There are parts of the world where saying the name of Jesus out loud can cost you your family. Your freedom. Your life.
Chris Campbell, Lori, and Heather knew that before they went. They went anyway.
This fall, fourteen people from FBC Boerne and partner churches across the country traveled on a Middle East mission trip with the mission organization To Every People. They didn’t go as a group. They split into three teams and spread out across three locations, each team with a different assignment, working alongside local partners who have been quietly, faithfully, and at great personal risk carrying the Gospel into some of the darkest places on earth.
This is Part 1 of their story.
Lori: Equipping the Brand-New Believer
Lori’s team of three worked with a local couple who do something extraordinary. They gather new believers — people who have come to trust Jesus from Muslim backgrounds, from atheism, from no background at all — and spend a week in intensive discipleship. No Bibles. It’s illegal to have one where they live. These are people who believe Jesus died for their sins but have never read a single chapter of Scripture.
The training is called Foundations, and it does exactly what it sounds like: it gives new believers the whole story of the Bible in one arc, from creation to fall to redemption, showing them that God has been working to bring people back to himself from the very beginning. Lori’s team came alongside that couple and co-taught the material with them, pouring into a fresh cohort of brand-new believers over four intensive days.
The deeper goal isn’t just discipleship. It’s church planting. The couple trains believers to go back home and start something — a house church, a growth group, a car church. Lori describes the Gospel spreading across the region “like wildfire.”
“Our partner told us,” Lori said, “‘You have Jesus in your heart and you brought him to this place, this dark place. You can’t discount the importance of just being here.'”
Heather: The Ministry of Presence in the Refugee Camps
Heather’s team of five went to refugee camps. Their assignment was focused on children — a population the local partners haven’t yet had the resources or access to serve. Over three days, across four camps, they interacted with more than 400 kids.
There were significant restrictions. They couldn’t use Jesus’ name. They couldn’t preach. What they could do was show up with the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, a few relay games, some crafts, and a bracelet-making activity — and love kids who have grown up in a desert with no home to go back to and very little hope of one.
“Camp life there is just dry,” Heather said. “Their physical surroundings are dry. And it’s spiritually dry. They’ve lived through persecution, through ISIS, through losing everything. There’s no hope. So just for us to come in with the light of Christ, we just prayed that they felt the love of God while we were there.”
They couldn’t say everything they wanted to say. But they carried Jesus with them into that place. As Lori put it from across the table: “I know those kids felt the love of God.”
Chris: Walking Young Men Through the Life of David
Chris Campbell is a fifteen-year FBC Boerne member who spent years on the sidelines of missions before taking Perspectives in 2024. Since then, he’s been on three trips in eighteen months.
For this trip, Chris and a team of four men worked with a group of young male believers — brand-new followers of Jesus with minimal training. Over two days, they walked through the life of David: the victories, the failures, the grief, the worship. They built the curriculum themselves.
They expected a quiet room. They got the opposite. The men opened up, shared stories, and talked about miracles they had personally experienced. One man described waking up one morning — still a Muslim at the time — and feeling led to go to church. He found one, attended, and came home to find that something catastrophic had happened while he was away. Had he stayed, he would not have survived.
Dreams, visions, miraculous protection. Chris said it plainly: “While these countries may want Jesus out of there, Jesus is not going to be thwarted.”
Why This Matters
The Middle East is one of the fastest-growing regions for the Gospel on the planet. Not because Western missionaries flooded in, but because God has been showing up in the dreams of Muslims, in the courage of local partners, and in the quiet multiplication of house churches, car churches, and underground gatherings of people who have given up everything to follow Jesus.
FBC Boerne gets to be a small part of that. Fourteen people. Three teams. A handful of days. Thousands of years of kingdom work woven together in a million decisions that brought everyone to the same room.
Chris, Lori, and Heather came home changed. Part 2 of their conversation — with more personal highlights and a closer look at what God is doing in the region — is coming soon.
In the meantime, if something in this story has stirred something in you, that’s worth paying attention to. Reach out to anyone on the FBC Missions team, or consider signing up for the next Perspectives course. The harvest is real, and there is room for you in it.
Listen to the full conversation on the SO THAT Missions Podcast, Episode 84, Part 1: available below, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.
Go, Pray, Give, Welcome
These stories are one expression of what it looks like to take the Great Commission seriously — not just as a concept, but as a way of living. At FBC Boerne, we believe every follower of Christ is called to play a part: to go, to pray, to give, to welcome those who’ve been brought close. Faith is doing all of it.
If her story is stirring something in you — questions, curiosity, maybe even a little fear — that might be worth paying attention to.
Interested in learning more about missions at FBC Boerne? Visit fbcboerne.org/missions to learn about upcoming trips and the Perspectives class.
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If this conversation stirred your heart for the nations, share it with a friend, your small group, or someone exploring global missions. Let’s pray and move together — so that the world would know Him.
