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Brother Andrew, author of the book God's Smuggler and a former missionary to the Soviet Union, now focuses on ministry in the Muslim world via Open Doors. Stan Guthrie, senior associate news editor for Christianity Today, interviewed Andrew about his new book, Light Force (Revell, 2004, with Al Janssen). The book details the struggles of churches trying to survive in the Middle East and Andrew's attempts to reach out to militant Islamic groups.

Your ministry in the Soviet bloc ended around 1967. Was publicity surrounding God's Smuggler the cause?

With [God's Smuggler], in order to protect my friends, I couldn't go back there.

Was that a surprise?

No, not really. I even think the same about [Light Force]. Can I go back to the Muslim work? But there's no advantage without taking a risk anyway.

So, I didn't feel too bad about not going back to the Soviet Union because, by then, we had a lot of people in place and missions functioning. And they're still working in many of those areas.

But you can go back now.

Yeah, [but it's] no fun. I'm entirely in the Muslim world now.

Why?

Because I foresaw, although I was not able to define it and communicate clearly, that the next round of confrontation and therefore persecution would come from the world of Islam and not from Communism, which I already saw was in its dying days at that time. But Islam grew stronger, especially in the '70s when the oil crisis erupted in the world. The Western world was on its knees in front of the mosque.

What have been your main areas of focus in the Muslim world?

My personal focus would be the Middle East. That's what this book is about, and the main outreach that we have is a little farther east in several Muslim countries.

What is your goal in helping persecuted Christians?

The principle that we have always followed is "Seek your brothers." Is there a church? What is it like? What do they need? They do not need us as Westerners, but they need our resources, our encouragement, our prayers. And if only out of pure selfishness, you should concentrate there because you find a lot of answers to questions that we are going to face in the near future: how to deal with Islam; how to deal with fundamentalism; how to deal with "terrorism."

If we would know, we could have prevented a lot of atrocities. But we haven't. We don't know [Islam]. I want to learn. Out of pure selfishness, we should get involved, to learn.

[In comparison,] Communism was so easy, really easy. We now refer to Communism as "the good old days of Communism." And yet we'll never know how many Christians were killed, let alone the millions of others that were killed, under Stalin.

But what's happening under Islam? How many are killed there? What is the structure there that seems so strong that we cannot penetrate it? Why is the church so weak in those countries? Why are there so few missionaries? Why is there so little support from the Western evangelical churches toward those that work in the Muslim world? All these things baffled us at the time. And I want to know.

So that's why we go there. We have a two-pronged approach, to strengthen the church, and then we learn from Islam, apply it to our own situations, and return full circle, to strengthen the church there and prepare the church in our countries better. This is basically our original vision statement in relation to Communism. You learn so much from them that you apply at home. The first blessing is for us. I think the same is happening now.

Why did you write Light Force?

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February (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49