The following "Please Don't Share the Gospel" was written by my team leader, Brant, about our team's most recent inspiration:
"Pastor Muilar. Muilar is the head pastor of a 300 member church here in Salor, Malaysia. He quit his job as an entrepreneur at the age of 37 in the peak of his career, right after the birth of his second child in order to become an associate pastor. Now 17 years later his modest church has started and supports a dialysis center, orphanage, soup kitchen, senior citizen center, school, and special needs home. Muilar himself is passionate about prison ministry and throughout the years has not only discipled prisoners inside the prison but taken them into his home as family after their release.
When Muilar was sharing his testimony he made it sound so logical and simple, “Yeah, we started a dialysis center because in this area there weren’t many and only the rich could afford them.” He said it as if it were a normal thing for a small Baptist church pastor to do, as if it weren’t a logistical nightmare to start and run a non-profit medical business, as if it was as simple as seeing a need in the town, attempting to meet it, and relying on God to make it happen.
He has an incredible story of how he came to Christ, but what makes Pastor Muilar’s ministry unique is his perspective on purpose. He doesn’t run humanitarian aid programs as a tool to convert people to Christianity or so that he can draw people into his church; he does it because Jesus tells his followers to meet the needs of the needy. He gives all aid with no strings attached. He doesn’t care if the people are drug addicts or welfare recipients or if they go to church. In fact, he has a rule for volunteers; no talking about Jesus, Christianity, or the church to the recipients. He doesn’t give food in return for attendance to a sermon, he gives it totally free. Most pastors and even missionaries would be aghast at this approach; that is, before they understood the result. As we talked to the people at the dialysis center, Muilar told us that all of his patients have received Christ and are now attending church. One hundred percent. In the average church 20% of the attendees are involved in some kind of ministry and 80% just show up for the services; at Trinity Baptist Church it is exactly the opposite: 80% of the congregation is involved in ministry. It seems counter intuitive to me but Muilar just makes it seem simple. “God told us to love people, so that’s what we do; eventually people start to ask why and how we love them so much and that’s when we tell them it’s because of Jesus” (paraphrased).
It’s just one more way I have been able to see God at work in the world in real and tangible ways. I think Pastor Muilar’s church and ministry can be a lesson to people everywhere caught up in arguments over the approach and implementation of the gospel; don’t judge others on how they are spreading God’s love but rather value the diversity. Whether all you do is door to door evangelism or you are running six NGOs with specific rules not to preach, God will use your obedience to bring about his Kingdom.
*Names and locations have been changed in this blog in order to protect the pastor and his church. All ethnic Malays are considered Muslim by law and Malaysia is in a time of political instability where religion is being used for political purposes, so persecution of the church is very real and potentially dangerous here.
On that note, please pray for the church here in Malaysia during this time of increasing persecution – not that the persecution subsides but that through it the church will “watch, stand firm in the faith, be brave, be strong, and let everything done be done in love.” [1 Corinthians 16:13]"
