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Tabitha* and her husband, Jake’s*, journey in missions began when her interest in sharing the love of Christ with Muslims and his interest in the Russian language led them to serve in Central Asia. For 15 years, they worked on Bible translation before needing to leave their host country due to unforeseen circumstances. This led them to a neighbouring country where they found a large community of the same people-group they had previously worked with. Over the next 19 years, they started a church for believers and seekers. “We realised that in this country, people were more receptive to the gospel because they weren’t constrained by the cultural rules and family expectations of their home country,” Tabitha explained.
As they served in this new location, the couple continued to pray and think about the home country of the community. Initially, most of the believers had no interest in returning, but that began to change. Tabitha was excited when one Jesus follower told her: “You can’t go back, but we can.”
The couple quickly realised that for these believers to take the gospel back to their home country, they needed materials. “There were virtually no materials in their language. Once we identified this gap in discipleship materials, we knew we needed to fill that hole,” Tabitha said, describing her surprise and sadness about the experience of one believer from their church who had visited their home country. "During his visit, he went to a small underground church in a village that had been meeting for about 20 years and there was no teaching of the Bible. The pastor would ask everyone: ‘What is God saying to you this week?’ And people would share without ever opening the Bible. The visitor requested to share something from the Bible and asked everyone to open their Bibles to determine if what the visitor was teaching was true. This being a new concept for them highlighted the problem when churches are meeting with no resources and even the pastor isn’t trained.” For this reason, Tabitha and Jake felt strongly that simple, biblical resources were needed for believers and house church pastors in the region.
Tabitha and her husband also noticed that believers had little to no knowledge of the Old Testament, so New Testament references to the Old Testament held no significance for them.
"We believe that the Old Testament helps you to understand the New Testament. Your understanding of the gospel is very impoverished if you don’t know the Old Testament," she noted. This inspired them to create their first course with their small team. As they looked to publish the course, Tabitha and Jake connected with MediaWorks. Tabitha’s team provided the content and MediaWorks handled the design and publication. "The course takes you through the books of the Bible. We contextualised it to the needs, experience and culture of the community we serve," shared Tabitha.
Designed for small groups, no background knowledge of the Bible is required. The 40-lesson course includes questions for discussion, answer keys and addresses cultural topics, such as hospitality. "Serving is a big part of the culture and the youngest usually do most of the serving,” explained Tabitha. “We included activities that highlight the need for everyone to help and work together and not just put all the work on the youngest ones. We put this principle into practise when we prepare for our church meetings." As hospitality and relationships are central in the culture, time isn’t a major concern. A typical house church meeting includes eating, sharing news, studying the Bible, chatting and praying, often lasting four or five hours.
The Bible study course is now being used by small groups across the region. "It was crucial for us to focus on village pastors and small group leaders who have no Bible training. Many of the believers aren’t strong readers or they don’t enjoy reading, so we needed to make things easy and enjoyable," shared Tabitha. In one area, where believers face many challenges because of their faith, the gospel has continued to spread. Tabitha shared that despite the difficulties 50 small groups have formed and are studying the Bible together. She recently visited one of the groups and was amazed to see their love for God. “It was encouraging and a blessing to see a local lady teach a lesson from the course as we sat in a small apartment room with eight other people,” Tabitha said.
Tabitha and her team have also developed courses for Deuteronomy and a ‘Love one another’ course. As the need for more resources continues to grow, they are currently working on courses for Revelation and Isaiah. "We love the beautiful partnership we have with MediaWorks as they support us in things like design, layout and getting it on their website so we can distribute it," Tabitha noted.
Their team is seeking more writers, those who can help with distribution and someone to help manage the project. "Our heart has always been to help believers to love reading God’s Word. We love seeing people engage with God’s Word,” she expressed. “That pushes us to keep supplying them with more materials.”
*name changed
Pray for Tabitha and her team as they continue to work on courses for the books of Revelation and Isaiah. Pray for the small groups that are using the Bible Overview and the Deuteronomy course to study the Bible, that they will grow in their faith and share the love of Jesus with others.
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