“As soon as the outbreak of the virus was announced, we stopped all our face-to-face house church meetings,” says Salomeh, an online worker who remotely works with believers in Iran. “Everyone is obeying the rules, and doesn’t even visit his or her family.”
Iran was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic—and it doesn’t seem like the crisis is over there. For Christians in Iran, many of whom have to worship Jesus in the shadows, it was an additional burden on a life already filled with danger and tension.
Iranian Christians faced a significant question: Can a secret church continue to exist under a lockdown? If it wasn’t for online tools and workers, it would have been extremely difficult. But with your support through partners, what was difficult has become a spark for the church in Iran, Salomeh says. “In this time of crisis we have over 10 hours of prayer meetings every day,” she says. “We created a special prayer schedule that we call ‘Frontline,’ where prayer members can virtually walk in and out to come to pray together.”
