Open doors & emerging opportunities

This map highlights the world’s Muslim-majority countries stretching from Northwest Africa to Southeast Asia. There are more than 1.5 billion adherents to Islam worldwide representing one of the greatest (and most challenging) mission fields for the Gospel. We are primarily working with ministries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) including the Arabian Peninsula.

Rooted in hundreds of languages and cultures, and fragmented into Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, and other streams, Islam has many faces as its adherents seek to know God and salvation. Internationally, ministries are coming together to share learning and research and to develop joint strategies for inviting the Islamic world to follow Jesus. At the national and regional levels, linguistic ministries continue to demonstrate powerful outcomes as they join hands in effective partnerships. Islam’s militant, fundamentalist sectors, and the continuing conflicts in the greater Middle East make for daily headlines in our press. While political change may be the immediate motivation, the recent and continuing revolutions in that region demonstrate that these societies, particularly powered by their younger generations, are ready to consider new options.

The Gospel has not had such an open door in the Islamic world in the last several hundred years. Dozens of high-priority countries, language groups, and specialized Islamic ministries desperately need coordination through effective partnerships to increase effectiveness and see acceleration of evangelization. At the same time, there is a need for increasing collaboration between Christians who will approach Muslims with love and respect, not allurement or coercion or force. The extraordinary changes in Islamic areas where there have been effective partnerships demonstrate the critical need to prioritize Kingdom collaboration in this sector.

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Our work in this area

In an average year, VisionSynergy serves 6-8 networks and partnerships involving hundreds of organizations focused on ministry to Muslims – from national partnerships in the Middle East and North Africa, to large regional networks that have a shared vision to reach unengaged Muslim people groups. Members of our team have worked in the Islamic world since the 1970s and have a wide-ranging network of significant relationships. We are the primary advisors to multiple networks seeking to coordinate church-planting efforts on-the-ground as well as evangelistic outreach to Muslims through internet and mobile strategies.

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