Halfway through his term as a Journeyman with the International Mission Board (IMB) in West Africa, Elijah Harrington* shared the gospel with a Muslim man in a rural village who had never heard the gospel.
The man said to Elijah, “How come nobody has ever come before and told us this? This is too good to be true.” Elijah said that the experience stirred a desire in him to commit more years to overseas mission work, feeling it was a calling from the Lord.
“When you’re in the U.S., you have all these resources available, all these healthy churches with faithful believers,” Elijah said. “I want to be able to utilize that to go to places that don’t have that.”
Elijah and his wife, Jana*, have dedicated the past six years to missionary work in Southeast Asia serving with the IMB. In a closed country, they mainly minister to Muslim communities, navigating complex cultural landscapes while pursuing meaningful connections and supporting local churches to share the gospel with their neighbors.
Both Elijah and Jana have always had an interest in exploring different cultures and felt a call from the Lord to serve internationally with the IMB as Journeymen after college. The couple met during Field Personnel Orientation (FPO), a training session that all missionaries must complete before being deployed by the IMB.
Elijah and Jana continued to keep in touch after their respective terms concluded while Elijah went to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Jana moved home to Greenville, N.C. This connection eventually led to dating and then marriage, shortly after which Elijah and Jana felt the Lord calling them back to overseas missions, this time in Southeast Asia with the IMB.
Elijah works as a finance liaison and sales lead with a social enterprise as an entryway into their country. Focused on giving back to the community, the business employs 100% local people and pays them above a fair wage.
Within the business they have been granted many opportunities to make connections with the people in the area, but Elijah and Jana have also built strong relationships through getting to know others in the community. Jana has a passion for ministering to women and often participates in women’s groups with locals, bringing women from church along to encourage dialogue within the community.
While there are many believers and healthy churches in the area, many are uneducated on how to share the gospel “so they just don’t do it,” Elijah said. Many local Christians are also fearful of the local government as sharing the gospel could also endanger their life.
Over the past couple of years Elijah and his team have created the “Go Reach” program designed to get local Christians in their area of Southeast Asia involved in sharing the gospel with their communities. Elijah’s team travels to churches in their area encouraging them to share the gospel by offering a two- to three-week training where they will learn evangelism skills specifically targeted toward Muslims that they can then take back to their towns.
During this training, local believers and pastors will teach them how to share the gospel, how to be a faithful church member and help them understand what a Muslim believes so they can better share the gospel with Muslims. While Elijah’s team does some of the teaching, they desire for local believers to be as involved as possible.
“I’m trying to work myself out of a job, essentially,” Elijah said. “I’ve always felt like I always want everything to be locally led as much as possible. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I think we’re steps closer.”
Though the “Go Reach” program is just starting out, Elijah’s team has seen over 200 salvations of people with a Muslim background within the past year which continues to spur them on to continue mission work in Southeast Asia.
“There’s so many days where it’s hard, you feel discouraged, you feel lonely and you’re far away from family,” Elijah said. “But I think when you see local believers really catching on to the Great Commission, that’s our biggest encouragement for sure.”
The Harringtons will be recognized at the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina’s annual meeting during the joint N.C. Baptist-IMB Sending Celebration, a moment set to spotlight missionaries commissioned by North Carolina churches and pray over them as they continue their journeys.
*Names changed for security reasons.
(EDITOR’S NOTE — This article originally appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of the Biblical Recorder.)
