so you wanna change the world?

If you're looking for a way to fulfill the 4th and final concentric circle of the Great Commission ("the ends of the earth"), I invite you to pray about joining me on two upcoming trips.

My next trip will be to Curitiba, Brazil on Sept. 12-21. We'll be helping a new church plant in the village of Vila Sandra reach out to their community by engaging in door-to-door evangelism and discipleship for the week. The pastor of the church plant, Jose Carlos, is a godly man with a heart for Vila Sandra, a slum area of Curitiba. The few members of his church are looking forward to a team of Americans coming down in September to help them bring in the harvest.

My last trip of the year will be to West Bengal, India on Nov. 14-23, the week before Thanksgiving. We'll be partnering with a pastor and church to reach an area of eastern India where the majority of the people work on tea plantations. The harvest is VERY ripe there, and we're praying that God would send forth laborers on this trip to help the nationals share the gospel. Based on past experience, I can promise you that it will be a life-changing trip.

If you'd like to join me on either of these trips, all you have to do is:
(1) just go to http://www.e3partners.org/pages/page.asp?page_id=25720;
(2) scroll down to the particular trip;
(3) click on the "more info" button; and
(4) click on the "online application" icon.

All you need to do is fill out the application and send in a $200 deposit. After that, you'll receive a Go Team Starter Kit which will help you send out all of your support letters (that is, if you need to raise support). After that, I'll orient you and the rest of the team as the trip approaches.

Can God change the world through a team of available, obedient followers? He did it through 12 uneducated men and birthed the church. He can do it again.

amritsar video courtesy of nathan knight

report from amritsar, india

Last Friday (Feb. 22), our team of 6 returned from Amritsar in the state of Punjab. This trip was a bit different than other e3 trips in that we went to train national pastors rather than bringing a team of Americans for evangelism. Northern India - in particular where we were near the Pakistan border (see map) - is heavily Muslim and fairly hostile to Christianity, so it's more effective for the nationals to do most of the evangelism.

This trip was a wonderful opportunity to meet many of our Indian brothers and sisters who are laboring in the ripe harvest fields of SE Asia. Overall, there were about 30 pastors who attended the e3 training on evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. Each day, we met for teaching in the morning and then again in the evening after dinner. In between the teaching sessions, we did some door-to-door evangelism in the afternoon for a couple of hours and then came back to share our evangelism experiences and celebrate. Every pastor was taught how to share the gospel using the Evangecube as well as e3's First Steps material on making disciples and planting churches. While many of the pastors were already actively engaged in evangelism, they were excited to have an evangelism tool and discipleship material that could be easily taught to their churches.

It was refreshing to see the zeal these pastors had for sharing the gospel of Christ. For 3 days, we went out into villages for the on-the-job portion of the training, and the pastors had a chance to use the Evangecube. In a total of 5 hours over the course of those 3 days, we had the opportunity to present the gospel to over 600 people with approx. 150 of them making a decision to place their faith in Jesus Christ as Savior! These were some good students.

Truthfully, I was very humbled by these pastors, and it felt very strange teaching them about evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. Many of these pastors had won many people to Christ, had started numerous churches, and had even been persecuted for their faith in Christ. After meeting these soldiers for Christ and hearing some of their stories, I honestly wanted to sit down and have them teach me. They are the real heroes of the faith, and spending time with them was a necessary reminder of cost of discipleship we all must be willing to pay. After meeting them and hearing what God was doing through their ministries, I found myself praying that God would see fit to send persecution to the American church to refine us and make us more effective.

Since returning to the States, I've already received emails from these dear brothers, expressing their gratitude for the training and their excitement in implementing it. One brother, Vijay, has already led 20 people to Christ over the past week. They are so excited about sharing Jesus with the lost Indian people, and they also sense the urgency that apart from Christ, these same people will die and spend an eternity separated from God. Their enthusiasm is contagious.

Please pray for these brothers and sisters as they seek to spread the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches. Nathan, one of the guys who went on the trip with us, made a 5-minute video with the pictures of each of the national pastors on it that I will post when I figure out how. You can use this to help you as you pray. Where they are ministering, there are strongholds of Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism (which combines the monotheism of Islam with the religious tolerance of Hinduism). Amritsar is actually the center of Sikhism and the site of the Golden Temple, a shrine visited daily by thousands of devotees. Please pray that God would tear down those strongholds and open the eyes of the Indian people to the truth of the gospel (2 Cor. 4:4; 10:4).

jammin' in India

Here's about 5 minutes of video of a few of our translators praising the Lord during some down time. Kinda gives a brief glimpse of some of the worship we might see when we're all around the throne. (Rev. 5 & 7)

out of india

Wasn't that a book by Rudyard Kipling? Anyway, our team is out of India and back at home. I apologize to those of you that I told to check here for daily updates while we were gone. The guest house in which we were staying did have Internet access, but it was only available from 9am to 5pm - the same times that we were going door-to-door in the neighborhoods. So I'll take time now to highlight some of what God did on this campaign.

First of all, thanks SO MUCH to those of you who were praying for all facets of the campaign. We witnessed things that could only have come about through the prayers of the saints. Just knowing that there were several hundred people back in the U.S. praying for us, the national believers, and the lost people of India was an incredible thought and encouragement.

Where to begin. Getting to India. Needless to say, it takes a while to get there. In order to meet the group in Atlanta, I left out of Charlotte on Friday, Nov. 23, at around 9AM. After hooking up in Atlanta, we flew to NY and then across the Atlantic to Mumbai (formerly Bombay). After a long layover there, we flew to Cochin, Kerala and took a 2-hour bus ride to our guest house. When we finally arrived at the guest house, it was mid-morning on Sunday. We were able to rest for a couple of hours before we joined the host church for a time of worship in the afternoon.

About India. Two things stand out - it is a beautiful country, and there are a lot of people. The state of Kerala has a tropical look to it with lots of coconut trees (Kerala means "land of coconuts"). It's not uncommon to see an elephant being led down the road by its owner since they are commonly used to move heavy loads. The standard of living is obviously below ours, but we didn't encounter abject poverty as in other parts of the country. But there are a lot of people. India is about 1/3 the size of the U.S., but has as many people as the continents of North America, South America, and Africa combined. Chew on that statistic for minute - it's really mind-boggling. Over 80% of those people are Hindu, and nearly 12% are Muslim. So technically, it's not a godless land, but it is a very God-less land. The biggest thing that I'll take away from this trip about the Indian people is their hospitality. It's as much like biblical hospitality as anything I've ever seen. When you visit their house, they invite you in, pull up every chair in the house for you, and bring out food and drink for you, even if they don't have much themselves. It was very humbling to be the recipient of such selflessness.

Regarding the ministry, beginning on Monday we were divided into teams and went to our respective neighborhoods. I was on a team with Martin (my brother-in-law), Bijo (our translator), James (another translator and seminary professor in northern Kerala), and Manoj (an Indian national). Our goal was to do door-to-door evangelism Monday through Wednesday and then follow-up with those individuals on Thursday, encouraging them to come to a cell group meeting in their neighborhood Thursday afternoon. By God's grace and the Holy Spirit's guidance, we were able to lead nearly 40 people to faith in Christ during the week! While every conversion is notable and significant, the one that stands out is the chance we had to lead a 104 year-old woman to faith in Christ! What a picture of God's grace! Overall, our campaign team saw over 160 people "born again" into the Kingdom of God! The four exclamation marks in this paragraph really do not do justice in attempting to convey just how incredibly God worked this past week.

But even more significant than these individual professions of faith (if there can be anything more significant than a person being rescued from death and brought into newness of life) is the foundation that was laid for the future of evangelism in India. Since this was e3's first campaign to this part of India, the hope was that by the end of the week we would have helped plant at least one church. But as Eph. 3:20 tells us, God is "able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us." By week's end, we witnessed 5 different cell meetings in 5 different neighborhoods! Each of those cell groups is a baby church full of fledgling believers that through the nurturance of the local mother church will hopefully develop into a multiplying church full of mature believers. Additionally, we were able to train many national believers in evangelism and discipleship by modeling the process throughout the week. Through this training process, the work of making disciples in India will continue, long after our team has gone.

With our team is back in the U.S., the new believers in Kerala are in very capable hands. Pastor Dani Abraham, e3's national director for India, has assembled an awesome team of pastors and lay people who have a heart for evangelizing, discipling, and shepherding the people of India. The mother church, Worship Church, led by Pastor Sabu, is full of individuals who have committed themselves to seeing these baby churches grow to maturity. Our team was just one small tool to help reach India with the gospel. The bulk of the work will be done by these Indian nationals, so please be in prayer for them.

As you pray for India, please pray for the following: (1) these new believers and new churches, that they would persevere and be a light in their communities; (2) Worship Church and the national believers who will be discipling the new believers; (3) Pastor Dani as he works to accomplish the vision God has given him for the evangelization of his country; (4)
for our American team, that they would take what God showed them through their involvement in this campaign and be even more motivated to make God's name famous in the States; and (5) for how you might be involved in what God is doing in India - by praying, supporting Pastor Dani, or going with me on a future campaign. God moved in a mighty way on this campaign, but there are so many more people that need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.

happy thanksgiving!

For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. - Jn. 3:16


Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! - 2 Cor. 9:15

to india with thanksgiving

The day after Thanksgiving, I'll be joining a team of Americans on a church-planting trip to Cochin, Kerala in India. It's located in the SW corner of India on the coast, right near the southern tip of the country. This will be the second of two training trips that I'm taking before I can lead campaigns myself.

It's not too early to begin praying for all aspects of this trip - the logistical details, preparation of the team leaders and campaigners, national pastors and church members, the lost, and that all we'd do would glorify Christ. Next month, I'll be sending out a prayer calendar to all of our ministry partners on our prayer list. This prayer calendar has a specific prayer emphasis and scripture each day - prior to, during, and immediately after the campaign. If you aren't on our email list, are interested in joining it, and will commit to be a part of the prayer force that undergirds our ministy, just send a blank email to join-jaskiprayerteam@lists.e3partners.org.