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).
