I travelled to the North of India for 10 days to attend and to experience what missions is like in that region. I had accompanied the pastor of my Church, a very passionate, mature and a very wise man with years of experience in the missions field under his belt. My travel began from the middle-east to one of the most religiously sensitive places in India. With a solid strategy and a full year of preparation, our team’s core mission was to train local missionaries and pastors from within the region, teaching them to build, grow and multiply Churches in the areas assigned to them. The vision is great and so is the task. I have never witnessed anything of this scale. As much as I am eager to share, I cannot go into the specifics. I have to be wise enough to know what to share and what not to.
The 10 days I spent in this remote area was truly an eye-opener. Like I said, we had a clear mission and that was to raise and train pastors. So I spent my time with pastors from the area and learning about how they lived, about their families and about their ministry. Most of them do not have the experience of being raised by a Christian family and they were very eager to learn from us. My pastor taught them almost everything, right from the basics of the Gospel to living a holy life, from starting a Church to growing and raising leaders in order to multiply Churches and even how to raise money by faith. The training went on for hours every day with a few breaks for lunch, tea and snacks. I was never tired.
My take away from the trip were many. I saw the massiveness of the tasks ahead and the seriousness by which we need to work to accomplish them. This must be a team effort and it requires thousands of pastors working togther towards one goal. It is best to train and equip indigenous people into missions because they know their territory very well. They can accomplish the tasks better and in a shorter period of time. The challenge is to train them. They do not have a long Christian background and a lot of their culture and beliefs have been moulded by the local culture and religion of that area. So they read and understand the Bible differently. Their language and behaviour may not be refined. What they have that we look for is a passion to serve God.
The whole 10-day project was a success. Lives were touched and the leaders were trained well and sent. But we barely scratched the surface. It will take us a few years to reach our goal. From here I travelled towards the South of India, to Kerala where my parents and sister’s family lives. I spent some time with them, attended a wedding ceremony and travelled back to the middle-east to my wife and son. It was good to be back home but I left the trip with a huge burden in my heart. An unsettling feeling to be part of God’s plan to save the world.
