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Floyd Horst, veteran missionary to the Philippines, was taking us to a meeting of Agape Fellowship on the campus of Mindanao State University in Marawi City, on the island of Mindanao. We left Iligan City where the Horsts lived and drove south, past the Iligan airport. Shortly, the first Mosque appeared on our left, and we were entering Muslim territory. It seemed that a cloud hovered over us, though the sun shone brightly.
We passed through a few tiny barrios on the way, but mostly it was rice paddies with a few other crops, being tended by hand or plowed by carabao. I noted the rice paddies, separated by earthen dams, with hard-packed paths along the top of them. Occasionally, I could see down a narrow lane through the palms to a cluster of tiny nipa huts where several families lived.
As I saw these tiny villages, a story of the Lord's ministry came to mind. He had ministered to throngs, healing the sick and casting out demons. In the morning, He rose early, and went to a solitary place to pray. When the disciples found him they urged him to come back to the town and continue his ministry. He said to them, "Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth."
When he spoke of towns, he was talking about the little villages that dotted the countryside, much as these little barrios did. I remembered the parable of the great feast where the king sent out his messengers into the "highways and hedges." The highways were not like our interstates, nor even our county roads. They were the wide lanes where even a chariot might pass. And the hedges - that was the little space between fields,(like the space between rice paddies) where men could walk.
And I wondered; had anyone yet gone down that little "highway" between the palms and told the people in that cluster of nipa huts about Jesus?
In the outskirts of Marawi City, we passed the little place where once the late Frank Laubach had lived and taught his literacy method, "each one teach one." We saw "Signal Hill" where he often went to pray. As we saw it, I wondered why his plan to spread literacy throughout the country, so that men might read the Word of God, had failed? The plan was a great one; but it failed in the execution of it.
Later that day a crowd of Christian students and faculty members gathered for me to speak. I could not get away from the phrase, "next towns also." And that is the challenge that I lay before them. You do not need to hold a massive evangelistic crusade with a famous evangelist to reach the nation for Christ - if each of us, if each Christian congregation, were to go to the next town. No vast organization would be needed. Just go to the next town. And those can then go to the next town, until all have heard.
Perhaps I was influenced by Laubach's plan; each one teach one. Not just to read, but to know the Living Word.
As I spoke, I could hear the cry of the "muezzin" (crier) from the minaret (tower) of a near by mosque calling the Muslims to prayer. I knew that to do even such a simple thing would involve difficulties, perhaps even death, in this Muslim area. But, here was the Lord's command, there were the towns and the people, and if it is to be done, here are the kind of people who must do it; by whatever means is necessary.
At that moment the vision that has birthed Omega was conceived. In July of that year (1980) Omega World Misssions was incorporated, with offices at the U.S. Center for World Mission at Pasadena, California. OWM functioned as a cooperating agency of that key organization for four years. Since moving to Victorville Omega continues to carry on in the philosophy of the USCWM, focusing on the least evangelized peoples of the world.
That is what we are doing, by God's grace, through our sister
organization in the Philippines. In the north, where there was
no Muslim presence (although communist rebels were a problem),
it began by holding literacy classes in tiny mountainside villages.
In the Muslim areas, it is done by agricultural projects, literacy
work, health ministries, mercy
ministries, and "whatever gets the job done." Much of
it now is teaching and equipping the young converts with knowledge
of God's Word, and holding them up in prayer as daily they put
their lives on the line in these areas.
And in this area right now, some are going "to the next towns." And, seeing the change in men's lives because of "Isa" (Jesus), Muslim sultans (elders) are actually inviting native Christians to come to their villages! Let us pray that God may bless their testimony, and protect them from enemies, so that all may hear.
Doug Montague and family work in Indonesia and Malaysia to strengthen the hand and encourage the heart of the church in those areas. Doug conducts leadership training and discipleship ministries in conjunction with existing churches, and assists the local body in church planting efforts there.