Case study
While Calum and Megan* were university students in their native Scotland, they met several overseas students, including a number from the Arab world. During this time, they began to sense the Lord calling them to work abroad as missionaries. They approached AWM in 1989 and became candidates the following year.
We felt the call to go somewhere where there was almost no existing church.
Montpellier in the south of France was Calum and Megan’s first stop, where they launched into nine months of intensive language study and missionary training. Following this season of preparation, they shifted across the Mediterranean to join a church-planting team in Tunisia.
While living in North Africa, they were honoured to witness the Awake Tunisia ‘99 international prayer initiative and all the Lord did there that year. They had seen little church growth in the previous eight years, then suddenly, ‘people were being baptized every week!’ That experience ‘grew our faith enormously’. They witnessed that ‘God can and does do what seems to us impossible’.
By 2001, Calum and Megan were leading a church-planting team in the capital city, but sensed the Lord was moving them on. So, they returned to the south of France, this time to Marseilles, to join the media centre team. It was there Calum discovered that his ‘lifelong fascination with computer programming’ was God-given. This skill dovetailed with their experiences in Tunisia to birth an Arabic-language internet ministry. In 2007, Megan was appointed to lead this ministry, while Calum continued computer programming. In 2013, they joined the media team in the south of England, where they currently serve in these roles.
In the context of their media ministry, Calum and Megan have witnessed ‘God doing amazing things’. The entire Arab world is open ‘like never before’. The Arab Spring and its aftermath, mixed with unparalleled access to the internet, was a heady concoction. It left many Arab Muslims deeply disillusioned with Islam with the ability to hunt for answers. More are looking into Christianity than ever before – a search that begins online.
When Calum and Megan joined the media team in Marseilles in 2001, ministry was via radio, satellite television and Bible Correspondence Courses. In their years of media ministry, Calum and Megan have appreciated the need to keep at the forefront of current trends and developments. The peril of becoming ‘irrelevant and ineffective’ keeps the team pressing forward. So, after establishing a growing internet presence, media reshaped priorities to become a web-based ministry. Later they adapted to be mobile-friendly, as almost all of those searching online were using their smartphones rather than computers to access the internet. Social media became another core component of the ministry of media. Nowadays, instead of broadcasting a message to as wide an audience as possible, the team is listening to Muslim seekers and engaging with them in a personalised way that is relevant to them.
Living and working abroad for twenty-three years has its pluses and minuses. It has resulted in Calum and Megan losing touch with friends and family and with a lot of what has happened in the UK. However, they have learned about different cultures while working in a team spread across a number of countries, time zones and languages. They also have a keener sense of what is good and bad about their own culture. They see they could be in a position to help UK churches ‘think critically about our culture’ and what might be common blindspots for people who have lived in the UK all their lives.
*Names have been changed.
