Back Umut Ceylan, former Muslim, reaches out to growing Middle Eastern community in Middle Tennessee
September 8th, 2010
Born in biblical Colossae, or modern-day Denizli in Turkey, Umut Ceylan grew up a strict student of Islam. His father, in the military service at the time, and his mother, who also worked for the government, sent him to live with his grandparents soon after he was born.
Umut's grandparents were devoted Muslims compared to his parents, who were known as secular “cultural” Muslims. His mother always encouraged him to be a good Muslim, but not a radical. His father, a materialist, discouraged too much devotion to the Middle Eastern religion.
However, from birth, he was immersed in Islam, and thanks to his grandfather, he was enrolled in Quran school in a local mosque at a very young age. “I loved my grandfather, so I started going to the school just to make him happy,” Umut said.
At age five, his parents moved to Izmir (the biblical city of Smyrna) and brought their young son along with them. From the time he left his grandparents until middle school, Umut lived in two separate worlds—the traditional world of Islam and continued education at the Quran school on holidays and the modern world of Izmir that captured his attention during the rest of the year.
He said, “In Izmir, guys had girlfriends in middle school. People were doing marijuana and alcohol. I'd been taught to give myself to Allah. But, those other things were also so good to me. I wanted to be a part of both lives.”
As he moved into high school, he learned to combine his two worlds and began buying philosophical reading material—mythological, psychological, economical, and political—to learn more about the culture around him and where he fit.
“My father became a high school history teacher,” Umut said. “He believes Islam, Christianity, and Catholicism came from pagan religions. He said if you were born into a Muslim country, then you have to be Muslim. Basically, he rejects changing and converting to anything new.”
In an effort to find his place in the religion he was "born into," Umut began exploring the Sufi way—one of Islam’s many sects. Similar to new-age Islam, this liberal one welcomes all people of all faiths and encourages its followers to read, think, and question what they believe.
“They wanted me to think about the ways of Allah and not just accept it,” he said. “You can only want to accept something. I loved this idea. I was practicing Islam and praying to Allah five times a day.”
At this point, the only thing Umut "understood" about Christianity was that the Old Testament was corrupted by the Jews and the New Testament was corrupted by the disciples of Jesus. He believed Allah gave Jesus ("the Prophet") a book called the gospel from which He preached. But after Jesus ascended into heaven, his disciples changed it and made him “God.”
“I didn’t even know that Christians had a book to read on their own,” he said. “I thought priests only preached about ethical things. In my world, I didn’t even think Christians or Westerners had any ethics because of what we saw on television, radio, in magazines. You saw 16-year-old girls having sex with older men, people doing drugs, men leaving their wives for no reason. That’s what we understood of Christians and Western culture.”
In the midst of his quest to gain truth and understanding, Umut also searched for a girlfriend. According to him, girls had never showed any interest in him. As a result, one of his friends suggested he learn how to play guitar to finally get some of that longed-for female attention.
“I started to play in this rock band and met friends,” he said. “One of them told me about this cultural center where people from other countries were going to be. They were going to have food, wine, and girls. My friend, who was a great Muslim, wanted to go, but he didn’t want to be alone, so I told him I’d go with him.”
What they found wasn’t the wild party they’d hoped for. Instead, the group at the “cultural center” began singing songs about Jesus and teaching from the Bible.
“I got really angry," Umut said. "My friend said, ‘I’m so sorry. I lied to you. It’s not a cultural center. It’s a Protestant church.’ I later found out it was Campus Crusade. At the end, they told me about spiritual rules and asked me if I wanted to believe in Jesus. I said, ‘Are you kidding me? No.’”
In what turned out to be a transparent conversation with the Campus Crusaders, Umut told them he would never believe Jesus died on a cross for his sins. And the New Testament Bible they gave him that night wound up in the bottom of a dumpster on his way home.
What happened next is what Umut says was “the work of God.” He began to think about the "sin, salvation, and heaven" that the Christians explained to him. He knew he had to find the answers for himself and didn’t want to go back and hear the “corrupt ideas and beliefs” of Christians, so he went to a bookstore and bought his first Bible—a Bible he thought might be pure and uncorrupted.
“The Christians told me I was born a sinner, but the Quran said I was born pure. In the Bible I bought, in Romans, it said everyone sins. It hit me," he said. "I asked myself some honest questions: When was the first time I sinned? Have I ever been pure? My parents had always said, ‘Don’t lie. Don’t be jealous. Be thankful. Be a good man.’ But I remember sinning as a child.”
Umut was discovering what he'd always known and what he was learning didn't match up. He’d always been taught that things caused you to sin, not a sinful heart.
“As a Muslim, I didn’t want to accept that I was born in my sin. The more I read the Bible, the more I started to believe Jesus and not Mohammed. I can’t believe I even wanted to read the Bible because I didn’t want to change. But, I accepted it. I said, ‘OK, God, I know I’m a sinner,’” he said.
The second topic about salvation, planted by the Campus Crusaders, said there’s only one way to heaven through Jesus Christ, so Umut began wrestling with this idea.
“When you realize you’re not a good person, it gets harder to believe you can do something to satisfy God,” he said. “I had to be honest and look in the mirror at myself. I knew the only reason I was doing things for Allah was to be in heaven one day. I didn’t even care if he was going to be there.”
With a long list of rules from the Quran that he had to follow—such as praying five times a day—Umut knew there was no way he could continue following them all. Most of them had to do with the body, which he knew would die and decay one day anyway.
“The Bible says there’s only one way to heaven and that’s to put your faith in Jesus Christ. You don’t have to do anything else. I asked myself, ‘Why would I put my faith in Jesus? I’m only going to do it for the same reason as Allah—to go to heaven.' So I had to ask: 'What will happen in heaven?’” he said.
The Quran promises wine, honey, 70 virgins, and more to those who enter the afterlife—all things that satisfy the body. Umut said, “It sounds like a promised land, but what about my spirit? At that point, I realized Jesus said it would be only about God and me. The Quran’s heaven promised me things for my body. The Bible promised me my spirit.”
It took about two years, but he eventually came to grips with the truth staring him in the face. He said, "I saw myself standing before my Creator. I realized I just wanted to bow down and worship Him. It looked like a boring life at the time, but I was at least going to be with Him. It’s not about my body. It’s about my spirit and me. My body will die, but I know my spirit will live.”
He went back to the cultural center and met with a few Campus Crusade guys who helped him find answers to his questions. They knew he wanted to be a Christian, but Umut was still unsure.
“I prayed with them—repeated their words—and accepted Christ. I thought when I got back home I could always say the words and go back to Islam,” he said. “I still had questions. I tried to understand Jesus, even though I was praying in His name. It wasn’t easy to understand that one man went to a cross and died for me. It was hard to understand Jesus as God. That was May 1998. I was 18 years old. And that was the last morning I prayed to Allah.”
In 2001, Umut told his mom about his decision to follow a new way—Jesus Christ. Shocked and surprised by his decision, she hated the idea of his conversion, but saw his life change for the better.
Later, his decision accidentally slipped out to his dad when he was forced to defend his new faith during a dinner discussion about Islam. The blow from his reaction wasn’t as gentle. Umut was asked to pack his bags and move out of his childhood home.
"Thirty minutes later, my father came in and told me we are going to talk about it. We have never talked. But he sent my mom to talk to me and she said, 'Until you leave this house, you will obey the rules of this house. You will not read the Bible in this house. You will not pray. You can invite your Christian friends over, but you will not talk about Jesus or Christianity.' I stayed home under these conditions," he said.
In 1999, one year after his conversion, God began to use Umut in ministry. All along, he'd just wanted to be a basic food-processing engineer—a simple life with a wife and family to provide for. But he began playing guitar in his church, enrolled in Bible school, joined a local church plant, and started playing several roles—worship leader, preacher, and teacher.
His close friends, also secular Muslims, accepted this newfound change in him, but his life wasn’t void of all Islamic pressure. He ran across several people who threatened to burn down the new church he attended.
In 2008, Umut’s church partnered with Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, Texas. They welcomed a group of female leaders—most of whom were wives of the ministers—during a mission trip. Umut, the church's jack of all trades, was commissioned to be available to them and show them the city.
Traveling in that group was Michelle, one of the only single women on the trip who was there to help renovate their facilities. After several God-ordained interactions, Umut’s pastor encouraged him to ask the American girl out. And he did.
After the team left, Michelle and Umut Skyped for several months before God opened the door for him to move to Texas for six weeks so he could spend time with her and learn how to do ministry at Austin Stone.
When his six weeks were up in Texas, he left for his home country not knowing when they'd see each other again. But at one of his stops along the way, still four hours from home, he got a call from Michelle who had hopped on a plane right after he left and was on her way to see him. Her pastor had offered to support her trip to Turkey to do ministry for nine months in his church.
The relationship quickly forged ahead after that: premarital counseling, engagement, and marriage—complete with three wedding ceremonies (marriage license, Turkish, and American).
For a total of 11 years, Umut had spent his life ministering to the people in Turkey—without pay. He thought he would live and die there. His dream was to spend the rest of his life serving as a church planter and pastor. But God laid out another path for the newly married couple and they wound up in Michelle's hometown of Brentwood.
“My heart beats for my people and my country. He told me I was done there, which was really hard for me," he said. "I’ve only done ministry my entire life. The only thing I can sell is the gospel. But I believe God is sovereign and he leads our lives the way He wants. I have no power to fight with Him. He wins. So I go where He says to go.”
Recently, Brentwood Baptist gave Umut the opportunity to share his story at the Middle Eastern Prayer Event in Baskin Chapel. And he’s been given another opportunity to speak at the “Engage Forum,” a learning discussion coming up on Monday, September 20 at 6:00 p.m. in Wilson Hall.
“God put a burden on my heart for Middle Easterners,” he said. “They want to be a part of something, but they often isolate themselves. They’re just as afraid of Americans as Americans are afraid of them. Someone has to break that cycle. More than 40,000 Muslims are here in Nashville. This is my ministry now. It’s just the beginning of connecting Middle Easterners to Americans. They’re here. They’re growing. Fear only brings anger, and anger brings sin. But if you go and learn to love without expecting anything, it’ll change everything.”
What You May Not Know…
Islam is based on five pillars:
• Faith or belief in the oneness of Allah and the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad
• Daily prayers
• Concern for and almsgiving to the needy
• Self-purification through fasting
• The pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able
Islam has four major sections and more than 73 branches:
• Ahmadiyya
• Shi’a
• Sufism
• Sunni
Middle Eastern population estimates:
• American Religious Identification Survey: 1.3 million (2008)
• Pew Research Center: 2.5 million (2009)
• Encyclopedia Britannica: 4.7 million (2004)
• U.S. News & World Report: 5 million+ (2008)
• Council on American-Islamic Relations: 7 million (2010)
Needs of Middle Easterners* in Nashville:
• Language education (ESL classes)
• Job Skills
• Culture shock and homesickness
• Health and Finances
• Lack of Friendships
*Nashville receives 300-600 refugees every year, many of whom are Middle Eastern.
By Kaylan Christopher