Any-3: Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime—Lead Muslims to Christ Now!

Three chapters of this book are excerpted in the Mission Frontiers it inspired, on starting discipling movements among Muslims.

Any-3 is a simple, effective, respectful, enjoyable and reproducible model of witnessing to Muslims which is introducing a new paradigm in Muslim ministry:

The Holy Spirit has used Islam to prepare many Muslims, within minutes or hours of hearing the gospel, to accept Christ as the atoning sacrifice for their sins, without the investment of months or years to build relationships.

After years of relatively fruitless ministry in a “resistant” Muslim land, Mike Shipman and his team developed the Any-3 approach to sharing the Gospel (with Anyone, Anywhere, at Any time) as a means of filtering for spiritual openness under the work of the Holy Spirit. They also identified and corrected various false perceptions that were crippling their ministry.

As a result they found the formerly “resistant” people among whom they had been working to actually be highly receptive. Mike describes the fruit seven years later:

More than 5,000 Muslims … have professed faith in Jesus Christ through Any-3 style evangelism. We are seeing believers and churches reproduce in multiplying generations. Of the more than 450 groups that have formed among our people group, one-third of them are fourth generation and beyond. … Any-3 provides us with a way to simply and effectively present the gospel to Muslims … . The power is in the gospel, not the method. …

We are doing today what very few people dreamed could be done among Muslims — sharing the gospel and often hearing them say, “Thank you.”

And this is taking place in the homeland of a Muslim people previously considered “resistant” to the Gospel!

Any-3 Distinctives

One thing that distinguishes Any3 is the simplicity of the method. A person can learn it in an hour, practice it with a friend that afternoon, and be ready to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in fruitful interaction with Muslims that evening!

Another distinctive of Any-3 is that it provides a simple and natural path for moving from casual conversation to a gospel presentation and inviting a positive response. Yet “it feels spontaneous and free, helping Christians live an evangelizing lifestyle.”

And “because its principles derive from the evangelism pattern modeled by Jesus, Any-3 can be adapted to virtually any culture or worldview.”

God is using Any-3 to awaken and empower His people to joyfully share the gospel once again. Those who do are experiencing for themselves the gospel’s power and joy.

Any-3 is a five-step process which starts with getting acquainted and leads to discovering whether the Holy Spirit is at work in that person’s life to convict them of sin and prepare them for salvation.

Overview
(2 pages formatted for printing)

The following material is adapted and reprinted with permission from Any3: Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime — Lead Muslims to Christ Now! by Mike Shipman (Richmond: WIGTake Resources, 2013), available from ChurchPlantingMovements.com/bookstore.

Following are the five steps, as outlined in pages 21-23. For the detailed explanation of the principles and rationale behind each step, get the book.

Step One: Get Connected

1. You can pursue this with anyone by asking two kinds of questions:
   – “Who are you?” questions to learn about their background, and
   – “How are you?” questions to learn about their current concerns.
2. Take time to get acquainted with them, their family. Be friendly and open.

Transition #1: “Are you Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or Christian?”

Step Two: Get to God

Step Two is accomplished with a question and an observation. The step two question is: “Most religions are alike, aren’t they?” Then make the observation: “We are all trying to please God, so we can go to heaven some day, and we are all trying to pay off our sin debt. We all sin, don’t we? Even good people sin. Sinning is easy, but paying off our sin debt to God is much more difficult, isn’t it?”

Transition #2: “In your religion, what are you doing to get your sins forgiven?”

Step Three: Get to Lostness

After asking the person what are some of the things they are doing in their religion to please God and get their sins forgiven, let them tell you two or three things they are doing. Listen attentively and don’t be afraid to ask questions along the way.

Wrap up the section by asking them three questions:

• “Are your sins paid off yet?”
• “When do you think your sins will be paid off?”
• “On Judgment Day, do you know that your sin debt will be paid?”

Transition #3: “What I believe is different; I know that my sins are forgiven. It is not because I am a good person, although I do try. I know my sins are forgiven, because God himself has made a way for our sins to be forgiven.”

Step Four: Get to the Gospel

Tell The First and Last Sacrifice Story. Finish by saying, “And that is why I know my sins are forgiven.”

Transition #4: “According to the Bible, if we surrender our life to Jesus as Lord and believe that He has paid for our sins through His sacrifice and that God has raised Him from the dead, our sins will be forgiven.”

Step Five: Get to a Decision

To bring your conversation to a decision, ask two questions:

• “This makes sense, doesn’t it? Although we cannot pay off our own sin debt, God has made a way for our sins to be forgiven through Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection.”
• “Do you believe what I have told you: that Jesus died for our sins and was raised again?”