There is a church in a central Asian country that wanted to make disciples, but that mission became more difficult, and more dangerous with every news bulletin that aired.

As the political situation in the country grew ever more intense, the government wanted to stifle any potential dissidence. That meant restricting the ability to meet in public places and greater scrutiny on certain religious groups that weren’t deemed “approved.” One day, Marcus, an elder at the church, heard rumors from the next city over that another church just like theirs had gotten in trouble with the government for hosting a Bible study in a public park. He called a meeting with the other elders.

“We need to tell our Bible study groups to meet secretly in their own homes!” he said.

“How can we?” replied another elder. “Our people aren’t used to facilitating their own meetings, and we can’t be everywhere at once!”

Just then the third elder walked through the door.

“i’m sorry I’m running,” he said. “I was just on the phone with Katherine. She was just released from government custody. They held her for four hours of questioning!“

This news only made matters worse. Katherine was one of their key leaders. She had a passion for evangelism and discipleship and was always busy leading others to faith.

Over the coming weeks, people in the church began to drift. Many stopped showing up for Sunday services, one of the few times they were still allowed to meet in such a large group. There were always mumblings and rumors about who might be watching. It felt oppressive. They tried to empower more leaders to meet as small groups in the privacy of their own homes, but the people weren’t used to facilitating small group Bible study and discipleship, so many of the meetings simply didn’t happen. Sometimes, these inexperienced leaders, just trying to do their best, chose books to go through with their small groups, but the elders found that many of these books taught bad theology. There simply wasn’t much good Christian materials available in their country.

“I’m sorry, Katherine,” said Marcus. “But the more people meet privately in their homes, the more they are being led astray! They are reading books that teach them not to trust the Bible as the word of God, or that Jesus wasn’t really who He said He was. It’s our job to protect the church from false teaching, so we’ve got to put a temporary hold on these groups. Just until things calm down with the government.”

“I’ve been thinking about this problem, actually!” Katherine said. “There’s an app that is available for anyone to download for free. I’d like to show it to you and the other elders. I think it could solve our problem!”

The elders met again, this time with Katherine. She showed them the Waha app and they loved it! With its push and play functionality, it made it easy for anyone to facilitate a Bible study, even if they had never led anything in their entire lives. And because they didn’t have to worry about false teaching from the app. It simply presents the Bible without commentary, asking a few inductive questions about what people are learning from scripture an how to apply it to their lives. It even has self-correction built into its meetings, so that if anyone shares something incorrect, the group steers itself back toward the Bible itself.

The elders decided to give it a try. They were a little nervous rolling it out at first, but soon found that their group leaders were more confident than ever! When they gathered for meetings, they were all looking down at their phones, not a paper Bible, so any potential government authorities never reported them. They just assumed everyone was looking at social media! Waha also included safety features to disguise the app, making it safe from prying eyes.

But what was even better was that the leaders didn’t need to go searching for discipleship materials. By simply allowing the app to facilitate an open-ended discussion of Biblical text without any commentary, the church experienced growth in both numbers and maturity.

One day Katherine joined Marcus and his wife for tea, and his jaw dropped to the floor upon hearing what she had to say.

“16 groups!” she said, grinning. “Our little ministry of 6 Bible studies has grown to 16 groups! Some of those are even second generation, meaning that the people in the Bible studies found it so easy that they went and started their own groups at home!”

The church said it feels like something big is happening. They do not have exact numbers because it can be dangerous to collect that kind of data, but it seems like there are more groups multiplying that they might not even know about. They are growing in both numbers and spiritual maturity, in the face of intense persecution!