OMS Outreach Sep - Dec 2015 | Page 20

Re a c h i n g MBB Farmers i n Asi a By M* Missionary in Asia One Mission Society is also much more family and community focused than in the West. Therefore, our ministry approach seeks to provide practical help to communities, specifically cooperatives of rice farmers. The foundational vision for this ministry is to build Christ’s body of believers, without walls, by building holistic relationships in villages throughout the region. Local leaders are identified and trained to oversee the believers in their village or region. These leaders are interwoven into a regional network of leadership for mutual support and accountability, with the goal of each village being self-supporting and self-propagating. Drawing from my background in agribusiness, God has helped me identify a way to strengthen the local farmers’ businesses while at the same time strengthening their family and work relationships. We do this by applying biblical principles and providing an appropriate and reproducible approach that can be used to impact the whole region. We are in the process of helping the first cooperative establish a mechanical I was sharing with some Muslim-background believers (MBBs) recently about the importance of building a bridge to reach their Muslim family and friends. We looked at Surah 3:42–55 in the Quran and saw how it presents Isa, or Jesus, as more than just another prophet. Using this passage from their own Quran, we can quickly see if they are “persons of peace” within whom our Father is already working. From there, we lead them across a bridge into a fuller understanding of who Isa is and what he has done for them through the Injil (Gospels). This approach meets these friends at a point of “felt need,” which is to know what the Quran teaches about how to get t