The gospel in the marketplace
The workplace. The marketplace. The place where Muslims, like most people, spend the majority of their waking hours each day. That is the setting members of Marketplace & Development Enterprises (MDE) embrace to build purposeful relationships in order to share the gospel. MDE members go to unreached Muslim communities as employees, entrepreneurs, and community developers and gain access into people's lives through the connections made naturally through their occupations. Men and women who desire to be missional as they work using their God-given vocational skills can play a unique role in disciple-making and church planting in unreached communities.
There are now over a billion Muslims who have little to no hope of experiencing God’s love or hearing truth in their community. A billion. We need to send seminary-trained, full-time missionaries to Muslim communities. But this is not enough. We also need to send “regular” people with jobs or businesses to the workplaces of those communities. The marketplace offers an avenue for people to legitimately live and work in communities that are closed to “missionaries,” and their lives offer a view of Christlikeness that their co-workers, bosses, neighbors, vendors, and clients can understand and copy. In order to broaden the reach of the gospel, marketplace people must go.
MDE is a service organization specifically designed to come alongside these marketplace workers to help them with their unique challenges and opportunities. MDE does this by casting vision for missions in the marketplace and by connecting its members to the training they need in a format they can access while working full-time. It also provides support through mentoring, coaching, and advice from fellow believers in the workplace, both in the US and abroad. MDE helps by requiring its members to develop ministry plans and follow them.
MDE also partners with nationals seeking to make disciples and plant churches. Unable to support his family of seven on a pastor’s “salary,” a former Muslim brother in Central Asia asked MDE to help him enter the shuttle bus business. MDE found investors who loaned him the money needed to purchase a bus, and a contract was signed. In the first month alone, this brother was able to bring in additional income and pay towards the loan. With the burden of finances lifted, he is freer to shepherd his young, growing flock and to share the Good News with the Muslim people around him.
In another setting, MDE workers are serving the Muslim community in which they live by providing life skills training and mentoring for orphans. Often launched from the orphanage at an early age, these young people have little training or experience in order to be successful in life. MDE’s affiliate in that country offers practical help and personal hope as they explain the reason for their service to these young people. The MDE workers have had incredible opportunities to share why they are there and why their love for Christ compels them to help orphans with government officials, orphanage workers, national partners, accountants, lawyers, and the list goes on.
We need to reach the unreached. We need to reach Muslims. Marketplace workers are playing a key role in meeting these needs.
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