On Friday we met with the mission/evangelism director of one district, in a denomination with 22 districts around India.

The Church of India can be divided into 3 parts:
1) Orthodox
2) Historic
3) Emergent
When we say India has 500,000 churches, and there were 140,000 in 1987, most of the new churches are Emergent not part of the orthodox/historic denominations.

Process of Evangelism/CP -
Have identified 120 grass rootsworkers for missions. When they are selected they are given two months of biblical training and then placed under the care of senior missionary.

120 are divide into 12 groups of ten with one leader. Leader identifies the mission field for new selections for 6 months.

1st month - Goal is to go around the village, prayer walk and begin to understand the context

2-6 months - Survey, research the people he is try to reach, social needs. Make friends with leadersvif significance that will give right to ask questions/talk to people freely in the village.
Are there schools?
Does anyone have Christian influence?
They have found that if there is no school they can start an evening school that is agreeable to parents because it allows children to work during the day.

After 6 months - find one house that responds to the missionary. Through that friend look for needs of famlies in the village. What are medical needs? Once a month they bring doctor to give free medical care. After this the missionary begins to go house to house. Passing literature and asking needs of families. Prays with them. They have found that though the missionaries may not be well trained in the traditional sense many show giftings for casting out demons and prayer for healing.
Missionary must touch every house 3 times.

After 9 months Missionary begins to do open air evangelism on the street corner of the village.

Typically one demon possessed individual becomes the conduit to reach the village.

After 10-15 people respond they continue to disciple for 3 months to solidify the faith then baptize and take to nearby church. Once they have 20 families they start a church in the village.

Missionary must nurture the church for 1 year even while moving on to a new place. After one year the mother church cares for the church. After 3 years Bishop takes over and appoints pastor.
Total process 6 years.

Once per month they gather all the missionaries to report and train.

Every Monday the groups of twelve missionaries meet for prayer and encouragement in a pastors house who can understand the mission needs. After 4pm they all go together to one village to have open air evagelism or evening evangelistic service. (Dance, puppet shoe, video)

Missionaries have baptized 20,000+ souls.
2009 - 6,070 baptized 86 churches

Every missionary must reach 3 villages per year, 25 Baptisms, and plant 1 church.

New missionaries are given 3-year preparation time. Must have 50 baptisms in those 3 years to be permanent.

(They don't place any missionary in a place where there is any other church.)

Their district has:
140 churches in cities 1 church/pastor.
980 churches in villages 9-16/pastor

Obstacles the Indian church faces:
1) Rural India is open for the gospel. The cities are very difficult, expensive, and isolated by structure (gated apts that can't be entered), unable to take up needs of the people.
2) Independent pastors that dominate areas, that's why he tells his missionaries to go to unreached places.
3) Lack of spiritual training of bilble school graduates. They understand theology but not practical.

25-50% attrition of evangelism
70% illiteracy in India.

Later on Friday we were able to sit down with another network leader. In the past 50 years they have been responsible for training more than 2,000 students through their bible school, which at one point was the largest bible school in all Asia.

In addition he was one of the cofounders of the DAWN movement for India that was started to see 1,000,000 churches planted in India. Today his network alone has help start over 4,000 in the last 15 years.

We spent a lot of time talking through the existing generations in India and what that means for the church moving forward. Over 50% of the country's population is under 25 years old. Almost all the major networks are lead by men in their late 50's/60's, and very few that we have met have a successor to take their place. The future of the Indian church and the changes that need to happen in terms of form and function need to be decided and owned by this emerging generation.

Another major concern is the growing tribalization that is happening around India. Even with all the western influence their is still a strong sense of tension to resist the western forms & ideologies. The Indian church has yet to give birth to an indigeneous christianity and the younger generation will need to work at this as they take up the mantle of winning their nation.

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Location:HBI Headquarters, Chennai