It started with three kids peeking through the fence. Then, a few more joined them and found a way to get around the fence to the other side. By the end, more than 20 Afghani refugee children from the neighborhood behind the fence had joined Connection Church’s youth activity, and church planter Jonathan Lee couldn’t believe his eyes.
“They’ve been coming to our church on Sunday ever since,” he says.
Jonathan confesses that he didn’t know the first thing about church planting when he started on the journey in 2021. All he knew was that his community of Federal Way, Wash., a diverse area where more than 100 languages are spoken, needed a multiethnic church and God was calling him to start one.
“I never thought I was qualified to be a church planter because I thought church planters are super-pastors,” Jonathan laughs.
But as God continued to open door after door, and Jonathan and his family kept stepping through them, they saw God birth a church in their community. And that was exactly what led to that January evening a year and a half ago when Afghani kids just showed up at Connections Church.
Since then, Connections Church has had a chance to meet the parents of these children and another group of Syrian refugees in a nearby community. This past year, they saw a woman from Afghanistan place her trust in Christ and be baptized.
“At first, I asked God, ‘Why would you choose our church to bring these Afghani kids? There’s so many other larger churches with better resources,’” Jonathan shares. “But then, God made it obvious. We planted this multiethnic church with the intention of reaching out to all nations, and that’s why He was bringing these kids to us.”
So, Jonathan embarked on another journey of unknowns: he started looking for a Farsi and Arabic-speaking pastor who could help him shepherd the people who started coming to his church. And that’s when he met Jamal through the Northwest Baptist Convention.
“He’s Iranian, so he speaks Farsi, Arabic, and English. He was a Muslim before coming to Christ, so he understands how people think. He knows the Quran, and he can show how it’s different from the Bible,” explains Jonathan.
Now, Jamal and Jonathan plan to plant an Arabic-speaking church in metro Seattle to continue reaching the Muslim population. In just a few short years, Jonathan went from being someone who didn’t know anything about church planting to planting a church and sending others to do the same.
“I never asked for any of this, but God just brought it to us,” he says. “I sense that because we’re so open to what God would like to do in our community, God continues to bring these opportunities to us — even though we don’t have everything in place, we’re just willing to obey.”
But Afghani and Syrian refugees aren’t the only people Connections Church is reaching — they’ve also met people like Viet and his family, who come from a Buddhist background. Through a sports camp the church organized last summer, Viet and his family started attending church. After placing his trust in Christ, Viet shared the gospel with his brother, who also decided to follow Christ, and now they are both planning on being baptized during the next baptism service.
“Most people who attend our church right now never went to church before,” Jonathan says. “We’re working with a lot of new believers and unbelievers, too. I really believe we have such great potential with our church as more come to know Christ. It’s going to be a game-changer in our community.”
“I’m so blown away by Send Network,” he adds. “To know there is a group of people who believe in what God is doing through me and Connections Church— that was huge for me.”
To learn more about how your church can start taking steps of obedience to reach local communities with the gospel through church planting, visit SendNetwork.com/Mobilize. To find a place where you can network with other church planters just like Jonathan and learn from top church-planting practitioners in the country, register today for a Send Network Gathering near you.
Published July 11, 2024