Author Archives: shanedar

The fog shrouding my house as I write this morning serves as an apt metaphor for my tendency to notice what’s right in front of me while missing what lies just beyond the edge of my thinking. 

Here: I have a daughter getting married in 22 days. This is wonderful. 

Just out there: Marriage as a social institution has fallen off a cliff.

Blaine Eldredge writes, “In 1949, 78.8% of U.S. households were married couples. By 2024, that number had fallen to 47.1%. Of women born in 1940, 90% were married by age 30. In contrast, of women born in 1990, only 27% were married by age 30.”

Something’s going on and it doesn’t look good. 

As a pastor, I wonder how my church (and our churches) are addressing this shift. If you’re a single person reading this and you’d rather not be single, I wonder if we’re caring for you in a way that lands. Is the Church walking with you or are we dishing out pressure, shame or trite platitudes? 

As a mobilizer, I wonder if this trend is present in the Muslim communities around us. 

Apparently it is. Muslim writers are exploring singleness and wondering about solutions. Pew Research shows similar rates of marriage among Muslims in the U.S. and the rest of the population, highlighting that foreign-born Muslims in America are more likely to be married. 

What does following Jesus look like as we respond to this issue? I don’t know. The fog only began to clear on this reality for me about four days ago! Feel free to respond and help me out.

I do see this in Jesus:

Engagement: He came from Heaven to hang out with the likes of us.

Empathy: He didn’t shy away from messiness.

Encouragement: His kingdom vision didn’t minimize hard lives, but infused them with hope. 

May God give us grace to follow him closely.

A July 28th mass shooting in New York City took the life of NYPD Officer Didarul Islam. An immigrant from Bangladesh, Islam was also a dad and husband. His widow gave birth to their third son two days ago. This is poignant in so many ways. I don’t know your experience with New Yorkers or policemen, but I’ve enjoyed interacting with almost all of the Bengalis I’ve met. They’ve been kind, hospitable, funny and beautiful. May God pour out grace and favor on this suffering family and the Bengali community in New York, the largest in the nation.
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Pew Research says it’s official: Islam was the fastest growing world religion from 2010 to 2020. In that time span, “Christians [grew] by 122 million, reaching 2.3 billion. Yet, as a share of the world’s population, Christians fell 1.8 percentage points, to 28.8%.” Muslims “increased by 347 million. The share of the world’s population that is Muslim rose by 1.8 points, to 25.6%.” Christianity declined in percentage largely due to disaffiliation, while Muslims grew largely due to fertility rates. At present rates, there will be more Muslims than Christians by 2070. What are we to make of this?
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Finally, I have a budding friendship with a Muslim man who’s been part of the Muslim Connect tribe for a long time and spends some of his days helping Christians understand Muslims. We’re getting together for coffee for the first time tomorrow. I’m already building a list of questions I’d like to ask him, but would love to hear your thoughts. What would you like me to ask this new friend?

Have you ever taken a beating for the gospel? People have fallen asleep while I’ve preached and a javelina once ran out of the woods, down the side of an outdoor amphitheater and derailed my best effort at a high school church camp altar call! But that’s about it for me. 

Recently in the United Kingdom, as 33 year old Karandeep Mamman preached on a street corner in Walsall, he found himself surrounded by a group of angry Muslims. Not appreciating his assertion that the Quranic version of Jesus was false, they hemmed him in, yelled at him and trashed his sign. 

Days after police showed up to check on him and disperse the crowds, Mamman was surprised to find himself facing prosecution for the event! His case was subsequently tossed when the judge found there to be no evidence of him “causing religiously aggravated harassment, alarm and distress” or violating hate crime statutes. 

This makes me wonder three things: 

1. Is there more to the story? Of course there is. There’s always more to the story. One account mentioned that his sign condemned homosexuality and two of his attackers were a homosexual couple. It’s not always Muslims. (To be fair, perhaps they were both homosexual and Muslim.)
2. How effective is street preaching? I’ve had some success in Sicily with telling Jesus stories to a couple Muslims at a time, but I’ve done no legit street preaching. I believe for some people it is obedient service to Christ. For most of us, I suspect we’d do better to connect in a more low key, less antagonistic way.
3. Then there’s this, If you or I faced physical threats for sharing our faith, what would we do? One option, of course, is “don’t do it!” In that event may Jeremiah’s “fire in my bones” toast our own marrow! Another option is to keep at it, endeavoring to be “Shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.”

All the while, may the Holy Spirit remind us to pray for women and men like Mamman around the planet who “consider [their] lives worth nothing. . . beyond the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”

Do you ever wonder how to balance joy at the good things with sorrow at the bad? I have a great wife, a quiver full of cool kiddos and work that I love. But I’m also aware that lots of gut-wrenching stuff is going down every day. I’ve not solved this to my satisfaction (Let me know if you have.), but I’m compelled to share some good news today. Three “good news’s,” in fact:

1. Mogadishu is being rebuilt.
The capital of the perennially broken state of Somalia is taking steps toward recovery. While al Shabab continues to wreak havoc, infrastructure investments and improved security builds hope for a new day. Happily, the reconstruction has opened doors for Somali women serving as engineers and project managers. 

2. The New York Declaration
“Seventeen countries, plus the 22-member Arab League and the entire European Union,” signed a document agreeing on three things: The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 was evil, that Hamas should turn over their weapons and power to the Palestinian Authority and that the path to peace in the Middle East includes a two state solution. 

3. Joshua Project launches fresh Adopt a People effort! 
“People Group Adoption is a commitment to prayer, advocacy, and partnership. It’s about seeing entire communities transformed by the gospel—especially in places where Jesus is not yet known.” Let’s do it!

If you’ve got a good news or two, I’d be happy to have you share them with me. 

After inviting countless Muslims to follow Jesus and countless Christians to give everything for Jesus, on Saturday, July 19th, Greg Livingstone went to be with Jesus. He heard the, “Well done, good and faithful servant” that he’d dreamed about for so many years. 

I didn’t know Greg as well as I wish I had and I didn’t get to know them until way too late in the game. 

In the early days, he was my missionary hero, the guy who did a Perspectives class at Penn State University and recruited four intrepid guys to move to Libya: An event which helped catalyze the beginning of Caleb Project and Frontiers and so many other good things.

Later, he was the guy who believed in the ethnographic research teams we were doing when few others did and perhaps no one should’ve. Greg said, “Yeah, I’ll try anything. I’ll listen to anyone, even a bunch of college kids if it might result in some Muslims finding Christ.” When a flood prevented our team from going to Khartoum, and then also our plan b, Dhaka, Greg advised us to go to Bombay. He gave us one phone number! On the strength of his reputation, that contact led to another and to another and eventually to three months that irrevocably changed my life. 

When Caleb Project went out of business, I happily accepted Bob Blincoe’s invitation to crash land at Frontiers and began to look for a chance to bump into Greg Livingstone. On the rare occasion that happened, I was like a kid meeting his favorite player at a ball park, embarrassed, tongue-tied, but happy for the encounter. 

Years down the road when my marriage fell apart, Greg jumped into the fray and sent the most sincerely apologetic and empathetic email ever to land in my box. After the divorce, he and I developed a friendship that has legit been one of the delights of my life. We sent emails. We chatted on the phone. We made a few wildly lo-fi videos and I was blessed forever. 

The power of that guy to encourage! He’s the only one who ever said “Shabash” to me. (Urdu for “well done.”) If you’ve ever gotten one of those from Greg, and I’m sure some of you have, you know it leaves a mark!

Greg was such a blessing to me: hero, mentor, terrible marriage counselor, but such a good, encouraging, inspiring friend. May God raise up a thousand like him in his place.

Have you ever thought about the Nation of Islam? With “Islam” in the title, you’d think the org would be of some interest to the Muslim Connect tribe. In the past I’ve thought very little about it. A message from a high school friend last week however, prompted a brief, but deep dive into this quasi-Muslim religion. Here’s the upshot:

1. It’s not Islam. At the risk of being offensive (and wrong!), NOI is Islamic in the way that Mormons are Christians; some similar beliefs alongside irreconcilable differences. NOI can be understood as a religious-political movement designed to confirm and demonstrate African American capacity, beauty and legitimacy.
2. Its origin story and the life of its founder are bonkers! Wallace Fard Muhammad founded NOI in Detroit, Michigan in 1930. His backstory up to 1930 and his disappearance in 1934 would be a terrific act one of a compelling movie.
3. NOI’s second leader, Elijah Muhammad took them from a few hundred members to a reported 500,000 at the time of his death in 1975.
4. Plot Twist: At Elijah Muhammad’s death, his seventh son, Warith Deen Mohammed, took over. A bit of a rebel, Warith had been excommunicated from NOI five times! After assuming the helm, he led most of the NOI members in conversion to mainstream Sunni Islam!
5. Louis Farrakhan revived the NOI in 1978 and today it numbers up to 50,000 members, but influences many more. 

On the plus side, NOI promotes discipline, health and conservative sexual morals. It also advocates for Black identity in ways that are good and soundly beyond my comprehension. Sadly, NOI holds to mainstream Islamic teaching that Jesus is not God and the Bible is corrupted. 

Should God bless you or me with a budding friendship with someone in NOI, I think we’d do well to remember they’re a person before they’re “someone in NOI,” and further, let’s talk like we normally would about how great Jesus is. He is, as he always has been, the key piece in the puzzle. 

I’ve realized with regret that since I’ve become pastor of my church, I’m more concerned about people attending than I used to be. It’s not the money. A good portion of our giving is done online and we don’t pass a basket at services. I suspect I fear attendance is a measure of how people feel about me! On the plus side, it’s fun to have the room full!

Back in the day, full time attendance for most churches meant congregants being in the building 4-6 times a week. It became 3-4 times a month when Sunday and Wednesday night services mostly went away. Now for many Christians, full time attendance equals 1-2 times a month! 

Thinking about this makes me wonder about Muslims in the U.S. and how often they go to the mosque. Certainly church buildings and mosques are not entirely parallel, but they do serve some similar purposes. 

First, the high bar: What percentage of American Muslims go to prayers five times a day? 42%, according to a Pew Research Center survey in 2017. What would the Christian equivalent be? Five daily quiet times? That percentage is amazing to me. 

Sunday services and Friday prayers are roughly similar weekly events for Christians and Muslims. How many Muslims attend Friday prayers? 45% of men, but only 13% of women. That pencils out to 35-40% of Muslims attending weekly services. For Christians, the number is about 29%. But only if you count all Christians. If you just count Protestant Evangelicals, the number bumps up to 58%! (This illustrates the statistical principle that says if you draw the circle where you want, you can get the answers you want!)

But wait a second: If you allow Mormons on the court, both Protestants and Muslims look bad: Latter Day Saints attend a weekly service at a rate of 69%

Of course this is self-reported data for all the above groups. If you want a scary dose of reality, check out this cell phone data based survey. You probably don’t want to see it! But this is for sure: It makes me glad for everyone of my people every Sunday they attend.

Special Thank you:
I’m grateful for those who gave in response to the past month’s campaign. You all donated enough to cover half the cost of one of my family member’s trip to Guatemala! Kudos and Gracie Mille! 

Please see the timely announcement at the end of this email. 

As Americans we seem to need a boogeyman: A big, scary nemesis, on whose demise we pin our hopes for security, prosperity and a happy ending. These days Iranians and immigrants occupy the top two slots on our Boogeyman Top Ten. You can imagine your way down the rest of the list. (If you’re not American, can you tell me, does your country do this?)

A prayer letter from a friend today prompted an arresting thought for me: On the one hand, Iran is a leading recipient of US ire, while on the other hand, it is likely Iranians are turning to Jesus from Islam in greater numbers than anywhere else on the planet! (Read more here.)

Certainly correlation does not equal causation, but in this instant it should be cause for contemplation. As Christians, let’s be careful to distinguish between the rulers and the ruled. Iran may be our enemy, but Iranians are not. In fact, maybe a million of them are our sisters and brothers in Christ.

Since most Iranians follow the Shia branch of Islam, this weekend is a good time to pray for them. July 5th and 6th marks the Islamic celebration of Ashura, the annual Shia commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, Muhammad’s grandson.

For info and ways to pray check out this helpful one page prayer guide. This video offers an on the ground look at some of the unsettling customs associated with Ashura. 

In other news:
Our family is planning to go to Guatemala this fall with my org, Healing Nations. We’ll spend a week seeing eye patients (mostly Dr. Anna!) and caring for overlooked people. This will be our first family cross-cultural experience. 

Over the past three weeks I’ve invited you to consider a gift to help cover the cost of this trip. Thank you to those who’ve given. This is at the last of those requests. I invite you to partner with us in this effort which we expect will have life-long impact on our kids, ages 11, 13, and 16. If God leads you give, click here, select “Healing Nations Trips,” type in “Bennetts’ October Trip.” Thank you very much.

Please see the timely announcement at the end of this email. 

John says in his third letter that he has no “no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” I got a little bit of that this week as our “Little Middle” daughter befriended a Muslim girl at their middle school STEM camp. 

There are at least three reasons it’s good for Christian kids to befriend Muslim kids (probably 83!):

1. Connecting with people not like them helps form a deep-down, fundamental understanding that different people see things in different ways. This helps combat the all too common current sentiment that assumes, “The way I see things is the way they are and people who ‘see’ them differently are stupid. . . and probably evil.”

2. If you build a decent friendship with a Muslim kid, maybe you get to the point you can talk about stuff you have in common like Jesus and how great he is, about Moses and what we can learn from him, and how to navigate challenging lives before the face of God.

3. Befriending a Muslim becomes a data point. It doesn’t say everything about every thing, but it does break down some of the weirdness of, “Oh my gosh, that person is different from me. I’ve heard I should be afraid of them and angry with them,” replacing it with, “but I’m not because I have this friend who is frankly amazing.”

Since my A-girl has set such a beautiful example, I’ve got to go this afternoon and meet her friend’s dad. I’ll try to do good like my daughter has done good and befriend him, show him the honor he merits and learn some good stuff from him.

Finally, this nascent friendship gave my daughter a rare and wonderful gift today: She witnessed the relief and joy in her friend’s eyes as she shared that today, after nine years of work, trials and tears, while the kids were at STEM camp, learning about trains and bridges, her mom was at the state capital becoming a U.S. citizen!

Timely Request:
Muslim Connect has always been free and will alway be so. That said, a couple of times a year, I invite grateful readers to donate to help it thrive. This summer, I have a special request: Our family of five is going to Guatemala in October with our church and Healing Nations to care for some overlooked people. You can read about these trips here. If Muslim Connect has helped, encouraged, informed or poked your buttons, please consider giving a gift that will help me, my wife and our three kiddos get to Guatemala. We expect this journey to be extremely formative in the kids’ lives. Anna will continue to help poor and underserved people see better. I’d be grateful for your gift. Click here, select “Healing Nations Trips,” type in “Bennetts’ October Trip.” Thank you to those who’ve given. You’ve been so helpful! We’re almost halfway to the goal!

Please see the timely announcement at the end of this email. 

I put my wife on a plane to Guatemala this morning. (If you find typos in this email, it’s because it didn’t pass under her wise and careful gaze en route to your inbox.) While she’s seeing a ton of patients and helping them see the leaves on a tree or their grandkids’ faces, the kids and I will be here pining for her return. 

We’ll be fine, I expect, but waiting stinks. Sometimes in little ways, like our waiting for Anna’s return. Too often in big and brutal ways: 

A friend waiting for a likely sobering diagnosis or for treatment to commence after getting the report. 

A mom in Gaza waiting to see if her husband comes home with bread or comes home at all. 

Farmers everywhere waiting for the rains to come or to stop. 

Unengaged people groups waiting for the first ambassador of Christ to move into the neighborhood. 

People all over the world waiting to see what Israel will do next, how Iran will respond and whether or not the U.S. will join the fray. 

And finally there is this waiting: My friend’s wife, Miriam, and two team mates recently went to Jerusalem with a message of hope and life in Jesus. Now they’re learning the ins and outs of air raid shelters while they wait for a way out that doesn’t include the closed airport. 

This afternoon she said I could ask you all to pray in these wonderful ways:

For those serving in the Holy Land to have Psalm 91 protection.

For the Christians, Muslims and Jews who live in Jerusalem to be protected by the Hand of ADONAI. (Zephaniah 3:15)

For Persians and Hebrews to reestablish healthy economic & political relations.

And though she didn’t ask, please also pray for Miriam and her friends to quickly find God’s way out of danger, and for my bud as he awaits his wife. His waiting is clearly more challenging than mine. 

Timely Request:
Muslim Connect has always been free and will alway be so. That said, a couple of times a year, I invite grateful readers to donate to help it thrive. This summer, I have a special request: Our family of five is going to Guatemala in October with our church and Healing Nations to care for some overlooked people. You can read about these trips here. If Muslim Connect has helped, encouraged, informed or poked your buttons, please consider giving a gift that will help me, my wife and our three kiddos get to Guatemala. We expect this journey to be extremely formative in the kids’ lives. Anna will continue to help poor and underserved people see better. I’d be grateful for your gift. Click here, select “Healing Nations Trips,” type in “Bennetts’ October Trip.”