Source: Steve Addison, Movements, June 23, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I spent a week in Istanbul interviewing Iranian disciples who had come out for training. Men and women living under the threat of arrest and imprisonment for their faith in Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The people I spoke to were leaders. Each had 30 to over 100 churches in their streams of multiplication. The churches are made up of 4-5 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They represent one network in a movement of God across the Islamic Republic, which is unprecedented in the 1400 years since Islam conquered Persia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been listening to the recordings of my interviews with these brave people. Here are some of the recurring themes that provide insight into how God is at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Invariably, the gospel goes from new disciples to their world of relationships, but carefully. They test and see whether it\u2019s safe. Sometimes parents who are strict Muslims don\u2019t know of their adult children\u2019s new faith. One disciple had not shared with his mother until a health crisis shook the family. She turned and believed, and he baptized her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This list is not a formula. It\u2019s a recurring pattern of how God is working to bring salvation to the Iranian people, inside the country and around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read What the Iranians Taught Me.<\/a> It reports on interviews conducted right before the recent war broke out and unpacks the themes listed above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n See also An Inside Update on the Church in Iran<\/a> (Radical) and watch Pray for Tehran<\/a> and Pray for Iran<\/a> (Prayercast) or read a 2015 book revised and re-released in December 2024, Jesus in Iran<\/a> (Eugene Bach).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Steve Addison, Movements, June 23, 2025 I spent a week in Istanbul interviewing Iranian disciples who had come out for training. Men and women living under the threat of arrest and imprisonment for their faith in Christ. The people I spoke to were leaders. Each had 30 to over 100 churches in their streams … Continue reading Iran: What I Learned Listening to Movement Leaders<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13961"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13972,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13961\/revisions\/13972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}