How Does Serve India Plant Churches? (A true life example)

How Does Serve India Plant Churches?

Serve India Ministries is all about church planting; specifically, partnering with local churches to plant a church. After 10-20 pastors are identified in a district, each will agree to target five area villages to plant churches in and meet together once a month for two days of prayer, training and fellowship. Serve India Ministries assigns a facilitator train the pastors through a 5-year curriculum that was written by our partner organization called BILD International. Getting this many pastors in one room together is an incredible time of encouragement and greatly builds the faith of soldiers of faith!

Pastor Rajan M (A new church is born!)

One of the recent updates we received from India tells of Pastor Rajan M* in Tamil Nadu. Pastor Rajan was very excited to take part in this valuable training and identified 5 villages that needed to hear the Gospel and have a local church.

Pastor Rajan initially focused his attention on a particular unreached village called T M* The key strategy for effective church planting in India begins with daily prayer for the village along with regular visits of house visitation and tract distribution. Pastor Rajan was particularly gifted to share the love of the Lord with villagers. It was many months of visits without any good response to the Gospel. But without losing hope, Pastor Rajan continued to pray and visit and finally a family came forward to offer their home for a prayer meeting. As God began to minister, more people began to come to the prayer meeting. Now the prayer meeting has developed into a church in which 15 people attend regularly. Pray that this church will grow in its ability to minister to this community.

Pastor Rajan is an example of how the current 450 pastors partnering with Serve India plant churches. The goal of each pastor is to plant 5 churches in 5 villages in 5 years. Currently these pastors are targeting over 2,000 unreached villages where a Gospel witness has never existed.

To sponsor a missionary pastor for $35 per month click here

* Because of anti-Christian elements, the full name of the pastor and this village he is working in are not given.

Ben's News

Benjamin is finishing up his bowling with the home school league and has been scoring in the 80’s with the help of the bumpers, but he won’t need bumpers much longer. I was interested in getting Benjamin some teaching about golf, and I know there isn’t any way I could afford lessons or green fees so I did some research and found out about 1st Tee. 1st Tee is a program that the area golf club host, to teach young people the game of golf. One of their main goals is to teach character, and the great part about the program is that it only cost, $40. He receives three hours of instruction per week, and they have golf clubs available for him. I think that Benjamin can be a lifelong golfer if he can be properly mentored in the game at an early age.
Janey started Ben off with his 2nd/3rd grade home school August 1, and he is picking everything up very well. Ben is studying Shurley English, Saxon Math, Beginning Hebrew, Spelling, The Light and the Glory (History) by Peter Marshall, Handwriting and Science. Of course, he is also getting some PE with basketball, bowling and golf. It is wonderful to see Ben learn new things, and it won’t be long until he is doing complex equations, physics and all of that fun stuff.

"The Prodigal God"

It is already the middle of August and we are busy getting ready for our fall schedule. I am praying that I will be able to fill Brother Ebey’s travel schedule from September to November. We currently have 100 pastors that need supporters, and Brother Ebey will be bringing 250 new pastor profiles with him in September. In 5 years these additional 250 pastors will impact 1250 villages with a church!
Leadership Conference
Last week, a friend was kind enough to pay my way to a leadership conference in Minneapolis. I was very challenged by the speakers. I was amazed to learn about an organization called Kiva (http://www.kiva.org/), a microloan ministry started by some young people. Kiva has done some amazing things; they have loaned out 100 million dollars to 3rd world entrepreneurs in only 4 years! Another speaker was Dr, Tim Keller, a pastor in New York City who was teaching about “The Prodigal God” focusing in on the parable of the prodigal son. From what Dr. Keller told us, the parable was more about the older brother than the younger brother. The older brother’s heart attitude was evil, and Jesus was actually telling the parable to the Pharisees. The part of the message for me was about repentance and our motives for doing good, not just motives for doing bad. As you look at the older brother in the parable, even though he did not live in sin like the younger brother, his motives for “doing good” were not pure. The older brother did good, but he still had bitterness in his heart toward the father. I realize that I often need to examine my motives for why I do good; is it for the right reasons or because it is just expected of me> Dr. Keller has written a book by the same title, “The Prodigal God.” I have it on hold at our library. If interested, it can be purchased at Amazon.
“True Repentance” - I ask myself: Why do we go to church, tithe, give to missions, give to help the poor, witness, or resist temptation? Is it because it is expected of us or because of God’s love in our hearts? Maybe this is what Jesus was referring to in John 15:8-11? It certainly has me thinking more about my motives.

imultitude.com (A Prayer Community to Pray for India)

We have just launched a new website called http://www.imultitude.com/. This web site is still in the beta testing mode but when finished, we hope to bring thousands of people to the web site to pray for India and create a prayer community on the web site and eventually have designated web pages for each district where we have a mission field. The donors of their specific mission field will be able to log in and post prayers for their mission fields as well as build a relationship with the other donors. I will keep you updated but I encourage you to go to the web site and create a log in and pray for India every day!

Haryana, India Report - "A Great Mission Field"

Haryana is a state located in the far northern parts of India. This is a very industrious agricultural state. Operation World tells us that there are only 265 Christian workers in the entire state, a state with a population of 20 million people. Of the 92 unreached people groups in Haryana, only 15 have a congregation. Serve India Ministries has 20 pastors working in this state and is currently recruiting another mission field with 20 more pastors beginning this fall.
Introducing Pastor Singh, a testimony from Haryana:
Pastor Singh was born to very religious Hindu parents and throughout his life, he grew up trusting only in the power of their Hindu gods and goddesses.
Pastor Singh came to know the Lord when he met a pastor ministering in his neighborhood. Also in the crowd was a man who was blind from his birth. Like the stories from the Bible, this blind man had been taken to many temples but there was no healing. In the end the preacher prayed for the blind man and a miracle happened. The blind man began to see for the first time in his life! Seeing this miracle before his very eyes, Brother Singh deeply touched! Realizing that Jesus is the only all-powerful God, he gave his life to him. Later his whole family accepted Jesus and began to attend a local church. As Brother Singh began to grow in the Lord, he sensed the call of God during a time of prayer to give his life for full-time ministry. Now Pastor Singh has planted a church and is partnering with Serve India Ministries in Haryana along with 20 other pastors in his district to each plant 5 churches apiece in 5 years. Think of it - 100 churches where there aren’t any churches today! Please pray for Pastor Singh and the 450 others who partner with Serve India Ministries.

Witch Doctor Touched by the Power of God!

(“My powers became powerless when the TRUE GOD’S power empowered me.”)

Serve India Ministries partners with 60 pastors in the South India state of Karnataka. Karnataka has a population of 53 million and about 0.7% are born-again Christians. There is much opportunity for the work the Gospel in this state but also much opposition from anti-Christian elements and witch doctors.

One of Serve India’s pastors, Pastor G, working near the city of Bangalore in Karnataka recently ministered in a community where a man named Kumar, who was a witch doctor operating through demonic powers. Kumar made a lot of money through his magic with the help of evil spirits. Pastor G’s church grew and was affecting this community as the Gospel was being preached and many people were being saved. These local people were no longer seeking out the witch doctors services.

Kumar was determined to disrupt the church's service by using his black magic. For three years, Kumar tried all his magic but to no avail. Finally he decided that he would attend a Sunday service and see what really went on at this church. The evil spirit did not allow him to sit at the church and he was forced to go back home. From that time on, Kumar could not have a peaceful night’s sleep and feared for his life. Often the very demons that these witch doctors serve will in time kill them. Now, Kumar could no longer perform magic and all his evil powers were gone.

Fearing the evil spirits, Kumar approached the pastor with his problems, and Pastor G showed the love of Christ to him and shared the message of the Gospel. As they prayed together, the power of Jesus was present and the evil spirit left him. Kumar was filled with the joy of salvation! Our new brother in the Lord later testified,
“My powers became powerless when the TRUE GOD’S power empowered me.”
Now he attends the church regularly and is helping Pastor G in outreach as he partners with Serve India Ministries to plant 5 more churches in the surrounding communities.