“Were you scared moving here?” we ask Jonas.
“Yeah, a little,” the smiling young man answers, and then relates the story of his transition from his predominantly Christian island in East Indonesia to this hard-core, widely-feared Islamic island of Madura.
I’m on Madura today with a short term team from a church in Boston, and we’re being introduced to the staff of an English center which is led by my friend Charles from California. A few years ago he and his family formed a team from the church they served in nearby Surabaya and moved across the Madura Strait to reach Muslim people with the good news of Jesus and to help serve them practically by teaching English. Jonas was one of the first to volunteer for the team and now works in the English center.
He continues, “I had heard all the stories about the Madurese, and about their bad reputation, but it has not been that way at all in my experience. I have felt very welcomed and have made a lot of friends.” Later he tells us a story of an older man he befriended after praying for the man’s leg to be healed. Jonas is studying the Scriptures with another Madurese friend he made. Seeds of the Gospel are being planted, people are being prayed for in Jesus’ name, and English is being offered to help the young people of this town escape poverty and have brighter futures.
Madura is a very poor place. It’s not fertile like its lush neighbor Java, and the 3.5 million living on the sparse, 2,500 square mile island scrap out a living anyway they can. In fact many have left their home island in search of work on other islands, and there are another 3.5 million or so living in East Java, mostly working as construction workers, steel recyclers and pedicab drivers. They have a reputation of being fierce, direct and sometimes dishonest. Other Indonesians are scared to get into quarrels with the Madurese. The island is also an isolated place. Until the Surabaya-Madura bridge was opened last year, the only way to get to the island was by ferry. That bridge has been a lifeline for Charles and his family back and forth to civilization.
The Madurese are the third largest ethnic group in Indonesia by population, and also one of the least reached. A few years ago in Surabaya, I was talking to a small group of friends working among this resistant people group. I asked these seasoned workers if they could estimate, throughout all of their networks, how many Madurese people have become believers in Jesus. They conferred together and finally came up with the number 30. In their estimation that’s a measly 30 people following Christ out of 7 million!
I remember a friend and mentor Steve Hawthorne teaching on the story from Luke chapter ten when Jesus sent out 72 disciples “two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.” Before Jesus told them to do anything else—before He instructed them to find the man of peace, eat whatever is set before them, heal the sick or proclaim the kingdom of God—He told them to pray. And Jesus’ prayer directive was very specific. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (verse 10).
When faced with such enormous numbers like 7 million and overwhelming need like widespread poverty, we can feel like even if we cloned ourselves 100 times it wouldn’t make a dent. But before Jesus’ disciples encountered the thousands of people in those villages and all of their needs, they were instructed to pray for more workers to be recruited right from the get go.
That’s why there was such joy in my heart when we crossed the sparkling new bridge to Madura today. The whole five-member team from Boston felt it too and we rejoiced as we listened to worship music and prayed together for God to make a way here so that Christ would be welcomed.
Pray that a movement would be started in Madura. And pray for whatever field your own feet find themselves in, that battle replacements would be raised up. Pray that the Lord of the harvest would send more workers to his harvest field.
