BRIDGES- by Maryellen Blevins of Faith Fellowship, Dexter, NY
7:16 pm in Outreach by Pat Noble
I [Maryellen] was investigating various avenues to learn how to share the good news with Muslims and came across an exciting tool from an organization called the Crescent Project. It’s founder, Fouad Masri, is from Lebanon who grew up in the Muslim faith but later became a Christian. His whole ministry is centered around equiping Christians with the knowledge of how to share with Muslims. He is well versed in the Muslim faith but understands their need for a Savior and the grace of God. He truly loves Muslims and you can see that in ever step of his teachings. He created BRIDGES a small group study on DVD which consists of six 35 minutes video sessions in which he explains what Muslims believe and how to form a bridge to them via relationships so that you can share the gospel of Jesus. Each session starts with prayer, a warmup exercise, the 35 minute video session, a discussion of that video, and an action assignment. The leadership kit gives you a section to help the head of the small group to facilitate each aspect of the session so there is no fear of what to do! He provides 2 of his own books in the workbooks so that you can have even more information on how to have educated discussions of the theological differences between our beliefs. There is alot of information in each of the video sessions even though they are only 35 minutes each and to absorb it all you would need to watch each session more than once. The most important thing you will get from this program is God’s perspective on Muslims! He loves them very much and with the daily media information from news sources that tends to be negative towards Muslims, we can easily lose how God feels about these people. He is willing that none should perish and that includes Muslims. Sometimes it can be hard to have a response of love when you are looking at atrocities that are done in the name of Allah but this program shows you that God wants us to have His attitude on the cross – ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do’!
If you are interested in joining a BRIDGES study group contact Pat Noble at 5669413
