CENTRAL ASIAN REPUBLICS Fall 2008
Talking with a Tajik pastor
“I know we must be true followers of Jesus"
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*photos do not represent individuals in the story *names have been changed to protect believers |
Mehrzod* used to laugh at the cross.
A Pamiri man from Tajikistan, he knew nothing about Christianity except the little he had heard about the so-called “Baptists.” And none of it was good.
“In my heart I felt bad things about them. I was always fighting with their children,” he says, referring to his neighbors.
Then one day during Tajikistan’s civil war in the early 1990s, Mehrzod had a dream. In the dream he heard a voice say, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Living in the middle of a war, without food, trying to take care of his wife and young daughter, Mehrzod was indeed weary and heavy laden, but the significance of the words didn’t hit him until he met a man with a Bible not long after having the dream.
“One day a guy came to me and said we need to go out. In his hands there was a Bible. I picked it up and said, ‘It’s a pretty book.’” Mehrzod looked more closely and realized it was a Bible.
“I just opened it up to the middle and there was the verse that I had heard before. My hair stood up on end. I was amazed. I didn’t understand. How could this be?”
Suddenly, Merzhod was looking at the cross with curiousity rather than disdain. He called his brother, who was living in Moscow, and said, “Hey, I need a Bible.” Merzhod didn’t know it, but his brother had become a believer. A week later a stranger knocked on Merzhod’s door.
“He was quiet, didn’t want anyone to know he was in there. But it was a polite knock, so I thought if it was a bad person he would bang on the door. I asked, ‘Who is it?’ The man said, ‘I’ve just come from Moscow and I’ve brought a Bible for you.’”
Merzhod gratefully received the Bible. He opened it to the book of John.
“From the first verse in John it is very clear that Jesus is the Word and the Word is God, so Jesus must be God. All of my thoughts turned upside down. I became really free,” he says.
The message of the cross is no longer foolishness to Merzhod, who since receiving Jesus has given his life to serving him. Today, he understands how it feels to be the family on the street whom neighbors avoid.
“On a family level, one thing is really tough. My children are being raised without any friends. All my neighbors know that we’re believers and they don’t let their kids play with ours, and this is really hard.”
Merzhod’s passion, however, is helping his children and other believers to see what it means to follow Jesus in every situation. To that end, Merzhod is passionate about house church—about believers gathering together around God’s Word in their homes.
“At first, I just saw that the church was supposed to worship using the Russian traditions. This tradition of singing with guitars and a big choir—it is not a Tajik tradition. But then I understood that the Word of God is enough for the Tajik people,” he explains.
“This is the road that we’ve taken… that the church meets in my house, and even though my house is really small, there are lots and lots of people who come in.”
Merzhod says he used to think that churches had to have programs and orders of service, “but now we have a real church and it’s not a program. We pray and ask the Holy Spirit, ‘What do you have for us?’ And we get everybody’s thoughts and we talk about these things.
“Last week a guy came from another church and worshiped at my house. He saw the way our children would come in and out and talk. He said, ‘You can’t do it this way. You must sit quietly and worship. You must do it this way.’ “But I said, ‘This is real life; this is how we live. The Word of God comes to us where we live and naturally.’ This guy was really surprised.”
Merzhod continues: “My ideas about the church have completely changed. If there is a church that is really tied to the Lord, then it has a chance. But there are a lot who are really tied to their system. Our door is always open; it is never closed. I know that we must be true followers of Jesus; more than this, I don’t know.
“Your children should see the work of the kingdom going on, not just hear a lesson about the work. They should see miracles happen, they should see lives changed, they should see people proclaiming Christ, not just hearing lessons about it. If the church is in your home, then they see it happening. This should be the normal life of the church.”
Merzhod says the church in Tajikistan is enjoying a period of grace which will not last forever.
“Right now in Tajikistan Islam’s hands are tied. As we go out and profess Christ in freedom, it’s going to rise up against us. It’s going to break loose and come against us.
“I don’t believe that everybody in Tajikistan is going to become believers; I believe that God has fruit out there and we must gather that fruit. We aren’t going to win people to faith just by preaching a pretty sermon; it’s going to come through difficulty. People are not just going to come to Christ in one day. They’re going to come to Christ through a lot of difficulties and trials. I believe this. From which way (are the trials) going to come? I don’t know. But I know that Jesus is looking for true worshippers.”
Please pray for the church in Tajikistan
- Ask God to bless the young Tajik church with purity of heart and freedom from the love of money.
- Ask God to bless men like Merzhod with servant hearts so that they can serve the church, their families and their neighbors in the manner Jesus taught his disciples when he washed their feet.
- Pray for the Tajik church to reproduce into unreached villages throughout the country of Tajikistan.
Learn more about the peoples of the former Soviet Union
Kazakhs :: Kyrgyz :: Muslims of Moscow :: Tatar :: Turkmen :: Uzbe