Trousdale - Miraculous movements : how hundreds of thousands of Muslims are falling in love with Jesus

MIRACULOUS MOVEMENTS

How Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims
Are Falling in Love with Jesus

JERRY TROUSDALE

2012 by CityTeam

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Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

All quotations from the Quran are from Quran , tr. Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall.

ISBN 978-1-4185-4728-8

Printed in the United States of America

12 13 14 QG 5 4 3 2 1

ENDORSEMENTS

For seven years Ive been hearing Jerrys reports of Gods activity as Disciple Making Movements have unfolded in Africa. This past summer I had to go and see for myself. I heard many of the stories recorded in this book with my own ears from the people whose lives have been radically transformed. I joined prayer meetings as intercessors fasted and cried out to God for peoples and nations. I saw with my own eyes churches that had been planted and communities that were being transformed. And I met many former Muslims who have given up everything the world values, because they have fallen in love with Jesus. Truly, God is filling the earth with the knowledge of His glory as the waters cover the sea! Read Miraculous Movements and glorify the Lord with me.

Claude King
Co-author of Experiencing God:
Knowing and Doing the Will of God

Miraculous Movements is thirty-three amazing, true stories of how God is revealing Himself through visions, dreams, healings, etc. The book also shows how the power of much prayer and simple obedience based discipleship and training has transformed thousands of Muslim communities. CityTeams results over the past five years have been outstanding and we are delighted to be partnering with them for the glory of the Father

Hugh Maclellan, Jr.
Chairman of the Board
The Maclellan Foundations

With Miraculous Movements , Jerry Trousdale and his colleagues at CityTeam have made an invaluable contribution to the body of Christ!

David Garrison, PhD
Author: Church Planting Movements

If you want to be truly impacted by a book that has the ability to significantly increase your prayer life and give you a glimpse into how Muslims are making sacrifices to follow Jesus with everything they have, then this book is for you. In its pages are stories of men and women who have nothing to speak of in terms of material blessings, but everything in terms of passion and zeal for risking their lives to follow Jesus. Its humbling, inspiring, and is exactly what can happen when we show people the gospel rather than tell them.

Arron Chambers,
Senior Pastor of Journey Church
Author: Eats with Sinners (Outreach Magazines
Recommended Outreach Resource of the Year 2011)

Kafka said a book must be an ax to the frozen sea inside us. This book is lethal to the frozen modernist Christian mind. God is being true to His Word doing greater things among Muslims as Jesus promised. My heart longs for the western church to wake up to the genius of simplicity found in these disciple making principles. These stories fuel a question that keeps me up at night, Why not North America?

Roy Moran
Shoal Creek Community Church

As a church planter for the last 10 years, our family has made it our mission to go where no one else wants to go. This book, Miraculous Movements , very much aligns with this mission of getting to know the community around you and then sharing the teachings of Jesus rather than trying to go in and hope people come to a church or, in some cases, a home church, just because you set up shop. This book shows how to attract people to follow Christ, not try to convert them to simply know Christ. If you want to read stories that will change the way you think about church plants and churches built outside our Western models, this is the book for you. Whether you are a church leader or a person who is curious to see what God is up to in other parts of the world, you wont be disappointed.

Charles Hill, Church Planter, National Speaker

CONTENTS

4. Inside Islam
Disillusionment and Discontentment

9. Of Whom the World Is Not Worthy
Learning from Heroes and Heroines of Faith

13. Getting Started
Biblical Practices for Engaging Lostness

TEN YEARS AGO

In 2002, CityTeam International was a seemingly successful rescue mission touching the lives of more than five hundred thousand disadvantaged urban dwellers every year. Yet while CityTeam was experiencing Gods blessing in helping-ministries and evangelism, the organization was a failure in discipling its converts to see real transformation in communities. But that was about to change. That year, CityTeams CEO Patrick Robertson read Good to Great by Jim Collins, and, inspired by what he felt was a call to recommit CityTeams mission to the cause of discipleship, he invited the staff and board of trustees of the organization to begin a journey into a highly intentional focus on obeying Jesus last words: Go therefore and make disciples.

Also in 2002, David Watson (now CityTeams vice president of Global Church Planting) had recently concluded a season of ministry in Southeast Asia and India that some have considered unmatched in its success in modern eras. But the successes he observed were born of the desperation that followed a tragic disaster earlier in his ministry when several people he had discipled were martyred in the process of planting churches among a very challenging people group. In the grief and discouragement that followed, David knew that something was missing, and he turned to the Bible for direction. He began to see that many of the barriers that keep the gospel from rapidly reproducing in challenging regions of the world are addressed in biblical principles that have almost been hidden in plain sight. The answer to his questions about ministry was more obvious than he could have imagined. In fact, the answer was the Bible itself. This new approach produced amazing outcomes in India as Watson stopped training missionaries from best practices models, and simply allowed them to discover what had previously been overlooked: Gods plan of making disciples from the text of the whole Bible.

One year later, in 2003, Jerry Trousdale (now CityTeams director of International Ministries) and a group of highly effective African colleagues met David Watson, and they resonated with the intentional application of biblical principles of making disciples who obey God. That led them to launch a ministry that set a challenging goal of seeing at least one hundred churches planted among each of the eighteen largest and least reached people groups of West and Central Africa, churches that would be characterized as disciples making disciples. Also around that time, another group of African leaders formed a large partnership of more than fifty ministries to more effectively make disciples among the least reached peoples of East Africa.