Persecution’s blessing: church growth in India

Posted: 11/30/07

Persecution’s blessing:
church growth in India

By Lance Wallace

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

HYDERABAD, India (ABP)—Sam Bandela has worked five years in the mountainous central region of India. Even as tsunami relief and personal challenges intervened, he continued to find local partners, train indigenous church planters and fund development projects in the largely Hindu region.

Finally, he is seeing results.

Among three tribal groups—Sora, Jathava and Kui—in the area between the Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states, 50 new churches have been planted. Some were in spite of active resistance by other religious groups.

In this region, anti-Christian militants often threaten new converts. In recent years, several foreign missions workers have been killed.

“The persecution is causing the church to grow,” Bandela said. “The church in India has not grown much in the last 50 years, but it has grown tremendously in the last two years because of the persecution.”

Narayan Paul, a 78-year-old pastor and evangelist, and his ministry partners have started more than 120 churches after leading 12,000 people to faith in Christ. Their methods are simple. They travel to the remote hill villages building relationships and sharing the gospel.

“In March, Brother Paul baptized 80 people and another 70 people in May. The people are responding,” Bandela said.

In April, more than 3,000 Christians from the hill tribes staged a silent prayer walk as a demonstration against religious persecution. The event solidified the new believers and was not marred by violence.

As Paul and his partners travel, they identify physical needs that Bandela—a Co-operative Baptist Fellowship field worker—is able to channel CBF Global Missions resources toward addressing. As a result, some villages have built new water systems, saving people a two-mile hike down a mountain at a nearly 45-degree angle to retrieve water.

Bandela also schedules medical clinics in the remote areas, bringing physicians from the United States to treat the villagers who have little access to health care.

In some areas, they have helped complete church buildings, which usually begin as four walls with thatched roofs or no roofs at all. So far, Bandela has worked with five churches to build new roofs, with five more in progress. The plan is for 50 more.

Plus, Bandela has channeled aid and supplies to help more than 400 families after floods hit the area in August of 2006.

“Our focus, our end result is church planting,” Bandela said. “Medical clinics, sewing center projects, supplying food, flood relief, water projects—they are all means and methods for evangelism. All that we do is helping people come to know the Lord, giving birth to a new church.”

Bandela and his wife, Latha, live in the United States because of the special needs of their youngest son, Paul. Bandela travels to India several times a year for a month or longer at a time to network, develop partnerships, facilitate church groups, conduct medical clinics, train new church planters, execute building projects and participate in evangelistic meetings.

Often, pastors from the United States participate by teaching in the church-planting seminars and training in Hyderabad. The program, established by Bandela with gifts from CBF churches, now is led entirely by indigenous Christian leaders and produces cohorts of 10 to 20 church planters several times a year.

At the graduation ceremony, each church planter is given a new Bible and a bicycle. The newly trained evangelists are then sent out into the remotest areas to be the presence of Christ in word and deed.

“Giving a bicycle to them is like giving a car,” he said. “The roads are cow paths. It’s only $50 for a bicycle. When you and I go to eat, we’ll spend about $50. For us, it is just a meal and fellowship, but for them, $50 for a new bicycle is a lifetime investment.”

Bandela works with local leaders, empowering and equipping them to build upon the foundation he has laid and start new work in areas he couldn’t possibly get to.

“American Christians have a part—prayer, encouragement, giving—but they are not the front runners,” he said. “Times have changed. We need to stand behind our Indian brothers and sisters as they lead the way.”