Professional Management in Church Planting - Engage India

We had a smashing time with Joseph Abraham leading training sessions for our senior evangelists and their leadership teams from the 24^th – 26^th February. 35 leaders from 6 different mission fields attended the workshop held in Jharkhand state. His focus was on improving the performance of the church planters. We spoke on topics on team building, planning, time management, and goal setting. The first day of the training was a family picnic for all the leaders. The following two days were intensive training sessions. Joseph is a professional no-nonsense, much focussed person who ran through the sessions with a purpose to get the people trained in the intended topics. The entire event was focussed on knowledge and skill building. 85% of the participants were oral learners and they got the value for their money. The training sessions were very interactive and skill based. Each session was started with illustrations, concepts and creamed with activities. Every single person gave a positive feedback at the end of the workshop. It was fun.

Some body would ask me what the marriage of Professional mamagement has with church planting. I would be surprised if this is not a priority in every ministry. Our ministry has taken to this because excellence matters to us. And we want to be the best and most successful with the task that our Lord has given us. Some times complacency and not taking responsibility for errors puts ministry on the back foot.

It has been three days of great learning and thanks to Joseph Abraham for the wonderful job. Our Oral Church planters were greatly blessed by it. He will review their performance every 3 months. I will report back in 3 months on the developments and evaluate the progress of the gospel in the unreached areas. I pray through all of this we are able to take the gospel farer, deeper and wider and may the coming of our Lord be soon.

Daniel Ponraj

For Engage India, Training wing

visit www.engageindia.in for info, write me daniel@engageindia.in

Keeping up Versus Growth - Discipling India

Keeping up: Growth & discipleship

In the business of expanding the kingdom of God, Engage India is sitting on a Gold mine. The need and opportunity of the spread of the gospel is at large in the mission field of Jharkhand. And the gospel is spreading far and wide in this largely tribal land. But it has its challenges. Largely the gospel movement has been spreading through what I would like to call the “Web movement.” It would mean that the spread of the gospel is through kith and kin and not so much as an entire village. That would mean that in a village 3 families would come to faith and somewhere 15 kilometres away 3 families would come to the faith through their influence. Well there is great joy that the gospel is spreading fast and far, but it makes discipleship really difficult. Distance makes it difficult to follow them up. Discipleship needs regular close up association over a long period of time. And distance makes things difficult. And you make a real effort to disciple the group and when you have made some progress you say well I have done my part and let me take it a little easy. And then the church grows again and spreads even further. And then the new leaders take this difficult role. Who ever said it was easy?

2010 is the year of discipleship. The deeper the new believers grow in the Lord the farther and deeper the church grows. When will India be evangelised

High, Deep & Wide - Gospel is unheard!

All of India needs to hear the gospel!

This week has taken me to a Baramasia village in a remote region in Jharkhand where a family was being oppressed by evil spirits. Through their son-in-law who has found hope in Jesus Christ, this family found a new way. They invited the evangelist in the region to share the gospel to them. I was invited to visit the region and share the freedom in Jesus. I was shocked at the number of villages there that have not heard the gospel ever before. There is no Christian in the entire region. The Catholics have over the last 30 years established many mission centres in the region. But they have a very small number of believers. But no Christian! I like to call Protestants as Christians. I am a strategist and immediately my brain was running fast to find a way to spread the gospel in these villages. Looking at this critical situation I would have normally said, it broke my heart! But over the 10 years in ministry, this has become a pattern. As you expand the mission field you find hundreds of villages that have not heard the gospel. My reaction this time round was, “I should lay out a plan for evangelization”. The gospel has to reach these villages. It is tough, because it takes any where from 1 to 6 years to get the first group of believing believers. It takes a while for the gospel to break through in a virgin land. The gospel still stands as an unheard way. The Christian world has much to respond to the need in the much un-evangelized North India.