What Does Gospel Proclamation and Discipleship Look Like in a City of Multiple Languages
How much have you heard about Dubai?
Dubai is a large city of 4.5 million people who are from every country in the world. 89% of the people are from outside the UAE. That means there are lots of different languages spoken in the city.
Now, English is the language of the city for business. Arabic is the national language. Most people can speak some English. However, English is not the heart language for the majority of the people in Dubai.
How does this impact disciple-making?
What it means is that most people hear the gospel and are discipled in their second or third language, English. Furthermore, because English is the business language of the city most of the churches worship in English. This creates a beautiful picture of church when you have in some cases 60+ ethnicities all worshipping together in the same language.
It also has its limitations. Think about preparing a sermon to preach to one of these congregations. You have native English speakers with post doctorate education levels all the way down to individuals who haven’t completed secondary education who only speak English at a 1st or 2nd grade level. How do you engage all of those people in the same sermon? How much of the sermon do certain sections of the congregation understand and comprehend? It is a great challenge.
So, the multiple languages impact corporate worship in the church, and they also impact one-to-one discipleship. Recently, I met a lady who heard the gospel in English and came to faith reading an English Bible. However, English is not her heart language. After coming to faith, she was baptized in an English-speaking church and then discipled in English.
A month ago, this woman realized that she did not know how to pray in her heart language. She realized she had never shared the gospel in her heart language. She didn’t know how to study the Bible or make disciples in her heart language. This is a big deal because she is much more expressive in that language. Her prayer life could be deeper and more specific. She also could share the gospel with her family and people in her home country if she was more comfortable using her heart language to study the Bible and pray.
Dubai is an amazing place where people from all backgrounds come together to live, work and worship. We praise God for the opportunities that exist in Dubai. We praise God for English speaking, multi-cultural churches that preach the gospel. And we want more! But we also need churches in many other languages like Tagalog, Urdu, Hindi, Oromo, Farsi, Dari, and Arabic.
Prayer Requests
Please pray with us for many more churches to be planted across the UAE in many different languages.
Pray for strong believers who are willing to give their time and energy to disciple others in their heart language.