What we can learn from the persecuted church?
From a discussion at Ekklesia 23
At Ekklesia 23, Debrina and Mojtaba from Open Doors and author Phil Moore discussed what lessons the UK Church and UK church pastors and leaders can learn from the Iranian church. Here is an edited version:
Firstly from Debrina and Mojtaba:
Since 2009, the Iranian government has been closing down Protestant churches. Today, none are operating openly. Evangelical and Protestant Christians in Iran are considered a threat to National Security. If you're Orthodox or Catholic, you have certain permissions for your church activities. So Protestant Christians are forced to gather in houses, in parks, in public places, restaurants, etc to have their meetings.
This followed a period in the 1990s and early 2000s when many people of Muslim background were saved and many churches became busy and this came to government notice. After this the church became house churches and many were still saved as invited families wanted to know more about Christ.
The cost of following Jesus in Iran means they may lose their job, university place, be rejected by the family, be imprisoned.
"When I was 19 we started our house group and for one year we had regular meetings. Then early one morning, when I was preparing breakfast, there was a knock on the door. I was very surprised as it was very early in the morning. I opened the door and there were 10 officers standing there. They said they had to search the house by the order of court. They just pushed me into the house and started searching for anything about Christianity. My three sisters and my mum were sleeping and woke up. They were very shocked, crying and not allowed to move. Then they put handcuffs on me and my family, putting blindfolds over our eyes and took us in separate cars to jail. They kept me there for 22 days."
We see discipleship in two ways within the church. First is an intense encounter with Jesus. This is quite common in Iran and the Middle East. So when two ex-Muslims would meet they ask each other have you seen Jesus? That intense encounter brings out the second - a following of Christ and paying the cost.
There was an elderly lady, She was called in for interrogation as she did evangelism. Interrogations in Iran will take the minimum eight hours to maximum few weeks. She went in and four hours later she was released. We asked what happened. She said that they told me not to evangelize and I told them that I used to be sick and no doctor could figure out what the problem was. One night I saw Jesus in a dream and he told me the problem was in the kidney and that I should go to the doctor to check it out. The doctor confirmed the problem was there and that they would operate. Two weeks later my daughter was in hospital. She saw Jesus walk in the hospital and Jesus healed her. The interrogators said that they got it but don't tell anybody else. She kept telling them the story and they kept telling her not to tell others. Eventually they told her to just go. Later she went to prison and lost her house. One of the young soldiers came to her and said, "Mother, go in, take everything you want. Take your money. Take your documents. Take your jewellery." She went inside of the house, took her Bible, came out and said, "That's all I want. The money, the documents the rest is yours."
Intense encounter with Jesus brings intense discipleship. If the first one is not there, don't ask your people to do the second one. Don't don't force them to pay the price.
Phil Moore used to lead a thriving church in South West London and has been inspired by the Iranian Church:
It's hard not to be inspired by the Iranian Church - it is life-changing. I came into contact with the Iranian church towards the end of the Covid lockdown. It seemed to answer so many of the questions that Covid raised. A lot of people left our churches and didn't come back. They said they found it spiritually refreshing. Church was actually a detriment to their spirituality. That crisis was an eye-opener. It asked us questions like, "Are we creating the kind of followers that Jesus died for?" I really felt that I had to find answers to these questions. It was then that I came into contact with the Iranian believers.
I'm a white British person. I've travelled to just about every continent as a preacher to teach people from the Bible. I think there's an invitation for us to have the humility to say, "I'm not sure we need to travel to do the teaching, I think we need to travel to do the learning."
I just came to the conclusion that I needed to go back to school again and learn from you. When these guys open the scriptures, they haven't got theological degrees but I found they understood the words of Jesus far better than I did.
In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul says when Jesus comes back our work is going to be tested. So there is going to be a cost. I saw that a frightening amount of what I'd been busily building for years was not gold or silver - it was wood, stubble and straw. So it became obvious to me that I was better off letting those who shared the vision I'd had before Covid to carry on leading that church and start from scratch along the lines I was learning from the Iranian believers. So I stepped out.
I think what Debrina and Mojtaba are describing for us is radical obedience to Jesus. Walking with the Iranian believers has shown me their conviction that Jesus has taught us how to see revival come. There are three commissions in the Gospels. One is the Great Commission - go to all nations. There is a commission to the 12 in Matthew 10 where Jesus gives 42 verses of 'this is how I want you to reach the nation'. Then there's another commission in Luke 10 where he commissions the 72. There's 24 verses where he doesn't just say go, he says, 'this is how I want you to go'. In these two latter commissions, he gives a set of instructions for how you see a nation turn to Christ. If we want to take seriously the lesson from Iran, I think we need to read those two chapters really slowly on our knees before Jesus and we need to say this is your commission not ours.
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From a discussion at Ekklesia 23, 27/06/2023