Content taken from Prioritizing the Church in Missions by John Folmar and Scott Logsdon, ©2025. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

An Oasis in the Desert

Gavin Watson was a member of the Evangelical Christian Church of Dubai (ECCD) and a trusted attorney for the ruler of Ras Al Khaima (RAK), the northernmost emirate of the UAE. Through that relationship, this Arab sheikh generously granted land for ECCD to build a church in his domain. When ECCD’s leaders received this amazing opportunity, they reached out to their partners throughout the world, including Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC (CHBC), which had sent the Folmars to Dubai seven years earlier. Josh Manley, an elder of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, had been trained at CHBC and agreed to move with his family to RAK. He planted the church and raised support for a building that would become a strategic gospel outpost in a needy part of the world.

 Because Josh had been qualified for missionary and pastoral service by these churches, he and his family were able to land in the UAE with support from an entire network of churches. Ten years of faithful service later, this church is an oasis for the gospel in a spiritual desert. Many believers have built friendships with the underreached local Emiratis. The church has been salt and light for the community. Some members work in high government positions; others teach local high school students. For several years, at Christmastime dozens of nationals would visit the Manleys’ house for an officially sponsored “cultural exchange event” and hear the true message of Christmas. Over the years, many people from different religious backgrounds have heard the gospel and come to Christ.

Because of the partnership among multiple churches in the US and the UAE, one church became a launchpad for gospel work in Arabia and beyond.

Help for Gospel Renegades 

For more than a decade, Josh Manley has trained and partnered with Afghan pastors who eventually led house churches in their home country. When Taliban forces overran Afghanistan in 2021, those pastors were on the run. One house church leader sent Josh a photo of the small room he was hiding in with his family, He texted him, “This is where I am living. We are hidden right now in different areas.”[1] World magazine reported that the Taliban had contacted several of the pastors and warned, “We are coming for you.”[2]

Before they were in ministry in the Middle East, Josh and his wife, Jenny, worked in government. They leaned on their political contacts in Washington, DC, and spearheaded efforts to protect and support their friends. Jenny recalled, “We stayed up 24 hours and called people in DC, called people that work for the US government—I mean, everybody we could. . . . We were trying to connect all these people.”[3] Missions agencies in the US had pulled their workers out of Afghanistan. Many ended up in the UAE. The Manleys counseled them as they processed grief and confusion.

But their friends were still stuck. The political and logistical hurdles were enormous. And yet, one Afghan leader told Josh, “Our hope is not in politics but in Jesus who is the King.”

Against all odds, many Afghan leaders evacuated and found safe passage to the US, where they joined with local churches and began the recovery process. Sarah Zylstra reported, “The Afghan House Church leaders are now scattered across a handful of countries. But they’re still connected, and they’re still writing and podcasting good theology, now with much more freedom.”[4] One of the leaders has built a 9Marks web page in Dari. Some have sought seminary training and remain actively involved in strategic gospel work in Afghanistan, where the house churches continue to meet.

Ministry Multiplication

...healthy churches overseas are platforms for ministry training and gospel influence. Pastoral training programs can become powerful resources for starting churches all around the world.

For example, McLean Bible Church (MBC) partners with several overseas churches like John’s to fund their pastoral training programs. Through ECCD’s pastoral training program, Christians from different countries are trained to become solid elders. Some of them stay at ECCD, but most return to their home countries and start new churches.

In one instance, a new national church was started in Nepal. Through our partnership with ECCD, MBC formed a new partnership with this new church. Our congregation offered critical support during their first years. Now, years later, that Nepali church has begun its own internship program and has spearheaded publishing work in the Nepali language. Don’t miss this: This new church in Nepal was nobody’s plan. The only plan was to commit to making ECCD a healthy church and to train pastors for ministry. And yet, through their faithfulness, God founded a new congregation and, through committed partnership, churches in America played a helpful role.

Connecting Gospel Nomads

When I (Scott) was a missions pastor in the US, a young woman from our congregation, Rachel, contacted me: “My company has assigned me to work in India! How can I leverage my job for the gospel?” I immediately texted Joseph, a trusted pastor in India. “Do you know of any faithful pastors or churches in her new city?” Without hesitating, he sent me the name and email address for Samuel. I wrote Samuel, and we spoke at length.

By God’s grace, within just a few days of learning about her move, I connected Rachel with Samuel, though I’d never even heard of that city before. We visited Rachel after she’d been in her country for a year. On that trip we received glowing reviews. Samuel loved having Rachel as a member, and Rachel loved being a member. She even requested an extension of her assignment so she could keep serving her church.

Leveraging Networks in India

I once arranged a team of elders and pastors from MBC to travel with me to India. Our goal was simple: Visit a retreat to meet new pastors and see how our church could encourage them in their work. National pastors retreats are great opportunities to develop partnerships.

My Indian pastor friend, Joseph, organized the retreat. I’d known Joseph for years, so I had lofty expectations for this trip. A year earlier, he’d told me, “Come and see: There are many faithful pastors and churches in India you can partner with.”

The trip far exceeded our expectations. The first morning, we were all suffering from jet lag and woke up later than the Indian pastors. They started without us. While we slowly woke ourselves up with cold showers and coffee, seventy-five pastors had been standing outside in the cold for about an hour. Aligned in a circle, they listened intently as one pastor stood on a stump and preached to the group for about ten minutes. After his sermon, the other pastors then encouraged him and offered feedback on how to improve. They listened to two or three sermons each morning.

These faithful men represented churches throughout India. Neither the time of day nor the cold made a difference. They rose early to help one another become more faithful handlers of God’s word. Some were serving in India’s most difficult areas. Others were making plans to do the same. Our partnerships grew. And we were humbled at the privilege of supporting them.

Partnering for Theological Education

I met Timothy from Portugal through a mutual pastor friend. Timothy told me about his plan to start a new church in his gospel-starved country. I love supporting faithful national pastors. I passed his support needs to the review team at MBC, and they agreed to begin a formal partnership with Timothy and his new church.

Within two years of moving to Portugal, he started a theological seminary. As far as we knew, this would be one of the only biblically faithful evangelical seminaries in the country. Through another partnership, our church was able to provide a shipping container full of textbooks and reference materials at the cost of the shipping alone. We were able to do the same with other international seminaries too.

Partners in Persecution

Suleiman was being hunted. Originally from the island of Zanzibar, he had completed his pastoral training in the UAE and returned home. He’d begun preaching Christ to his former Muslim friends. When several came to faith in Christ, there was a violent backlash.

Suleiman’s family disowned him. He tried to return to Dubai but was forcibly removed from an airplane by police and interrogated three times. Authorities threatened to rape and imprison him if he wouldn’t renounce Christ. They pressured him to give video testimony and spread lies about Christianity.

In response, Suleiman wrote a three-page “confession” for the police. It was filled with Bible verses that explained the gospel. The authorities were at a loss. They didn’t know what to do, so they simply released him and ordered him to keep quiet.

Life didn’t get easier for Suleiman. He and the new disciples received anonymous death threats. One convert’s house was burned; another convert was murdered. Still another was horribly raped and threatened. Suleiman fully expected that one day he would either be dead or doing church-planting in prison.

Somehow, he escaped to a nearby East African country. He was taken in and cared for by a church there. But Suleiman’s enemies found him, and the church that helped him was also threatened. Anti-terrorism police were called in to provide protection.

Suleiman was experiencing Paul’s prediction that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). But it wasn’t only Suleiman who was caught up in the persecution. The Christians who were with him were in trouble too. Eventually, an entire network of churches got involved. Churches as far away as New Zealand and the United States sacrificially cared for the victims of the backlash.

Here’s a question: Why? Why were congregations in East Africa, Dubai, New Zealand, and the United States so eager to help a Zanzibari Muslim convert, even when it posed a risk to themselves? Perhaps it was because, as Paul said, “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Cor. 12:26). They cared for their brother because they were members of the same universal body. Thanks to this joint effort, Suleiman and the rape victim are now married and safely in another location. They’re pursuing training for future ministry. 

These partnership examples display the same spirit of cooperation and partnership that fills the pages of the New Testament. These churches love one another (Eph. 1:15). They share good preachers (2 Cor. 8:18) and missionaries (3 John 5–6). They help each other with physical needs (1 Cor. 16:1–3). They pray regularly for each other (2 Cor. 9:12; Eph. 6:18) and imitate each other in Christian living (1 Thess. 2:14). They do all this so that more churches can be started. Because missions is church centered.

Churches that actively develop partnerships aren’t being innovative. They’re illustrating the spirit of the New Testament. As we follow God’s design, we’ll continue to see God use cooperation to bring himself glory among the nations. Missions works best when churches work together.

[1] Josh Manley, “Afghan Pastors Ask for Prayer,” 9Marks website, August 16, 2021, https://www.9marks.org/.

[2] Emma Fowle, “What the Taliban Takeover Means for Afghanistan’s Christians,” Premier Christianity website, September 27, 2021, https://www.premierchristianity.com/.

[3] Sarah Zylstra, “Escape from Kabul,” The Gospel Coalition, April 30, 2022, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/.

[4] Zylstra, “Escape from Kabul.”