Strategy

My strategy for South Asia over the past two years has been to focus on four major geographical areas with two separate ministries.  Our first area of focus was in the city of Bombay with New Life Church.  New Life is a very successful and nationally recognized church with over 17,000 members in their Bombay congregation and there are over 4,000 New Life churches in India.

Bombay Region

We have worked with New Life since the early 1990's and most of their top leaders are personal friends.  Pastor S. Joseph heads this work and I am laboring closely with him to insure that any work we do helps to advance the overall vision of the church.  For this reason, we chose to focus the bulk of our 2004 activity into strengthening the Bombay congregation.  This is of strategic importance since Bombay is literally the financial and cultural gateway to India.  One third of all the financial capital of India is controlled from Bombay.  This city of over 20 million people is where the Indian film industry is centered which surprisingly produces more movies than Hollywood.  The population of the city is staggering when you compare it to similar population totals.  Bombay has more people in one city than the entire population of Australia (19M), Holland (18M), or Bolivia (8M), and it equals the population of the entire state of Texas!  A strong base in Bombay will give us a more effective work in the nation of India.

I chose to partner with New Life in 2004 to support 50 workers in the city of Bombay.  Through those 50 workers we were able to launch over 150 congregations!  In addition we were able to consolidate 5,000 new church members into the church by following up on the Benny Hinn crusade in Bombay in February of 2004.  Though New Life Church was the main organizer of this historic event, there were many other churches that participated and the more than one million decision cards turned in were distributed equally to the partner congregations.  New Life received just over 100,000 decision cards, followed up on every one of them, and actually added 5,000 members to their Bombay congregation.  Much of this was made possible through the efforts of the 50 workers you helped to sponsor in 2004.

Through 2004 we continued to partner with New Life in providing funds for their ministry center.  This five story building is desperately needed for the advance of the national work.  For the past 30 years, New Life has operated out of rented buildings, but with the size of the work it was becoming financially irresponsible to continue to rent.  By 2004, their rented office had become so crowded that workers near the front of the building had to get up out of their chairs to allow a worker in the back of the room to exit the building.  Just visiting the building was claustrophobic! 

Thanks to your partnership, they are now nearing the completion of a beautiful five story office center on the north edge of Bombay.  We are devoting an entire floor to offices.  One floor serves as a meeting place for one of their 350 congregations and as a leadership training center.  Another floor will serve as a resource center and will house the video Bible School, principle of twelve training material and study resources for the New Life leaders.  We are also developing this center as a place where we can train the emerging church planters and oversee the national church planting vision.  The building should be completed in early 2006.

Varanasi Region

Our second area of focus has been in North India in the city of Varanasi.  This ancient city is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on earth and has a documented history that dates back 5,000 years.  Located on the banks of the Ganges River, it is one of the most holy sites of Hinduism.  The Hindus believe that a person who dies in Varanasi is granted immediate access into paradise and the river bank is lined with cremation sites that burn day and night.  The entire city lies under a dense smoke from these funeral pyres.  Astrologers line the banks of the river and ancient Hindu temples are found on nearly every corner.

I have partnered with New Life to help sponsor six church planting workers in Varanasi and those six workers have helped to advance the work out of this city to over thirty congregations.  Due to persecution, it is extremely difficult to meet publicly in the city but in the surrounding villages there is little resistance and people are hungry for the Gospel.  The church in the city is small and only about 35 adults but two of our workers, both under 26 years of age, are pastoring churches of over 500 adults in the surrounding villages!  Though it is not yet completed, the building we have helped to construct houses a regional training center and serves as a meeting place for the Varanasi congregation.  By the way, we need to purchase land in one of the cities where we have a congregation of over 600 adults meeting in a potato warehouse.  It's a pretty grim place to have church!  With about $6,000 we can purchase a good sized piece of land and begin construction on a building to seat 1,000.

Jalna Region

In 2005 we began to move with New Life toward the goal of establishing work in Maharashtra state, the region around Bombay.  Maharashtra is the third largest state in India and home to over 150 million people.  That's half the size of the entire United States in one state!  There are 183 unreached people groups in Maharashtra and 42,400 villages.  New Life has churches in 24 of these groups and 2,506 churches in the entire state.  In 2004 we sponsored 35 workers in the region of the city of Jalna.  Each leader has a goal of establishing 10 house churches in 10 separate villages.  In 2005 we have been able to establish 94 new works in the Jalna region through these 35 workers.  Some of these works are small but they are growing rapidly.  New Life has trained all 35 of these workers in the School of Leaders and they are moving their new converts through the Ladder of Success.  The work is overseen by a couple who pastor a successful church in Jalna of over 600 believers.  If we continue at our present rate of growth we will have over 200 churches in the Jalna region by the end of 2006, all through the efforts of these 35 workers.

South Central Nepal

In 2005, with your partnership, the Lord has helped us to launch 28 churches in South Central Nepal.  These church plants are among the Tharu people who until recently, were an unreached people group.  We sponsored 28 workers for a total of $33,600 but very little of these funds were used for the personal support of the workers.  The work among the Tharu people is in a state of revival and we're finding that in most cases it is not necessary to relocate a worker to an unreached village.  As the revival spreads, we are selecting workers out of their own villages and helping to train them to reach their own people.  We're spending our funds then on property and building materials.  Some of these congregations are upwards of 300 adults and in most cases the churches are too small the day they are completed!

multiplication

One of the main reasons I have chosen to work with New Life is the power of multiplication through partnership.  In the past two years, we have sponsored 82 workers with New Life church representing an investment of $98,400.  During this same 24 month period however, New Life has planted over 900 churches!  This is a ten to one return on our investment!  Most of the funding for the New Life church plants has come from resources raised by the Bombay congregation from within India.  What we are doing helps them to move much faster in their work but it's only a small portion of the overall vision.  There are encouraging sings that India is about to move into significant change.  In the Hindu dominated north, conversions to Christianity are taking place in significant numbers.  There have been large meetings in India for years but these days the multitudes are being consolidated into congregations.  In North India, 2003, we worked together with Dr. Alex Abraham to sponsor 50 workers and Alex placed them in an area that was undergoing revival.  Those 50 workers launched over 150 churches that year.  But in the past two years Dr. Alex, along with a group of Indian leaders he networks with, were able to launch just over 5,000 new churches in north India!

Model Churches

My vision is to plant one significant model church every year for  20 years.  That vision began four years ago and the Lord has helped us to launch four solid works.  They are at various levels of success but all of them are flourishing.  Our first model church, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, has grown to over 450 adults in four years.  They have planted two churches with their own resources and are now fully self-supported.  I supported the church financially for three years, then helped them to purchase a piece of property.  They have begun construction on a 600 seat building on that property.

Our second model church is in Gurgaon, India.  Just south of Delhi, Gurgaon is a strategic, rapidly growing commercial and business center.  The church there meets in a five star hotel and though it is only about 100 members, it is financially strong and filled with extremely capable leaders.  I helped them financially for one year and they are now fully self-sufficient.  The Gurgaon church is now looking for a larger location that will allow them to move to the next level of growth.

Our third model church, in Bhaktapur, Nepal, is an outreach that we took on out of a heart of compassion.  The church is small (just over 100 adults) and made up of extremely poor people but it is a delight to visit.  The couple who are pastoring this congregation also direct an orphanage of twelve children that we fully support.

Our fourth model church is outside Islamabad, Pakistan.  This church has exceeded our expectations in growth and though it is only nine months old, it has grown to over 400 adult believers.  We purchased property for them in April of this year and the church has been meeting in the open on that property since then.  We will be supporting the pastor of this congregation for three years.  He should reach self-supporting status in two years but we want to insure that he does not come under financial pressure until he is well on his feet.  We used this same strategy in Sri Lanka and it proved to be a worthy investment since it allowed the church to move forward and bring on a full time associate pastor in their third year.  The people in this community are not in abject poverty but they do have severely limited resources.  We want then, to help them to construct a building which we are working on now.  We can build here for about twelve dollars per square foot and our plan is to begin construction on a 1,000 seat auditorium in the spring of this year.  We are designing it to allow for a future expansion that will give us seating for 1,800.

Thanks for all you have done to help us! - Rick