Sunday, June 7, 2020

OPPORTUNITIES IN MISSION IN INDIAN CONTEXT



“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work, one finishes nothing. The Prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The day when you get satisfied in your mission activities you are done with your mission. Don’t get satisfies but be curious, emphatic, enthusiastic, passionate for the mission of God.
After the death of my son I came to the conclusion that we all are selfish, I mean in a positive way. Why do we follow Christ? The answer is simple that we want to be in heaven. Our desire is to be in heaven. When our son went to be with the Lord, we had one desire added to it that to be meet him too. So everybody has a desire in their heart to be secure, safe, have peace. But they don’t know where to find it.
I want to have small thought on opportunity what the bible says about it. Many times, we get opportunities but many times we don’t. What can be done at that time? If we ask Paul about it, he would say create it. Let’s look in Acts 17: 16: “his spirit provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.” - There was a provoking in him, some inspiration from inside.
Then in ‘vs 23, he speaks about the unknown god’- He is creating opportunities in to make them know about Christ, we can see him speaking in synagogues and marketplaces. He created an opportunity to speak to the common men making their unknown god concept without diluting the theology or the doctrine of Christ.

                In 1st century, Paul; did it, then we in this advanced technology we can do many things. In the 1st century or today, our focus to share the Gospel and remaining work is done by the spirit. 2nd century onwards we can see opportunities for the mission were always less but God worked in the least expected situations and places.
                Our ultimate goal is to share the Gospel not to convert anybody in any form. That the part of the Holy Spirit.
                I strongly believe opportunities are very rare that we get but we need to create opportunities to share the Gospel.  I think we should learn a few things from businessmen, many times we don’t need a product but they make the opportunity to buy that particular product.
-          Many times we may get opportunities but at the same time, God expects us to create opportunities.
-          Mission these days is not easy but at the same time, it is not impossible too.
-          We have vast opportunities for doing missions these days as technology has grown up like anything.
So how to create opportunities; hence we first need to know the society very well. Let’s see how is our society.    In my finding, I found out there are 4 types of people.
  1.         People of God
  2.       Receptive people
  3.       Resistant people
  4.       None of these groups.







          1.       Children of God:
Children of God are considered believers, i.e. the church-going people or people who are trying to live in Christlikeness. These people need to be developed spiritually; we need a direct word of God through sermons, counseling, etc.  The ministries towards them are; Sunday worships, Sunday schools, youth, women, men gatherings, Bible studies and Weekly prayer groups etc. 

2.   Receptive people
They are the non- believing body but are very religious or can be good people in society and also in family. What they lack is salvation. They are receptive to listen to the gospel and will respond to it positively. The ministries towards them are; making good relationships, Praying with them, Film shows, etc. For example: when we were in Bihar, one of our missionaries went to the book, he met a person, he asked him and he said what he is doing and all. That person told I want to meet your pastor, he referred to Rev. Jerish Varghese, he met Achen, after a couple of questions he said I want to be a believer. Rev. Jerish told to come to church as possible to him. He used to live far. He was always there whenever possible. He was a medical representative. He got married in a Hindu way, after his marriage he bought his wife to Rev. Jerish and told him achenji (Reverend) whatever you told me, tell her also so that she can also be a believer. He even started giving tithe and helped in other needs of Patna mission-field. 

3.       Resistant people
They are also non believing body, resistant to the Gospel and its activities. They are basically anti- Christian elements of society. It is tough to share the Gospel to them. They can hurt us or abuse us. At the same time, we cannot run from the responsibility of sharing the Gospel to them. To reach them, we need to have schools, Hospitals, tailoring training centers, etc. There are many examples in history where ministry was done by our compassion projects and other social development projects.

4.       None of the above
They are might be believers, or might be non believers. They have a peculiarity that, they are very much passive to Gospel. They don’t have any response to the Gospel and also are tough people to reach. For them what can be done, they obey us. Get them involved in mission work and give them leadership in some or other things in the mission field. I found these kinds of people in Gujarat. What we did is that, we organized missionaries and told them to take few selected people according to their maturity level for mission work and give them leadership in the prayer meetings and other things like ladies' meetings, elders meetings, etc.  as believers are concerned. About non- believers we can try many times as possible to reach them. In Gujarat, the main reason why we organize so many meetings is that just making it sure that we share the gospel as many times as possible until they receive it.  This is applicable in Gujarat, I don’t know about other places.

We have many opportunities in which we can do mission in possible ways; we just need to be alert and see possible ways to share the gospel. As I said earlier, we just to have that passion, zeal above all Ambition to do it for the faith we have in Christ. We just need to take the risk, we will have a result of risk for the Lord.


Note: This is the seminar that I took at Jubilee Memorial Bible College.