In October of 2018 we founded al kanisa al masihiya fi Madrid—the Christian Church of Madrid—an Arabic-language weekly fellowship. We were meeting in a borrowed space from a Latino Assemblies of God congregation in Tetuan, a neighborhood with a large Muslim population north of downtown.

It’s easy to compare the Old and New Testaments and think of missionary activity – the outward-focused spreading of faith in the God of the universe – as something new and unprecedented until Jesus’ time. After all, there is little evidence that Israelites traveled very far outside the Promised Land except as prisoners of war. However, a closer look at the Hebrew Bible shows that God had threaded mission as a constant theme throughout his word, and even into the very fabric of Creation.