Now, I’m not much of a talker on airplanes. In fact you guys that are talkers really get on my nerves. I prefer to pull out my iPod or bury myself in a good novel. I hear guys talk about how they pray God will give them opportunities to share their faith with people on the plane. I pray God will put me around people who don’t want to talk and that will just leave me alone.
So as I was minding my own business reading my book, I noticed the guy next to me was reading a Christian book. His name was Corey and turns out he was a pastor in Turkey. Corey’s parents were immigrants from Turkey but Corey was raised in the U.S. Sometime in his late 20’s, Corey felt the call to go to Turkey and start a church. So he (and his father) left the “good life” of the U.S. and went to Turkey to start churches.
Turkey has a population of about 80 million, mostly Muslim, and only about 100,000 are Christians. As we continued to talk about the church in Turkey, Corey shared with me that he had been arrested about a dozen times over the ten years he had been pastoring in Turkey. But his passion for the people of Turkey did not seem to be dampened in the least.
As he pulled out his laptop and started sharing pictures of several of the church plants, it was kind of like a proud parent pulling out pictures of their children. The really cool thing to me was the cities these church plants were in. He showed me a church plant in Ephesus, yes, that’s the same Ephesus that Paul wrote the book of Ephesians to. He also showed me a church plant in Laodicea, a city mentioned in the book of Revelation. I didn’t even know those places existed anymore much less that they were in Turkey.
Makes me wonder, how does the center of the Christian faith 2000 years ago become a place where it’s even hard to find Christians?
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