By Charlie Costa, Regional Coordinator for Middle East 

In 1993, I was elected as missionary for BMA Lebanon. After I graduated from Central Baptist College, I went back to Beirut and was sent by First Baptist at 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 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 work in Jordan then gradually expanded to Egypt as I was teaching at the seminary in Beirut. 

There I met young men coming to Lebanon from other Arab countries 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. So 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 was in agreement with the strategy that I believe is 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 if they had to learn another language to communicate to the people, it would be a longer commitment. 

(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. In a few years, maybe another generation of indigenous people can do the work, then it becomes 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 eighteen Arab countries through our ChangeMakers. 

We started thinking about going to these Arab countries and people who share our vision of church planting. And that’s what we did in Iraq after the U.S. invasion of Baghdad in 2003 that lasted twenty-four 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, two 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 have asked, “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 has now 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 eighteen churches there. Sixteen were planted by the national workers we support and oversee. The other two churches have started two others. Eighteen church plants and this can happen again and again as the Lord leads. 

It’s totally God’s work.

Same situation 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 we have three house groups and hope they become church plants as they grow. 

But it takes time, it takes work, follow up, discipleship, going through the process. In Syria, we  have four church plants 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 now have a new church plant in Amman, where it’s a full house every Saturday for a worship service. Rarely do you find empty seats with upwards of a hundred in attendance, even 90 to 100 people. The church keeps growing and we’re hoping to plant more in Jordan. 

I haven’t mentioned the auxiliary ministries that support the church planting movement we have. 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, and we now have Johnny Hachem here in the U.S. to represent our Middle East team, to go to churches, to bless people with his marvelous talent, speak about the work in the Middle East, and get churches involved.