In the Name of Jeeezus....

[Guest guest]

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 05:20:01 -0000

"arunsitaraman <arunsitaraman"

<arunsitaraman

Religious intolerance and the missionary actitivites

 

During the last 25 years, the real estate purchases by Churches of

various denominations has been of staggering proportions. There have

been massive efforts to construct church buildings in all nooks and

corners of the country.

 

Where did the money come from? A CBI inquiry is called for urgently

and effective action should be taken to enforce the law of the land

on perpetrators who have been spreading intolerance among faiths, on

converting religion into a marketplace to buy up souls and affecting

the peaceful conduct of social affairs in the country. In many

instances, these actions also constitute threats to the territorial

integrity and sovereignty of the nation.

 

Here is a tip of the ice-berg as gleaned from just one church website:

 

Calcutta…A month of systematic prayer by local Christian leaders

followed. They divided the city into 25 routes for prayer walks. Many

of the citiy's 160 churches adopted one or more of those routes,

claiming the territory for the Lord Jesus Christ. The results of that

concentrated time of prayer are still visible today. That month of

prayer enhanced the Mission Calcutta 2000 Network, whose aim is to

establish a church in every one of the city's 93 postal code zones by

the end of the year 2000. Great progress has been made. Thirty zones

that did not have a church now have one. Today, only 30 other zones

remain untouched…Many consider this city the very seat of Satan.

Hindus believe that bathing in the Ganges River at Varanasi washes

away all sins. A number of Christian workers took up the burden of

prayer for this city and in prayer walks boldly declared before the

idols, "You are not a living god." One year later, it was discovered

that church planting works had opened up in sixty villages around

Varanasi over that past year, with 300 baptisms reported.

http://www.ad2000.org/uters4.htm

 

 

 

Signs are Pointing to North India

 

 

 

SIGN #3: There is a growing sense of vision and cooperation in the

task.

 

Today there are some 40 million Christians in 200,000 local churches

in India. In the last few years, local churches and parachurch

organizations have joined in the vision of reaching India by

generating more than 200 plans for evangelization focusing on the

year 2000. For example:

 

 

 

"The Evangelical Church of India has a denominational plan to

establish 1000 local churches by then. With almost 900 churches

already, they expect to reach their goal in 1998 -- two years ahead

of schedule.

 

 

 

The Friends Missionary Prayer Band has developed "Hindi Heartland

Penetration Strategies" to mobilize 1000 new missionaries and to

research and evangelize 300 unreached people groups within the next

few years.

 

 

 

An agency has a church-planting movement among 100 of the Joshua

Project 2000 unreached peoples of southern Asia.

 

India Reach has taken on the goal of reaching 500 million people with

the gospel through direct mail efforts followed up by personal visits

within six weeks to the individuals who respond. They are believing

God for over 65 million decisions for Christ by the year 2000.

 

An agency has launched an initiative to present the gospel through

literature to 100 million people in India by the year 2000.

 

An agency has a goal for training 100,000 missionaries for outreadh

to India, 10,000 of them by December 31, 2000.

 

The Association of Pentecostals is working effectively towards a

church for every one of the 75,000 pin codes by the end of the year

2000.

 

The Charismatic New Life Churches have a church-planting movement for

every one of the 512 districts by the end of the year 2000.

 

 

 

Historically, much of the mission work in this part of India has been

done by individual missionaries, ministries and denominations. We

rejoice in their faithful efforts and enthusiastically support all

that they are doing. But God is doing something very special in India

at this time with His Church. As never before, networks are emerging

throughout all of North India involving not only historical mainline

church leaders, but new church pastors, missionaries from both

international and indigenous missions and qualified professional

people, many of who are leaving their careers to devote themselves to

reaching the unreached in North India.

 

 

 

Many of these people and organizations have come together as the

North India Harvest Network, a loosely-organized forum established

for mutual encouragement and strength in evangelism and church

planting efforts. Totally managed by volunteers, it has sponsored

seminars in 60 of the 200 districts of North India to build networks

and mobilize workers for the harvest they truly believe is coming.

Their goal is reaching "every people group in every city in every

language in every geographic district." Their mission is expressed in

the phrase "PLUG, PREM and be NICE," a series of acronyms that

describe their focus and methodology for reaching their goals.

 

 

 

PLUG refers to the different targets their networks are trying to

reach: every PEOPLE - in every LANGUAGE - in every URBAN center - in

every GEOGRAPHIC division (district, block and PIN code).

http://www.ad2000.org/uters3.htm

 

 

 

Consider the following numbers of congregations established in North

India, the vast majority within the last 25 years:

 

 

 

The table shows that the number of Christians in North India (HP,

Haryana, Rajasthan, UP, MP, Bihar, Punjab, Chandigarh, Delhi) was

1,939,540 i.e. 0.49% of population; Rest of India had 17,700,744 i.e.

4.01% of population.

 

http://www.ad2000.org/uters5.htm