“You’re not my brother.”
Jabar froze in shock, his outstretched hand hovering uncertainly under the metal tiffin of food as effusive professions of gratitude died on his lips. The cacophony of traffic and vendors’ shouts seemed to fade around the two men standing in the crowded bazaar. Before William’s interjection, Jabar had simply thanked him for buying him food, echoing the Islamic tenant that all men are brothers and should assist in times of need. Only the kindness in William’s eyes belied his blunt words as he continued. “Until you can reject the false prophet Muhammad, until you can get rid of your Qur’an and stop blaspheming in prayer five times a day, you will never be my brother.” William paused. “But when you accept Christ as your Savior, that’s
when you’ll become my brother.”
‘I Could Die at Any Moment’
Eighteen years prior, Jabar mounted a dais on the university campus, raising his hands to silence the cheers of the thousands of impassioned students assembled before him. In the inflammatory rhetoric of Islamic extremism, he urged the students to fulfill their religious destiny through jihad. Jabar, raised in a fundamentalist village, had arrived in the South Asian city for university studies with Islamic devotion infused into his identity. The student arm of a militant Islamist political party
soon recruited him and, by 2005, recognized him as a rising star within its ranks. He regularly led rallies inciting students to join the fight for political dominance—even through violence. The students infiltrated crowded civilian areas, concealing knives under their long tunics. They targeted law enforcement officials in brutal stabbing attacks to clear the way for public protests. Jabar himself killed three policemen, each time escaping arrest. After graduation, however, Jabar’s terrorist affiliations
threatened to limit his prospects for employment. He slowly distanced himself from radicalism, pursuing instead well-paying translation jobs with humanitarian agencies.
In late 2022, a walk through a public park led to a providential encounter with an ABWE missionary. When Jabar expressed interest in the Bible—noting that the Qur’an itself mentions portions of the Old and New Testaments— the missionary invited Jabar to a weekly international worship service, where he met another ABWE teammate, William. Jabar and William then began meeting regularly.
“For about six months, Jabar told me that he understood the gospel and thought it was beautiful, but he was a Muslim and could not accept it,” William recalled. The day William confronted Jabar about becoming his true brother through Christ was
the last evangelistic confrontation. A week later—at age 39—Jabar collapsed from a stroke and a heart attack.
Lying immobile, he sensed his death was imminent. Memories flashed in his mind of the gospel and of the love and help he had experienced from Christians. This is the truth, he realized, and cried out to God for salvation. He later called William from the hospital. “I believe in Jesus,” he exclaimed. “I could die at any moment. I want to be baptized as soon as possible.”
Faithful Under Fire
Persecution began even before Jabar was released from medical care. Radical Muslim friends and family members learned of his conversion and at once began threatening to kill him for apostasy. They also began harassing his wife, Tahmina, calling her late at night and urging her to poison Jabar or to abandon her marriage. At first, Jabar’s faithfulness attracted Tahmina to the gospel. As the threats persisted, however, her resolve wavered. She covertly gathered Jabar’s financial savings and fled to the city with their young daughter and her sister. A group of Jabar’s former friends pursued, attacked, and raped the women. A few weeks later, Tahmina and her sister both discovered they were pregnant. Overcome with shame, bitterness, and rage, they refused to return home or speak to Jabar except to express their hatred for all that his faith had cost them. Meanwhile, Jabar’s uncle—an influential leader in his village—dispatched 14 Muslim clerics to force Jabar to return to Islam.
When Jabar refused to deny his faith, the leaders shoved him to the ground and beat him with rods. Alone in his apartment, injured and heartbroken, Jabar turned to Scripture. Opening his Bible to Psalm 59, he identified with David’s lament that his enemies lay in wait for his life like wild dogs. He echoed David’s plea that God would “spare none of those who treacherously plot evil” (v. 5). He shared the passage with William, who often visited him to offer encouragement, arriving at Jabar’s door in disguise to conceal himself from the extremists. Jabar pointed to the psalmist’s words and said, “This sounds a lot like what’s going on with me.” “I cautioned him that the passage was contextual for David,” William later recalled. “But the next day, Jabar found out on Facebook that his uncle who sent the clerics to attack him—a healthy man in his 50s—was struck with a heart attack and died. So, I had to agree with him.” Without Jabar’s uncle, the group of radicals disbanded.
They soon returned, however, armed with summons for 13 court cases filed on trumped-up charges. With no legal recourse, Jabar fled and hid in the jungle for two months. The isolation only intensified his despair. He decided to return to the city, telling William, “I need to be with God’s people. I need to be with the church. If they come for me, it will be okay; whatever
happens, God will take care of me.” Over the next year, William and others in the local church discipled and trained Jabar in the faith. Jabar quickly developed a burden for sharing the gospel with Muslims from his own people group. “He’s led several people to Christ,” shared William.
“He asked me one time for 50 Bibles. He said, I’ve got a bunch of friends in the hills, and I want to preach to them and give them these Bibles.’ So, he gathered 50 people in a friend’s house, explained the gospel, and gave out the Bibles. He’s doing the work of an evangelist.” In fall 2024, Jabar was finally notified that the fraudulent court cases had been dismissed. Soon after, he received a call from his estranged wife. Hesitantly, Tahmina told him that she wanted to return to his house with her children. She was ready to be identified as a Christian. “In the midst of so much chaotic suffering and pain, we’ve seen God move in Jabar’s heart— taking him out of a place of feeling hatred and revenge toward his enemies to holding a Christ-like attitude of forgiveness,” shared William’s wife, Rachel. With his family restored, Jabar seeks to lead his children and others in his community according to the truth of God’s Word.
Moving Beyond Evangelism
Within the South Asian church, ABWE workers have recognized a growing number of national believers like Jabar active in Christian witness. One local pastor with whom William works felt challenged to pray audaciously that his church of 90 members—primarily first-generation believers— would see 50 people saved and baptized in His congregation responded by boldly inviting friends, neighbours, and co-workers from diverse communities to visit the church and hear the gospel. By October, the church had baptized 56 new believers, including a former Buddhist monk and his entire family. Since the 1950s, ABWE workers have partnered with these and other local believers to spread the gospel among the many unreached
Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist people groups in this densely populated region. Missionaries working in the 1970s and ’80s discovered that the best—and sometimes only—way to plant churches in villages prohibited to Westerners was to train
and send national leaders. As local churches began to pick up the mantle of evangelism, however, they uncovered a
deeper need. “We’re seeing more and more that, for the indigenous Christians to truly take ownership of evangelism and discipleship in their churches, they need help to grow deeper in their biblical foundations and convictions,” explained William.
“Many pastors struggle to articulate basic doctrines like the Trinity. Church leaders don’t just find correct theology on their own; they need theological education, training, and resources.” While theological education is crucial for establishing biblically faithful churches that teach the full counsel of Scripture and guide believers toward spiritual maturity, statistics indicate that
as many as 85 percent of the world’s pastors—not only in South Asia—possess no formal biblical or theological training.
William witnessed these needs firsthand growing up as a missionary kid in South Asia. After his own conversion in college, the Lord instilled in him a burden for the unreached and a passion for teaching theology and biblical languages. Desiring to use those skills to develop doctrinally sound churches, he, Rachel, and their young family returned to South Asia in 2022 to
serve in theological education alongside two other families. “In South Asia, our team works with hundreds of churches that we’re strengthening, developing, and equipping,” said ABWE President Paul Davis. “One of the unique aspects of ABWE’s
approach to theological education—in South Asia and around the world—is that we simultaneously employ both informal and formal methods to fit the context of the church leaders we’re training.”
Equipping the Saints
William notes that informal theological education has proven particularly effective for developing South Asian church planters serving in villages hostile toward Christianity and inaccessible to the American teammates. Other pastors actively serve in less restrictive areas but still benefit from one-on-one instruction and regular small-group meetings to gain a foundation in biblical theology, expositional preaching, church polity, worship, and ministry. “Each of the pastors we’re training has several house churches, and we’ve asked them to bring their sons so we can train them too as elders,” shared William. The theological educators also serve as professors at a Bible college established by ABWE workers in the 1980s to develop reproducing national church leaders. The Bible college offers formal courses at three branches in the region, all designed to move students beyond spiritual milk to the meat of the Word (Hebrews 5:12-14). One branch provides a one-year, full-time program to equip young men and women who have recently graduated high school and desire training for future ministry. The second offers for-credit evening courses for pastors, deacons, and church leaders already engaged in vocational or lay ministry, while the third offers intensive classes. Since its founding, over 200 local believers have graduated from the Bible college and currently serve in churches throughout the region.
In the Footsteps of William Carey
In order to build deep, enduring foundations, the national church must have not only theological instruction but also access to biblical resources. “As our team continues to grasp the specific needs of the church here, we’ve seen a glaring need for unity of confession on basic Christian doctrines,” said William. To this end, he authored a catechism in the local language, published in 2024, to provide succinct questions and answers about the fundamental doctrinal principles that Protestants around the world have affirmed for centuries. William published the catechism with the assistance of ABWE South Asia teammates and national partners dedicated to translating Scripture and Christian resources into local indigenous languages. Even more momentous, William recently completed a New Testament Greek textbook, grammar, and lexicon written in the local language. “This is the first time since the days of missionary pioneer William Carey that Christians in this region have been able to learn the New Testament in its original language,” he explained excitedly. A class of 12 students now meets to read the New Testament in Greek—the first time this has ever happened in their language. William continued: “Literature is one of the most important ways that we can impact future generations of Christians. This is a huge step in theological education for the South Asian church toward rightly handling the Scriptures and safeguarding the church from error.”
An Unwavering Gospel Witness
Through the ABWE team’s dedication to imparting the doctrinal riches of Scripture to church leaders who “will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2), indigenous evangelists, pastors, and ministry leaders are poised to establish an unwavering gospel witness in villages and people groups throughout their nation. “Our theological educators in South Asia reflect ABWE’s model of balancing contextualization for national ministry with biblical faithfulness, resulting in local churches that can reproduce,” conveyed Paul Davis. “Through theological education and resources, the South Asian church can grow beyond her infancy,” William reflected. Even now, the foundations are visible. “National believers like Jabar and local church leaders are doing ministry even beyond what we know about, and it’s exciting.”
