History and Overview of Ministry in the Middle East

By Charlie Costa, Regional Coordinator for Middle East

After graduating from Central Baptist College, I returned to Beirut and was sent by First Baptist Church in Blackwood, New Jersey, to serve in Lebanon. Then, in 1989, my father died, and I took over for him as Lifeword’s Arabic speaker.

Lifeword Executive Director George Reddin encouraged me to apply to be a BMA missionary, and in 1993, I was elected at the national meeting in Colorado Springs, then sent to Lebanon to begin the work. As the ministry began to expand, we started to work in Jordan, then gradually expanded to Egypt as I taught at the seminary in Beirut.

There, I met young men from other Arab countries coming to Lebanon with a passion for ministry, but because of the economic situation in the Middle East, they had to go back and do regular jobs. No one was there to support them to start a ministry. I told the BMA missions department there was an opportunity through the men I was training to start church plants all over the Arab world.

It was the beginning of what we now call our ChangeMakers.

Everyone agreed with the strategy. I believe it was God-given to BMA America. Working with nationals is more effective than sending Americans to foreign fields. When you send an American missionary, it takes a while to be effective on the ground, except in situations where the spoken language is English. But it would be a longer commitment if they had to learn another language to communicate with the people.

(In some places, sending American missionaries has worked beautifully, like in Papua New Guinea. What the BMA is doing through American missionaries there is amazing. Maybe another generation of indigenous people can do the work in a few years, then it will become an even faster-growing ministry.)

So, I began recruiting them from the seminary in Beirut, where I taught and trained them to lead, then go to their home countries. We are now in 18 Arab countries through our ChangeMakers.

We started thinking about going to these Arab countries and people sharing our church-planting vision. That’s what we did in Iraq after the U.S. invasion of Baghdad in 2003 that lasted 24 days. We went into Baghdad when U.S. troops were on the ground there, and it was still war in a lot of ways. We planted the church in Baghdad, then went up north and planted two more.

The work continued to expand, and now, we’ve planted 36 churches, 2 of which were overrun and destroyed by ISIS in North Iraq. Buildings were destroyed, and people dispersed, then moved to Kurdistan, then to Turkey, some immigrating to the West. We have met a lot of them in Arab congregations here in America and Canada. At times, people ask, “Do you remember me?” And I’ve had to say that I don’t. Then they will say, “You baptized me in such and such church in Iraq.”

The work now has pretty much stabilized, and God is leading the expansion. Case in point, our missionaries in Sudan — church planters, local missionaries and nationals — were kicked out by the government to South Sudan and started work there. Later, because of the proximity of South Sudan to northern Uganda and northern Congo, the work spread into these regions. Currently, we have 18 churches there. National workers we support and oversee planted 16 there. The other two churches have started two others — 18 church plants, which can happen repeatedly as the Lord leads. It’s totally God’s work.

The same situation exists in South Sudan and the northern regions of Uganda and Congo. Egypt has been part of this work for a long time. We’ve planted six churches, and now have three house groups, which we hope will become church plants as they grow. But it takes time, work, follow-up, discipleship and going through the process.

In Syria, we have four church plants that are almost at the point of being full-fledged churches. They all need buildings, which, unfortunately, we cannot help with, but we do support the church planters, our ChangeMakers. In Lebanon, we have four churches in the process of being planted. One of them organized a few months ago into a Baptist church and submitted the name of the ChangeMaker to be ordained as a pastor.

Over the years, we’ve planted other churches in Lebanon and Jordan, and we now have a new church plant in Amman. Every Saturday, there is a full house for a worship service. Rarely do you find empty seats with upwards of 100 in attendance. The church keeps growing, and we hope to plant more in Jordan.

I haven’t mentioned the auxiliary ministries that support our church planting movement. We believe you need ministries for the local body, namely, ministry to women and young people on social media. Everybody’s on Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. Today, it’s what makes the world turn.

We’re active in ministry to women who are marginalized in society and have teams in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. That ministry is growing as we sponsor conferences for these ladies, bringing them in after ministering to them during the year. That’s where we reap the results of what we planted during the year.

That’s what we’re doing in the Middle East. We now have Johnny Hachem here in the U.S. to represent our Middle East team, go to churches, bless people with his marvelous talent, speak about the work in the Middle East and get churches involved. If you want to know more about how to help with BMA Global’s Middle East ministry, contact me at chuckcosta58@gmail.com. You can also reach out to Johnny Hachem at hachemjohnny@hotmail.com