[1]MUMBAI (BP)–Despite its vastness, India is not beyond the reach of a Christian who yearns for all people to be reached with the life-saving message of Jesus.
You and your church can help carry the Gospel to India in many strategic ways. Here’s how:
1. Pray — Prayer always comes first and last, because it connects us with God’s mind and heart and unleashes His power. Begin a personal or church prayer ministry for India as a whole or for one of its unreached peoples or cities.
2. Send a volunteer team to pray “on site” in India. Join with local believers and workers to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with Indians eager to hear it.
3. Partner with workers in India to strategically “adopt” an unreached city or people group. “If you want to make a long-term commitment to seeing a city or a group come to faith in Christ, we’ve got thousands of places for you to plug in,” says a worker. Southern Baptist churches can even become “strategy coordinators” — primary leaders in the effort to launch a church-planting movement among a specific people.
4. Consider becoming a “strategic mobilizer” church — a church that not only participates in reaching India but challenges and mobilizes other churches to join in the task.
[2]5. Befriend Indians in your area. More than 3 million Indians live in the United States; most maintain close ties with relatives and friends back home. If you share the light with them, they will share it with India.
6. Give generously to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. Your gifts support the career workers who are committed to evangelizing South Asia. The 2004 offering will enable the International Mission Board to send many more workers.
To begin praying for India, ask God for:
— church-planting movements to bloom among every people group in India and South Asia and for the “giants” in this region to bow before the God of all nations.
— millions of Indian young people to decide to follow Christ while they are still young.
— Indian Christians to embrace God’s vision to take the Gospel across every ethnic, social, religious and caste barrier.
— the exploding Indian middle class to hunger not only for material prosperity but for spiritual truth in Christ.
— the Good News of Jesus to sweep through India’s mega-cities.
— India’s Muslims to find freedom in Christ. Several powerful church-planting movements already are under way among Muslim peoples in India.
— God to continue to use both tolerance and persecution of His children in India as seeds for church multiplication.
— many more Southern Baptists and Christian workers to respond to the Indian harvest.
— workers to multiply their impact through the training of thousands of local partners, who will in turn train millions of others.
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For more information, visit www.imb.org/southasia or e-mail [email protected]. Or, call (804) 754-0444.