“We have been waiting for this chance to study God’s Word,” Khadija said at the start of the Bible study.

Khadija and her husband, Rayan, live in a remote community—a place that may never have been open to the Gospel had it not been for Facebook.

Some months ago, Rayan started engaging with us on our team’s evangelistic Facebook page, where he watched videos about Jesus and read passages of Scripture.

Like hundreds of other Muslims who have visited the Facebook page, Rayan also studied the Word with our page’s bot, a software application that runs automated mini-Bible studies.

After Rayan completed the mini-Bible study, we connected him with one of our Muslim-background believing partners. This gave Rayan the chance to meaningfully interact with a follower of Jesus.

But before ever meeting a believer in person, Rayan had already shared Jesus with more than a dozen people. His entire family had started reading the New Testament with him, and he had even been studying the Word with several coworkers using a smartphone app our team developed.  

For his first in-person Bible study with Hamdi, one of our local partners, Rayan gathered five other men to study the biblical account of God’s creation of the world.

The next time Hamdi came to their home, Khadija said to him, “Let’s move past small talk. It’s time for the Bible study you said you would bring us. We’ve been waiting for it.” She was just as hungry for the Word as her husband was—if not more so.

Since starting this Facebook project, we’ve become more convinced than ever that the harvest is plentiful. Look at some of the recent messages our page has received:

• “I’ve been reading sections of the Gospel of Luke on your page. As I learn more about Jesus, for some reason I love God so much more. I have never seen the love of God in my religion before.”
• “I’ve learned a lot about Jesus [by studying on your page]. Jesus was given authority from God over everything and is more holy than any prophet who ever lived.”
• “My husband and I loved doing this Bible study together. If our society followed these teachings of Jesus, it would be much better for our country.”
• “I love the stories about the miracles of Jesus. A group of us gather at the university to talk about important things. And now we can start studying the New Testament together with these stories.”

We don’t have a harvest problem. The harvest is ripe! The problem we see is a lack of laborers.

To help more groups like Rayan and Khadija’s become mature fellowships of Muslim-background believers, we need more laborers like Hamdi.

To that end, we’re equipping a team of faithful local believers to walk with the most spiritually hungry people we find on Facebook and to help them start new Bible study groups.

• Praise God for the harvest, and pray that Rayan and Khadija’s entire family will respond to the Gospel and turn to Jesus Christ.
• Ask God to build a team of faithful local believers and workers who will connect with spiritually hungry Muslims on Facebook.
• Ask the Lord to use Frontiers teams’ social media ministries to reach Muslims and introduce them to eternal salvation through Christ.

**This account comes from a long-term worker. Names have been changed for security.**

Original article: https://frontiersusa.org/blog/bible-studies-with-bots