The Church I'm Building Has No Walls and No Borders
I gave my life to Jesus 26 years ago, and when the Assemblies of God church of Iran asked me to sign a paper committing to a full-time calling, I signed it without a salary, without a safety net, and without any plan except to follow wherever God led. I have never collected a paycheck from a ministry. What I have collected is evidence, decade after decade, that God moves when people step out in faith. And right now, I'm watching something shift in the body of Christ that I don't think most people inside the church have fully named yet.
The shift is this: the old model of a building, a congregation, a single city is no longer the only legitimate shape for a church. I saw this coming not from reading a trend report but from living inside the collision of two worlds. I grew up in Iran, was recruited into Hezbollah at 14, converted to Christianity at 20, and then spent years founding house churches across a country where that work carried a death sentence. A church with no address kept more people alive than any institution ever could. That reality never left me.
Two months ago I launched what I believe is the first Christian Zionist church in Persian history. It exists online. It is built for believers who are watching Bible prophecy unfold in real time and who want to be, as I think of it, watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem. It's not a weekend service with a parking lot. It's a gathering of people across continents who share a conviction that the prophetic moment we are living in demands a new kind of community, one that moves at the speed of the Spirit rather than the speed of a building committee.
I have visited the Holy Land four times. Each trip deepened my certainty that the reconciliation between my native land of Iran and the nation of Israel is not a political fantasy but a prophetic trajectory. I have seen young Iranians who are hungry for truth, and I have seen Israelis who do not yet know that the Persian people are not their enemies. My goal right now is to help churches that have embraced replacement theology find their way back to what the Bible actually says about Israel and the last days. That is not a comfortable message. But I've never built a ministry on comfort.
The Zionist church I started is also changing how I think about discipleship. When I pray over people at conferences, I have watched things happen that I can only describe as the direct work of the Holy Spirit. At my most recent Christian Zionist conference, almost everyone in the room fell under the presence of God when I began praying. My camera man and my bodyguard stayed standing. Everyone else was on the floor. That is not theater. That is the same power I first encountered when the Holy Spirit told me to raise my hand toward a person standing behind me, and that person fell back, shaking, and was set free. Discipleship built on that kind of encounter looks different from a weekly small group. It demands that people grow into mature, Spirit-led believers who can carry what they've received into nations.
I am also watching a second development that concerns me and drives my work. The persecution of both Jews and Christians is accelerating at a pace that mainstream media has almost no language to describe. I've worked alongside the U.S. government's religious freedom offices to help move people whose lives were in immediate danger to safety. I've worked with the United Nations as an ambassador of peace for thousands of persecuted Christians. The need is not shrinking. It is growing. And the church's response to that need has to grow with it, which means structures built for a peaceful, stable era won't be adequate for what's coming.
My vision for the next chapter is framed around one phrase I believe I heard from the Lord: preach the whole gospel to the whole world with whole passion. My path from a prison cell in Iran to building the first online Persian Zionist church is not a straight line, but it is one line. It all points in the same direction. As Saeed Abedini, I am more convinced today than at any previous point in my ministry that the most consequential work of my life is still ahead. The church without walls is just beginning to find its voice, and I intend to be one of the people helping it speak.