MEHR Ministries is a “Reformed ministry, training and equipping servants of Christ to plant biblically faithful churches throughout the Middle East.” Hatami collaborates with the PCA missions group Mission to the World and works with the underground church in Iran to train leaders and help with church planting.

Last month, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a conservative evangelical denomination founded in 1973, ordained its first teaching elder of Iranian descent who was raised in a Muslim family.

On February 11, over 200 people gathered at Town North Presbyterian Church in Richardson, Texas, to sing, worship, and pray during the ordination service of Hamid Hatami. (Another pastor of Iranian descent transferred into the PCA and serves in the Pacific Northwest.)

Hatami was born in 1984, five years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran that resulted in the closure of many Christian churches and expulsion of Christian missionaries.

His family were Shia Muslims, but he had uncles and other relatives killed for their political views.

At the end of high school, he suffered injuries from a terrible motorcycle accident and was unable to move for months. He kept asking God why this had happened to him. In 2002 or 2003, Hatami said he was working with a friend on a software program and found a chatroom on the internet where people talked about God being loving—a message he had never heard.

Hatami joined the chat room and began to learn about the life of Jesus and the Gospel message. He wouldn’t accept a printed copy of the Bible, but he found a PDF version online and began to read it. As he was praying for clarity about his beliefs, he asked God for a sign. Walking along the road one day, he looked up and saw a sign attached to a closed Presbyterian church.

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