In Search of Gray Hair
by Aaron Myers - Director of Digital Outreach
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This past fall I celebrated my 51st birthday. I’ve always enjoyed my birthday. I love the celebration but also the thought of hopefully getting wiser with age and becoming a more mature believer, someone who is increasingly walking in greater understanding of how to live a God focused life. It was Solomon who wrote that gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness. I feel in many ways as if I’m just coming into my own and figuring out how I can best serve God and his Kingdom. A lifetime of experience and reflection has a way of refining a person. I see more clearly than I did in my youth.
It seems strange then that our North American culture has made it normative for a person to work until their mid 60s and then retire, to pack up all that experience and clarity and step away from the work they’ve been invested in. While there are important reasons to retire from a job, for the Christian, there can be no retirement from the call of our King. Retirement is not an opportunity to quit everything but rather to relaunch into the next thing. For most with gray hair there is still a lot in the tank and so if you are at or nearing retirement, love Jesus and still have a sense of initiative, I’d like to invite you to consider a relaunch into the harvest work of the Great Commission.
I’m in search of gray hair.
Here at Crescent Project our Embassy ministry equips and mobilizes the laity of the local church into one on one, online relationships with English speaking Muslims living inside Muslim majority countries. They are looking for friendship and a chance to connect. We call our volunteers ambassadors and they are stay at home moms, teachers, construction workers, engineers and, increasingly, retirees. Retirees in fact are our fastest growing group of new volunteers. Rick, from Florida, said, “I’m excited to work with Embassy to reach Muslims online! I find this perfect for me, at almost 80, since I can easily share my faith with Muslim men in Iran and Iraq using my iPhone.”
Making a connection online with a Muslim who speaks English and is interested in friendship is much easier than one might think. I recently did a search on a language exchange app where people learning a language can find a native speaker of that language to connect with. I searched for people from Algeria who spoke some English and were wanting to connect with a native English speaker. It gave me a list of over 200 Algerians who had been on the app in just the last twenty four hours. Every one of those 200 plus Algerians were more than likely Muslims who have never met a follower of Jesus, never had a chance to read the Bible, never been prayed for in Jesus name and have almost certainly never had an opportunity to respond to the gospel. They are on that app looking for a new friend - and they’re finding them. They are connecting with secular humanists and radical atheists. They are connecting with new age spiritualists and run of the mill hedonists. The question is, will they meet a true follower of Jesus?
In Luke 10:2, Jesus told his disciples “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” The harvest is plentiful. It was true when Jesus said it 2,000 years ago and it remains true today. And the workers are few - that too remains true today. We are praying for the day when hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of Muslims have an opportunity to respond to the gospel and be connected with a true follower of Jesus. And gray hair is part of the answer to that prayer.
At Embassy we run Facebook ads in Muslim majority countries that simply ask, “Do you want to practice English by reading and discussing the Bible?” Men and women who are interested walk through a questionnaire that allows us to identify those with intermediate or above English skills and at the very least, a curiosity about the Bible. We then connect them with an Ambassador and they begin to meet once a week on an instant messaging app that allows video calls where they work through a creation to Christ Bible curriculum we’ve created.
More Muslims are responding than we have Ambassadors to meet with them.
And so, I’m in search of gray hair. Embassy is of course a ministry for any age. We have 20, 30 and 40 year olds doing tremendous work online to share the love of Jesus with their Muslim friends. There is something unique however about those moving into the second half of life. I’m 51 and newly empty nesting. I am finding I have more time and energy for new projects than I used to have. I’ve also got more experience, more knowledge of the Bible and a deeper commitment to a life of prayer than I had when I was in my 20s and 30s. Those are some of the characteristics we’re seeing in our older ambassadors that make them effective. And it doesn’t hurt that age and gray hair are honored more in the Muslim world.
Today is the day that the Lord has made and today is the day that we invite you to consider joining us in the harvest.
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