Biography
Greg Livingstone was an American missionary and mission leader who gave his life to a single burden, that Muslim peoples across the world would hear the gospel in a way they could understand and would see churches planted among them. He did not come to that burden through theory. He came to it by going, by living among Muslims and by seeing how little the church was doing for people who made up a large part of the human race.
He first served in North Africa, where he lived and worked among Muslim neighbors in the years when few Western Christians dared to try. He learned the language and the customs, and he learned how deep the walls can be between a Muslim and the message of Christ. He also learned that most of the walls were not built by the Muslims. The church had often sent too few workers, trained them poorly, left them alone and pulled them out when things became hard. He saw that good people had given years and bore little fruit because no one had a plan for the long road.
Those years shaped what came next. In 1982 he founded Frontiers, a mission centered on making disciples and planting churches among Muslim peoples. From the start it was marked by a few firm convictions. Workers would go in teams so that no one was alone. They would learn the language well and live humbly among the people, and they would stay for the long term. The goal was not to gather a few converts and move on. The goal was a living church within each people, led by those who belonged there. Frontiers grew from a small group to a large mission with workers in many nations, and its work has reached into places where the name of Christ had hardly been heard.
He set out much of what he learned in a book, Planting Churches in Muslim Cities, which came out in the early 1990s. It became a guide for many who followed. In it he wrote plainly about the cost of the work, about the need for patience and about the danger of shortcuts. He argued that the church must send its best and not its leftovers. He pressed churches to give their strongest young people to hard fields and to support them with prayer and money for the long haul.
He was a driven man, and those who worked with him said so. He spoke with great directness and could be blunt. He challenged mission agencies and churches that he thought were comfortable and cautious. Some found him hard to work with and felt the weight of his demands. He was also warm, quick to laugh and generous with his time. Younger missionaries often said that he took a personal interest in them and prayed for them by name. His strong will and his tender heart lived together in him as they do in many pioneers.
His message to the church was always simple. The unreached will not be reached by those who stay at home. The Muslim world is not beyond the reach of Christ, and those who go with humility and love will find that God has been working there before them. He asked believers to count the cost and to give without holding back.
Frontiers continues his work, with teams living among Muslim peoples in cities and villages around the world. Many of those who serve today were drawn into mission by his example and teaching. His life is a witness to the power of one burden held for many years, and to the God who sends workers into the harvest when His people ask Him to.