alongside International Mission Board missionaries to share the Gospel within the 10/40 window, the region of the world with the largest number of unreached people groups and the fewest number of Christian workers.

“Ministry is relationships,” Heister said. “Life is about relationship with God. If you love God, then you love people, you love the nations. The DNA of the Holy Spirit is to love the nations. That’s what we’re built for as Christians.”

Hiester, who has led trips through the World Missions Center (WMC) at Southwestern Seminary since 2016, required student participants to take a three-hour course where they learned the basics of NAME culture, language, Islam, and “how to properly handle sticking points of Islamic theology and the Good News of Jesus Christ.” Additionally, students committed to deliberating with Muslims in Fort Worth for five hours prior to the trip.

During the trip, students applied what they learned in culturally appropriate contexts, as the four men on the trip were led by Hiester, while the four women were led by Hiester’s wife, Cindy, as they built relationships in gender-specific settings.

Gabby*, a Master of Divinity student from Nevada, said a “series of God-ordained interactions” she had on the trip allowed her to make connections with women from the region.

“We connected on false assumptions that the world and TV portrays on both sides,” Gabby said. “These conversations meant the most because they helped me realize that although we are different, we still go through many of the same fears, experiences, and obstacles in life. The kindness and hospitality of these women I got to talk to was overwhelming.”

Julie*, a TBC student who grew up as a missionary kid overseas, desired to participate because she wanted to “to confirm the call that I believe is on my life.” The trip allowed her to see the region she believes God has called her to serve while experiencing “the joy around me but also the great darkness that is there.”

Collectively, the team led a language school each afternoon and in the evenings divided into gender-specific groups to spend time in homes sharing a meal and engaging Muslims in conversation. Hiester recalled one evening that allowed each of the four male students to share about their walk with Christ in the home of Hasan, a man the group befriended.

As the group of male Southwestern Seminary and TBC students “were exchanging questions back and forth” with a group of four to five Muslim men, Hiester said he asked the Muslim men if he and the students could share “what faith means to us.”

For the next half hour, as Hiester translated, the students “were then able to tell them what their Christian faith means to them, and they got to share the entire Good News Gospel story of Christ from beginning to end.”

“As I was translating, I was watching these men as the students were giving one by one, their definition, their understanding of faith and a walk God,” Hiester said. “The Muslim men were locked in 100 percent, to listening to them and then when they were all done, the Muslim men were encouraged.”

Hector*, a TBC student from Texas, was one of the students who was able to share his testimony. He had spent time around Hasan earlier in the week.

“After my testimony, Hasan’s family invited me to live with them,” Hector explained. He said in Hasan’s home and in other places he “would continue to see the Muslim men we were interacting with want to be around me; not just me but the love of Christ. Often, I do not feel like enough in my relationship with God, but I am reminded time again how God uses the little.”

Following the trip, Hiester said, two students indicated they are “seriously considering” future mission work in the region. 

However, another student told Hiester the lessons he learned on the trip will enable him to serve his local church more effectively. Hiester said the student wanted to understand the culture of the NAME region and “take lessons learned from this trip and then come back to the local church and help lead missions in his local church in a better way.”

Bradley*, a TBC student from Texas, said the trip reminded him of the need for people to go as missionaries overseas.

“God has taught me all about the need for missionaries,” Bradley said. “It may appear that we send many people around the world to make God’s name known, but the truth is, we are lacking in the cities and nations that need the Gospel the most. God has given me a heart for the nations and awakened the desire to encourage others to go. However, I understand that training is an absolute necessity, so I pray that God uses me to help educate those who will one day live among the many unreached peoples of the world.”

Editor’s note: Students’ names were changed in order to protect their identities for potential future ministry opportunities in certain regions of the world.