Gospel Infrastructure – A Healthy Hub

The heartbeat of Christian missions is the desire to see the gospel proclaimed to people in every nation, tongue, and tribe (Matt 28:19-20), so that Christ will be worshiped throughout the whole earth (Phil 2:10-11). And the New Testament testifies that when people are saved, God intends for them to be gathered into churches where they will grow in maturity (Eph 4:13), share their newfound faith (1 Thess 1:8), and participate in the missionary endeavor that in no small part led them to the Lord.

For decades, Christians have grappled with how best to evaluate the most strategic places to invest money and send missionaries to achieve the most significant impact for Christ and his gospel. Joshua Project has been influential in this regard since the mid-1990s. Their metric for determining whether a people group has been reached is when more than 2% of the population identifies as Evangelical. That estimation has long been used to decide whether it was prudent to send more missionary resources to a particular place. The rationale was that if the 2% mark had been reached, then money and people should be sent to other, gospel-needy places in the world.

Recently, a new, more holistic metric for missions strategizing and planning has been proposed, called gospel infrastructure. This term refers to the biblically grounded structures that ensure long-term access to the gospel in a particular place. These structures include ministries and institutions such as Bible translation, evangelism, healthy churches, pastoral training, seminaries, Christian literature, worship music, and a base such as a healthy church  operating in the language of the missionaries present. Once these structures are put into place, they can fit together to create what we might call a healthy context of gospel ministry that can endure and eventually supply for more gospel ministry elsewhere. Evaluating where to launch new missions efforts based on the progress of building gospel infrastructure and developing a healthy gospel hub in any given place provides more profound insights than the metrics used in the past.

Building a healthy hub of gospel ministry can be compared to what a city does when it wants to promote the development of a particular industry. Government and business leaders are convened to strategize ways of catalyzing that industry. Key components necessary for that industry are put in place, including financial resources, access to utilities, and the construction of purpose-built buildings. Campaigns are launched to attract labor with the needed skills. When leaders with expertise and ambition in the desired industry begin to utilize these infrastructure components, a thriving industry hub can emerge. In the same way, a healthy hub of gospel ministry grows up when the gospel infrastructure components begin to contribute to ministry advancement.

I’ve seen just such a hub of gospel ministry grow up and advance in the United Arab Emirates, where I’ve lived and ministered over the last quarter century. To be fair, the gospel has been proclaimed in the Arabian Gulf region by men like Samuel Zwemer since the late 1800s. And churches have been gathering in the UAE for over 50 years, dating back to before the country’s founding. So, we stand on the shoulders of many faithful men and women who’ve held out the gospel here through the decades. However, the UAE has evolved into a thriving hub of gospel ministry, with a deeper and broader impact, since the early 2000s. Let me describe some of the components and how they’ve worked together.

1. Healthy Churches

Though churches had certainly existed here before the year 2000, it was in the 2000s when the Evangelical Christian Church of Dubai began to reform and be revitalized. From that church, Redeemer Church of Dubai was planted in 2010 and rapidly grew. Grace Baptist Church in Sharjah, a Redeemer church plant in Al Ain, and Covenant Hope Church in Dubai were also planted, as well as RAK Evangelical Church in Ras Al Khaimah. Like-minded churches were established in Abu Dhabi, and the Evangelical Community Church of Abu Dhabi underwent revitalization. These churches and more began to be planted, or existing churches were reformed, throughout the country, with all the pastors of these churches collaborating with one another. A new association called Ekklesia International has since been birthed out of this hub. Ekklesia International provides support and partnership with trade language churches that are more remote and have fewer like-minded pastors in their region. Today, there are nearly 20 healthy churches or church plants scattered throughout the UAE working in association with one another.

2. Pastoral Internships

Beginning with the Evangelical Christian Church of Dubai, many churches in the UAE have established pastoral internship programs to train and equip pastors. The programs often include individual discipleship, academic learning, training in pastoral skills, observing and debriefing elder meetings, instruction in preaching, and a variety of other topics, all while experiencing life in a relatively healthy church. Interns from more than one church and from different cultural or national backgrounds occasionally have the opportunity to learn together and intermingle. Some of the pastors of the more recent church plants or revitalizations have come out of the pastoral internships of these churches. These programs have also begun training men from surrounding regions and continents. Interns have now been sent to plant and revitalize churches in Nepal, India, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Zambia, Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere.

3. Student Ministry

Near the beginning of the wave of church revitalization and planting in the UAE, a gospel-centered university ministry was founded in the country. One hallmark of the ministry is a strong commitment to integrating students into local churches and discipling them in the centrality of the church in the Christian life. Students salt the churches with evangelistic zeal and youthful teachability. This aligns with the history of students playing a crucial role in evangelism and missions throughout the last century and even before. Many students who initially evangelized through the student ministry have become faithful church members and started families. Some now hold offices such as elder or deacon in local churches. Others have been sent out by the churches and student ministry to plant churches or pioneer student ministry in the surrounding region.

4. Seminary

One of the churches in the UAE has founded an accredited evangelical seminary in recent years. It’s the first of its kind on the Arabian Peninsula and now has hundreds of students enrolled in classes, both in person and via remote learning. The remote-learning students are located in many surrounding countries where the church has significantly less freedom. World-class professors regularly visit to teach weeklong intensive courses exposing students to some of the best in evangelical scholarship. Laity in the local churches of the UAE can audit classes or work toward certificates in biblical studies and theology. Some are coming from churches in the area that need reformation, and the hope is that they will influence the health of their local church toward reform.

5. Regional Conferences and Training Events

Throughout the year, various churches host conferences on biblical topics taught by pastors and professors who are among the foremost authorities on these subjects. A pastoral training intensive has begun in recent years. Many former pastoral internship students have gone out to plant churches and revitalize communities in the surrounding countries. The pastoral training intensive draws these leaders to revisit the UAE. These events feature church planting and revitalization think tanks, along with language-specific small groups, exploring how biblical principles are applied in culturally sensitive ways. They often bring pastor colleagues from these countries who otherwise would not have been aware of the resources available in the UAE.

6. Christian Literature

Bibles and other high-quality Christian literature are not available in ordinary bookstores. Still, the Bible Society has had two locations embedded in the local churches in two of the major cities. With the reform of the churches, the material provided by the Bible Society has improved over the years, offering more evangelically orthodox content. In the last five years, an independent evangelical book distributor has also been founded, furthering the widespread availability of Bibles and sound Christian materials. Last year, an evangelical Christian magazine was founded. It is now being distributed throughout churches in the area, even among some churches with more questionable theological commitments.

I could list several other components of gospel infrastructure that are synergistically contributing to the UAE becoming a healthy hub of gospel missions serving an ever-expanding geographical area. Evangelism is happening through members of the revitalized churches and carried on week in and week out through the student ministry. Christian material in languages other than English is increasingly being published in the region and distributed widely. And missionaries are finding healthy local churches to serve as a strong base as they serve in the country and nearby areas.

With the development of every potential healthy hub of gospel infrastructure, there will be differences and unique challenges based on the religious landscape, the character of local government, and the cultural distinctives of the place. For example, building a healthy hub of gospel infrastructure in a more rural location might require more modest goals than have been possible in the well-developed UAE. Student ministry might not be possible where there are few or no institutions of higher learning. Wise planning and strategizing will be required for each potential hub, taking into consideration each location’s distinctive advantages and limitations.

Working Together

The whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Similarly, a healthy hub implies that the components of a gospel infrastructure are present and Christian leaders and laity are utilizing each in ways that magnify the impact of the other components more than if they stood alone. Healthy churches are serving to strengthen local missionaries working primarily among the unreached. Maturing students are acting as spiritual catalysts for evangelism in and through the local church rather than just on campuses. Pastoral internships raise awareness and interest in church planting among the church laity, prompting some to enter ministry themselves. Seminary professors who teach classes also preach in churches and hold special events with university students, exposing Christians to some of the best teaching. More widely distributed Christian literature seeds all the above and can catalyze the writing gifts of local believers. I could go on.

Below are three benefits of developing healthy hubs of gospel infrastructure to advance missions worldwide.

1. Serves as a model for surrounding locations.

A healthy hub draws attention and serves to cast vision for Christians and local churches in the surrounding regions. When the people of God see the synergistic benefits of a healthy hub at work, they often begin to look for ways to imitate the best of what they’ve seen and experienced. Imitation has always been a significant component in Christian discipleship (Heb 13:7).

2. Facilitates access to godly expertise.

Many of the churches that have launched intern programs and sent out church planters and revitalizers stay in touch with those men. I meet biannually via video calls with all our former interns who are in ministry, and I also meet more frequently with individual interns. They seek counsel on issues they’re facing in the church from me and from other pastors they met while interning with us. Christians with the means to travel come to hear biblical scholars at conferences and seminary lectures, enabling them to ask questions and gain wisdom they would not otherwise have access to.

3. Encourages Christians to stay and grow.

Sometimes God moves people out of a church and ministry context for his gospel purposes (Acts 13:1-3). And we know that God uses upheaval and refugee experiences to work in his sovereign ways. However, Christians often benefit from longer, less transient periods in one church, maturing alongside leaders and fellow Christians who can undertake the slow, deep work of discipling. I recall a Western believer who came to faith in Dubai, then moved back to Europe for a time. But he ultimately returned to the Middle East because his Christian growth had been so rich in the vibrant hub of his city in the UAE. Several members of our church have declined opportunities to relocate because they don’t want to leave the church where they’re growing so much. Healthy hubs encourage all the benefits of staying and growing until God calls people onward.

Conclusion

The goal of building up healthy hubs of gospel infrastructure in strategic locations around the globe provides a deeper insight and potentially a greater impact than relying on Joshua Project’s 2% metric. Healthy hubs hold promise of accelerating and advancing the work of Christian missions in more robust and lasting ways. Evaluating where our missions money and people are allocated based on where healthy hubs in development could be strengthened or extended will promote effective stewardship of the resources God provides to the church. This lays the foundation for indigenous churches in a particular locale to flourish in their missionary endeavors for decades, if not longer. May our building of healthy hubs of gospel infrastructure be faithful and lasting work (1 Cor 3:10), built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph 2:20). May it bring ever-increasing glory to Christ.