By Mary Asta Mountain, Southeastern Seminary staff
When Adam Muhtaseb committed himself to the work of Christ and the mission of making disciples, he did so wholeheartedly. He had no training, and yet he saw God use his enthusiastic resolve in many ways. As time went on, however, he became more and more aware of his need for theological training.
Adam Muhtaseb graduates from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Two years after he graduated college, God led him and his wife, Sherrie, to Southeastern to be equipped for ministry. At the same time, he led Adam to a local church and pastors who would shepherd him, working alongside Southeastern to prepare him for his future mission field: planting churches in Baltimore, Maryland.
A Heart Captured
Adam was introduced to Christianity and the local church against his will when he was ten years old.
Adam’s parents had separated when he was young, and his religious leanings followed those of his father who was Palestinian and Muslim. Adam’s dad brought him to the mosques whenever he visited on weekends. During those first 10 years of his life, Adam grew up following the five pillars of Islam, praying and fasting with his father. It was all he knew.
When his mother’s boyfriend brought both him and his mom to church for the first time, Adam’s heart was very hard towards the truth of the gospel. What he learned about Jesus and the triune God didn’t make sense with the worldview he had grown up with. However, over the next two years, God slowly began to soften his heart.
“The basic tenet of Islam teaches that you work your way to heaven through good deeds, and you avoid the bad deeds which subtract from your spiritual resume,” Adam explained. “Hearing the gospel over time and understanding it — I realized that Jesus lived a life I could not live and died the death I deserved, and he sought out people like me and died for me. Something about that just really captured my heart.”
One Friday night, when he and his mom usually curled up on the couch to watch a Disney movie, they turned on “The Jesus Film” instead, which a member of the church had given them.
That evening, God brought down the walls in both of their hearts, and Adam and his mother prayed together to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Called to Make Disciples
Over the next several years, Adam’s faith was present but not well nourished. The church he and his mother attended excelled at bringing people in, but it did not have a strong discipleship focus.
It wasn’t until his sophomore and junior year of college that Adam was challenged to fully commit to Christ, both in word and deed. He had begun attending a local Baptist church and there experienced regular expository preaching for the first time.
Adam began discipling friends at school. He didn’t quite know what he was doing or what it meant to disciple someone, but he knew God commanded it. So, he began meeting with five guys to read through chapters of the Bible together and encourage each other in the faith.
From those friendships, three of the guys would go on to ministry, and one of them — Sam Gallagher — would eventually join Adam in pursuing theological training at Southeastern.
While they were still in college, Adam and Sam began a bible study and college ministry called 121, based on Philippians 1:21. It started out small, but God grew the ministry exponentially until there were a hundred students attending.
It wasn’t until his sophomore and junior year of college that Adam Muhtaseb was challenged to fully commit to Christ, both in word and deed. He had begun attending a local Baptist church and there experienced regular expository preaching for the first time
It was during this time that Adam realized that he had a heart for ministry and for church planting. However, he also became aware of the many things he didn’t know.
He regularly gave sermons running an hour and a half long, but he had no training in expositing the word. Opportunities to make disciples abounded, but Adam had no ecclesiology with which to understand the relationship between a parachurch organization and the local church.
When he was approached with an opportunity to plant a church through 121, Adam turned it down. He was just out of college. He didn’t know how to plant a church. The church that he had grown up in hadn’t set a good example of what that should look like. If he was to pursue healthy ministry further, he needed to be properly equipped.
A Season of Formation
It was in 2014 that Adam and his wife, Sherrie, arrived at Southeastern. Over the next three years there, Adam pursued a Master of Divinity in Christian Ministry.
“Looking back on seminary,” Adam reflected, “those years are so important because they form you into who you are going to be for the rest of your life.”
One of the key factors that drew Adam to Southeastern was the chapel speaker he heard during preview day.
“I remember listening to him,” Adam said, “and thinking, ‘I want to be able to do what that guy just did. He just preached verse by verse through the Bible, and it was interesting. And I love Jesus more!”
So, Adam decided to enroll, and while he studied at Southeastern, he grew both in his understanding of God’s word and the practical application of his training.
New Testament with Chuck Quarles had a significant influence on him and his study of the Bible. He was deeply impacted by the way he saw his professor’s love for Christ overflow in his teaching and preaching of the Scriptures.
Adam also took a church planting class with Tony Merida, who, at the time, served both as an associate professor of preaching and as his pastor at Imago Dei Church.
This course and many others directly equipped Adam for his future ministry of planting churches.
“In those seminary years,” Adam said, “you want to develop the peace of Christ; you want to develop integrity; you want to develop a heart for evangelism; you want to be the kind of person that you want to multiply, so that when you do pastor or plant or whatever it is you do, you’re able to say, ‘Follow me as I follow Christ. And I think those years were a really big opportunity for me to just learn. There was no pressure on me. No one needed me for anything, and I could just watch and learn from those already in ministry and take in information.”
Ministry Lived Out
As Southeastern prepared Adam with the knowledge he needed, Imago Dei played the significant role of building Adam and Sherrie up spiritually within the body of Christ.
Adam explained, “Something that was key for me was pairing my seminary studies with my engagement with the local church.” This was what caused him to join the internship program, Aspire, at Imago Dei.
“It’s one thing to learn about Christ-centered preaching. It’s another thing to sit in the church and experience Christ-centered preaching, especially ecclesiology,” Adam said. “For example, learning that the congregation is the final authority in a church, and then going to a church that has member meetings where the church members vote to approve a budget or add an elder or remove members. Seeing it lived out was really helpful for me.”
As it turned out, numerous members of Adam and Sherrie’s growth group at Imago Dei would eventually join them in moving to Baltimore, Maryland, to plant a church.
Others who joined the team were friends that they had made at Southeastern.
Adam recalled with amusement the first time he met his close friend and partner in ministry, Adam Wilson. While playing basketball in the Ledford gym, Adam dislocated his finger and promptly put it back into place — leaving the other Adam rather dumbfounded. The two continued playing and went on to become fast friends at seminary, both they and their wives. Adam and Jen Wilson would go on to play an integral role in helping lead the Baltimore church plant.
Reaching Baltimore
In July of 2017, Adam and Sherrie Muhtaseb and the church planting team were sent out from Imago Dei to be salt and light in the city of Baltimore, Maryland.
The new church started very small, meeting in the Muhtasebs’ living room. Over time, as it grew, they searched for a building where they could firmly establish the new community. In their search to rent a place, they were turned away simply for being a church.
“There is a real spiritual darkness around Baltimore City,” Adam said. “And it’s really hard to reach critical mass as a church plant, to reach to a self-sustaining place.
Most of the church plants here have failed over the last 10 years. They just don’t exist anymore. One of the reasons why is because it’s so transient. A lot of people come to Baltimore for school or for a job temporarily and then leave, so it’s really hard to get entrenched in the community and get a church going.”
Adam Muhtaseb is a leader of a church planting residency program in Baltimore that develops church planters who have passed “readiness” assessment or are preparing to be assessed.
Eventually, however, God answered prayers and provided the team the building where Redemption City Church still meets today. Both in this and in other ways, Adam has seen God’s faithfulness time and time again.
In the years since then, church members have gone to the nations as missionaries. The church has grown and multiplied, allowing for three other churches to be planted. Similar to what Adam experienced at Imago Dei, Redemption City Church started a program called the RCC institute, in partnership with Southeastern to provide theological equipping and seminary credit. Through this program over 100 church leaders have been trained for ministry in the past seven years, continuing Adam’s deep connection with Southeastern.
“I can’t believe God has done all of this through an idea,” expressed Adam. “When you come into our church on Sunday, it’s so warm and so kind. It’s such a special place. It’s honestly the safest, best place in Baltimore, in my opinion. And his presence is really there. God built that out of nothing. Seeing something that didn’t exist come to life out of miraculous intervention and grow into something so special — that has been really cool to be a part of.”
Seeing the Faithfulness of God
When Adam reflects back on the past 10 years, he is reminded of the importance of the local church and the vital role it plays in reaching lost people. He is also reminded of the power of God’s word and its ability to transform lives.
From his years at Southeastern, there are many moments that stay with Adam: the time he spent building long-lasting friendships, the hours holed away in a library cubby when he wrote his first-ever expository sermon, and the many times he worshipped God in chapel side by side with his classmates.
“That time prepared me to have the depth of soil to thrive in a really hard place like Baltimore,” Adam shared. “What God has done in me has been able to be multiplied, but it took a lot of time in those preparation seasons to get there.”
Ministry and service to the local church is an ongoing test of perseverance and trust in the Lord. However, as Adam’s story attests, God has shown himself willing and faithful to sustain his people as they run that race.
Join us in praying for Adam, Sherrie, and their family, as well as for Redemption City Church. Pray that the Muhtaseb’s three boys would grow up to love the Lord and that Adam’s own father would find salvation in Christ. Pray for Redemption City’s efforts to reach the lost and for the work of their members who are serving on the mission field or planting churches. And please pray that through these Great Commission efforts, many more would come to know the hope that is in Jesus.