OM’s workers in the Midlands area are passionate about sharing Jesus with the many least-reached people there and helping churches get involved. Area leader Max* has been with OM for two years, but his missions journey began much earlier, a story full of rich experiences in the Middle East, France and west Africa. Max shared his story with writer Nicky Andrews.

Nicky: How did God draw you into missions?

Max:  I finished university in 2002 and was wondering what to do with my French degree and TEFL qualification. When an old lady in my church – a faithful prayer supporter of missions - described how English teachers were needed as ‘tent makers’ in the Arabian Peninsula (AP) I contacted the mission concerned – and ended up having two amazing one-year teaching contracts in a place I’d never considered before. I was teaching loads of young Muslim people from both the AP and the Horn of Africa and as a young man myself, had the social freedom to make friends with these guys. I explored the Arab culture and leant some Arabic; I found it really easy to have meaningful spiritual conversations with these friends, despite the area being formally closed to ‘missions’.    

Although my hometown in England has a large Pakistani population, it was in the AP that I first developed a burden for Muslim peoples. The mission I had been with required Bible School study if I was to serve in the AP longer-term. So after doing a very useful short course on Islamics at one college, I got accepted onto their two-year post-grad degree course starting in September 2007. 

 N: What was Bible College like?

M: I acquired a great foundation - theologically, spiritually and practically - for ‘head, heart and hands’ AND I met a very special young lady called Ellie*. Our courtship featured many discussions about where we might serve together; Ellie wanted to go to Latin America while my heart was for the AP again. But Ellie wasn’t closed to working with Muslims, and did an Islamics course after she graduated in 2008.

N: So what was God’s compromise?

M: We got married in 2009 after I graduated. On honeymoon in East Africa, Ellie was fascinated seeing Islam lived out in an African context (rather than a Middle Eastern one) and she began to sense possibilities for service in Africa. My mission encouraged us to consider a Muslim country in French-speaking west Africa, where an established mission team needed some ‘new blood’. We went there in March 2010 for a ‘vision trip’ and could see loads of options for us both to teach English and literacy. We had found our destination!

I was a fluent French speaker but Ellie wasn’t, so we moved to Paris in 2011 for her to study French while I taught some English. This proved a great preparation for Africa: up to 500,000 folk from the people group we’d be working with in future were living in Paris. We accompanied another missionary on outreach visits to the squalid hostels these guys were surviving in, sending most of their wages home to west Africa. And not only were some of them from ‘our’ new country, they even came from the provincial town we had visited and would be based in – a great conversation starter!

N: When did you finally reach west Africa?

M: In the autumn of 2012 when our first child was six months old. But early in 2013 there was a big political crisis and all foreigners were advised to make an emergency evacuation as a precaution. We spent six months in a neighbouring state, mostly studying language, then returned to ‘our’ country -  but this time to the capital city because Ellie was now pregnant with our second child. Time in the UK for ‘home assignment’ meant we only returned to our original town in 2014.

Thus began five fairly stable years in one location, building relationships and studying language again; I began the huge task of updating and expanding the one text book available for foreigners, and also got involved in a literacy project with Wycliffe Bible Translators. As a team we supported local churches and travelled around small remote villages, encouraging isolated believers. We set up book tables in village markets, selling a whole load of literature in all the local languages: literacy stuff and Bible texts. Even in this Muslim society, we could do things like that.

N: Did you stay in that town?  

M: In late 2015 our third child was born. We were the only foreign family left in a city of 150,000 and it was putting our older kids at a social disadvantage. So returning to Africa in spring 2020 after another UK home assignment, we relocated to the capital; we could continue our various projects from there, and the kids would have more friends.

We moved there literally two days before the government introduced travel restrictions because of the COVID pandemic. These impacted our visits to villages but otherwise we had quality time with other missionary families; our country wasn’t much affected by the pandemic, and I made some real headway with that language text book.

N: Can you share any major highlights?

M: Some of the (very few) believers from ‘our’ people group observed that there was no worship music in their own language, but didn’t know how to create any. I connected them with a Nigerian ethnomusicologist who equips local believers for exactly that, and in November 2021 I organised a week’s workshop. The participants all lived very remotely from one another so this was a fantastic opportunity to come together for fellowship, and by the end, they’d created and recorded fifteen brand-new songs in their heart language! They’re still sung in the churches today. Facilitating that probably gives me more satisfaction than almost anything else we did.

N: You’re not in Africa now. What happened?

M: For various family reasons, we returned to the UK permanently in 2022. And if we hadn’t left when we did, we’d have probably been forced out anyway by another government crisis later that year. Frankly we had got worn down by a long time in a very hot climate and a deeply frustrating environment of corruption and under-development. We desperately needed some down-time.

In due course our mission offered Ellie a UK-based mobilising role, and I  applied for my current job with OM because I felt it was a good match for my skills and experience.

N: In what way?

M: In Africa we practised a church-planting strategy which is a big part of Disciple Making Movements (in OM we call it Disciple Making Ministries). The key component is the Discovery Bible Study (DBS) which is beautifully simple: you get a group of people together to study God's word and learn from it directly.

OM wanted someone to champion this church-planting approach amongst least-reached peoples, of whom there are very many in the Midlands; I began with OM early in 2023, leading DMM in the Midlands area. And the many difficulties and uncertainties we faced in Africa have definitely given me and Ellie a wealth of experience to draw on, helping us deal better with tough situations back here.

N: What does your role look like?

M: I serve one day a week at an urban drop-in ministry serving a Muslim community. Other times I’m often travelling widely in the region, providing encouragement and supervision to my OM colleagues as their line manager. But I don’t really manage their day-to-day ministries since most of my DMM colleagues in OM serve within other projects, charities, or churches.

I love this partnership approach so I’m also busy networking at a leadership level with all sorts of church and para-church groupings for prayer, strategic planning, training etc. There’s a lot going on in this region – church planting, and specific prayer both for Muslims and our urban centres in general. I also promote OM’s work through church services and Christian festivals.

N: What’s on your heart for outreach?

M: What excites me most is the outreach training we can provide through churches for ‘ordinary’ Christians – we are called Operation Mobilisation, after all! I love helping people to share the gospel and their testimony in a simple way, reducing the angst believers often feel about engaging publicly with those who don’t know Jesus.

We customise training to a church’s individual context and wishes. It could be spread across several consecutive Saturdays for instance, and include specifics like the beliefs and cultural attitudes held by Muslims or Hindus, and the resulting ‘dos and don’ts’ when engaging with them. But the essence is learning to share your faith with anybody.

We can demonstrate and practise some simple conversation-starters, like the ‘One Wish’ bracelets with four images that share the gospel message. Then we’ll all get ‘out there’, talking about Jesus with passers-by; people will discover what approach suits them best. The key thing is realising you don’t have to be some great public speaker – it’s just about connecting with another person as you’re following Jesus!

Do you want to learn more about missions opportunities in the UK or abroad? Or have an OM team help build your church’s confidence in outreach? Contact us through [email protected]

*names changed

Photos by Do Seong Park,  Andrew Wilber, Lennard Prediger, RJ Rempel, Andrew Fendrich