When Lina*, a Haggai leader living in the middle east, reflects on her Haggai Leader Experience (HLE), it’s the free, open expression in worship sessions that she remembers most fondly.

“It was a glimpse of what heaven will be like.”

For someone working in a context where sharing faith comes with significant risk and opposition, that vision sustains her spiritually.

In her community, 95% of the population adhere to a majority religion, and the past two years have brought political obstacles that make public faith-sharing even more difficult than before. There are deep cultural misunderstandings about Christianity. Despite these hurdles, she is making a Gospel impact.

Lina works as a registered nurse and internship coordinator for an international, respected Christian NGO, and through those dual roles she is illustrating the love of Christ through physical care and spiritual discipleship. She leads a program equipping young believers to share their faith in their communities, replicating the Haggai model on a local level.

In 2025 alone, the interns in her program engaged in 845 Gospel conversations, with over 30 people deciding to follow Christ. In her role as a registered nurse, Lina oversees mobile medical clinics that reach displaced people with critical care, a physical illustration of the Gospel.

The Haggai Leader Experience as a Turning Point

By any measure, Lina already leads with excellence. The HLE took what she was already doing and refined it, sharpened it, and gave it new direction. She describes the HLE as deeply encouraging. She gathered with women from across the Middle East who shared her calling to equip believers for Gospel witness. Together, they focused on clarifying individual visions and setting concrete goals.

Lina gained a fresh understanding of new age belief systems and how they’re being integrated into the majority religion in her region. This has equipped her to speak more effectively with younger generations in both areas of her work. She can address misconceptions not just about Christianity but about the spiritual frameworks her neighbors are adopting.

Equipped with clearer vision and stronger tools for her specific context, Lina returned home to multiply what she’d learned. The interns in her program learn not just Gospel content but how to lead with conviction grounded in understanding. The young people in her youth groups see faith lived out in action and relationship. The new believers she disciples become multipliers themselves, equipped to witness in their own circles.

This is what equipping strategically positioned leaders looks like: one leader’s growth ripples outward, shaping a community’s capacity to share the Gospel holistically.

*name changed for privacy

written by Janay Cyphers