The Church of Muslims: New Faith Community for Converts from Islam

This study is significant because it deals with the issue of Muslim Background Believers (MBBs) in Madinah. They are believers without a “proper” church to serve their needs (not accepted into the local church).

The MBBs do not have a clear structure to meet their different needs: spiritual, emotional, social, etc. They are sheep without a shepherd. They are people who put their trust and faith in Christ, but, for some reason, they are not able to join and be part of the existing church. The MBBs lost their old identity, and they are not able to get a new identity. They are happy to lose their Islamic identity, but they cannot have a new identity by joining the existing local church, being the Christian Background Believers (CBBs) church.

The literature has a lot to say about the MBBs in non-Arabic speaking Muslim majority contexts, but MBBs in Arabic-speaking situations have not been discussed enough. This study sought to ask the hard questions concerning the status of the MBBs in Madinah and the local CBB communities. The study is designed to investigate the issues of the MBBs as they leave Islam and go to the institutional church (CBB), and aims to figure out the qualities of the faith community that serve the MBBs in Madinah so that the MBBs would be used to their full potential as they serve the Kingdom of Jesus. This was done through a focus group of MBB leaders from the Fellowship of the Believers (FB) network of house churches in Madinah.

The study’s outcome can be summarized in at least three points (realities) where MBBs leadership was highlighted and discussed in the literature review:

• The importance of knowing where one stands as MBBs helps shape their social identity as a unique reality.
• The MBBs’ decisions of improving or changing the way they design their faith community must be based on an unbiased academic study and not on emotions or a wrong understanding of the scripture.
• The MBBs are to design the faith community with biblical qualities that best serve them as a church and best serve the Kingdom of God in their context.

O., Ahmad. 2022. “The Church for Muslims: New Faith Community for Converts from Islam.” D.Min., United States — Kentucky: Asbury Theological Seminary.