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World Outreach Podcast
World Outreach Podcast
EP 49 The Power of Indigenous Leadership to Ignite India: A conversation with John G
Join us for an enlightening conversation with John from Mumbai, as he shares his compelling journey in spreading the gospel across India's vast and diverse landscape. Discover how he navigates the challenge of reaching over 2,000 unreached people groups, urging the Indian church to rise from complacency and engage in active outreach. With stories of revival and transformation, John paints a hopeful picture of how the Holy Spirit is driving change in localized communities. His insights shed light on the significant opportunity for the gospel's expansion and the need for an awakened church ready to embrace its mission.
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you're listening to the world outreach podcast dynamic conversations designed to empower our community as we engage unreached people groups everywhere. Today I am sitting with john from india and he's going to share his story about how god is moving in india and what's taking place there and the great need that still exists in the beautiful country of India. So, john, thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me today, Ben why don't you start by giving us a bit of information about yourself? Tell us about your family. Where do you come from?
Speaker 2:I basically come from the west of India, Mumbai. I'm married to Preeti and we have three daughters who are currently pursuing their studies in the vision that God has placed in their heart.
Speaker 1:Tell us a little bit about your ministry that you do and how you're involved with World Outreach.
Speaker 2:We pastor a cross-cultural church in Mumbai which we founded way back in 2012. And God laid that burden in our hearts to reach the Unreached People group Way back in 2001, where the Lord called us for ministry. And we also serve World Outreach as the field leaders for India and Nepal, reaching out to the Unreached People Group in various states of India.
Speaker 1:India is a big place. It's quite vast and in many people's minds it's a bit chaotic and misunderstood a bit. You know so much. Tell us a little bit about your india and how you see india in its current position.
Speaker 2:India is, uh is a variety of people from different walks of life where you can experience life in various ways. It's, it's vibrant, it's lively. People are really devoted in what they believe and they are engaging, as well as very hospitable, and they are a loving group of people who, once you get to know, they really go out to make sure that you are safe, you are held and they are looked after. So it's the cultural fabric of Indian. People are very hospitable and loving and they are always in seeking for something better in life. They want peace. They are always seeking people.
Speaker 1:So India is a very diverse nation. We're talking about unreached people groups as our focus as an organization, something like just over 2,000 unreached people groups as our focus as an organization. Something like just over 2 000 unreached people groups still remain in india, I think, out of 2300 groups or so roughly how many people groups are in india with their current stats we totally have of around two 2300 uh, two thousand two hundred and seventy nine people groups in india.
Speaker 2:Out of this, 2,000 people groups are still unreached. So that amounts to around 28% of the UPGs globally, which comes to around 1.3 billion people living in India without having the knowledge of the saving grace of God.
Speaker 1:That's quite a sobering thought, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Quite staggering because when you see it's so much that has to be done and so many people are actually in the dark, so many people actually in the dark.
Speaker 1:On your first kind of response, feel of that. What is that? 25 of the world's population unreached. You know the vast majority is there. What's your response internally as you think about that?
Speaker 2:It's quite heart-aching and heart-breaking and challenging, because right next door you have a group of people who have never heard the gospel and who will go to them, who has the heart for them and who's thinking about them, because everybody is so busy and caught up that who's really concerned about their eternity, while we are really bothered about what we do here I that's what made me think. Who's concerned about their eternity? We live for a period of time, and after that what? So that's quite sobering thought. That really drives me and that has been a changing factor of my life and in that, what would you say?
Speaker 1:the state of the church in general is in India.
Speaker 2:India has been exposed to the gospel for quite a number of years. In fact, AD 50, St Thomas came to India and gospel has been in India for about 2,000 years now. But it was always, you know, regionalized. It was never given the thrust of missions, they always kept it indoors. They always kept it within the society and the church all grew in denomination but it never grew with the passion for missions, so it always stuck within themselves. They never ventured out because they were too scared for the security concerns and for the risks that it entailed.
Speaker 2:So the church today is quite complacent. They are happy where they are. They need to be challenged. They need to be put at a place where they feel uncomfortable in their present position. They need to be challenged. Like Archbishop Gerald said, church is a sleeping giant. The church in India needs to be awakened and it's time for it to awake. There is a need to explore missions. There is a need to be mobilized. There is a need to create awareness that there is such a vast need around us. We can't be complacent and contend in what we are. If we have received it, it's on us to give it. And that is the challenge for the church to realize and to awaken at this time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how would you say the church is responding to that clarion call of our time? There's opportunity, let's do it.
Speaker 2:I would say that there has been an awakening that is happening and there are pockets of change that is happening. There's pockets of revival and there are areas where there has been massive impacts by the gospel across India, by the gospel across India Though it's not all over India, it is localized but there has been impacts where the Holy Spirit is really outpouring and changing lives in an unprecedented way, and many are trying to mask its presence, but it's actually happening. So we are really seeing a wave of change and revival happening across India these days.
Speaker 1:That's great to hear and it's quite exciting because, as you said, it has been quite regionalized. The South is quite prominently known as your Christian regions, the Northeast quite heavily Christian regions, but other areas it just hasn't seemed to kind of penetrate well, Crossing cultural barriers and boundaries and stuff. Why don't you elaborate a little bit on the mosaic that is India and the various cultures and how that kind of impedes or prevents the gospel from going forward?
Speaker 2:Cultural barriers have been really a very important role in not allowing the gospel to go across, because traditionally it has been missionaries from the south who have gone to the north and traditionally what happened was they have always focused, tried to find focus and point of contact to the people who have migrated from the south to the north. They haven't been successful in trying to, you know, cross culture. Though they have been cross-culturally located, their mode of operand was not really cross-cultural and they always sought to be among the culturally familiar people, which has really impacted the mission work in the North. North has been resilient and they have been bound by traditions and the caste system which are very prevalent in India. And that has also acted as a big cultural barrier because South were always considered as foreigners and the people who came always were considered as infiltrators into their culture because their culture was very closed. So that has really played a very damaging role in the progress of the missions there.
Speaker 1:Right. And so, as people have begun to catch some of this vision, despite of these barriers and the people that you're working with, what has been helpful or what is working in bringing church planting, evangelism, church planting discipleship into new regions or crossing localities, crossing cultures yeah, that's a very interesting question because the focus to train indigenous leaders, that has been the game changer, because the more we try to go to different cultures we will be shunned.
Speaker 2:But if we can identify potential people and leaders among the indigenous people, among the UPGs, and catch one person who can impact his village, one person who can impact his tribe and he in turn can go and make a change in his own people group, that is really working. That is the way forward for missions and that is what we have been seeing in our ministry in our work, where we have been able to tap on that and identify indigenous leaders who can actually go out. So we train them and we help them to go out and seek their own, so they are accepted as their own and they find inroads among their cultural people.
Speaker 1:So, in this training and developing of indigenous leaders, local leaders, what have been some of the key skills or mindsets that need to be passed on and developed in those leaders?
Speaker 2:The main training that we want to give them is to take the gospel, the disciple making, where you tell stories. Many of these cultures they have. Story Orality is a great tool for them. Many of them are illiterate and many tribal people don't have any proper language, but storying is a very good method to expand and to take the gospel to them. Storying is a method by which they can actually go in a way that is reproducible and they catch the attention of their own people. And when they come with an interesting story and they tell okay, this is a story that changed my life and this can actually change yours. They are interested to hear what he has to say or what she has to say, especially among women. Storying is a great tool to impact among peers because they usually come around together for cooking or for washing or around wells and have a general conversation and that that sparks interest in them, which has been a big tool to share the message across.
Speaker 1:He, then, is being built on personal experiences with God, testimony sharing community-wise that way, yeah. And then building on that is storing actual scriptures and helping people to memorize scripture and grow into and understand the stories. How does that work as a reproducible method within that context?
Speaker 2:Because when they share their experiences, along with the stories that they say, they can't negate it. They have experienced it. And when they share that with their life and they have witnessed the change in their life, it really catches on the attention and it gives them curiosity what if I also experience? How can I experience it? How can this change my family? How can the fabric of my family and the vices that are present in my family be removed? So they want to experience that, they want to have a taste of that, and that really goes a long way for them, because if they have experienced it, maybe I could too. So they want to try it out and God is gracious. The moment they cry out with a pure heart, with a seeking heart, god opens the heavens and comes down. And we have witnessed people's lives change without any external influence, just they crying out to God, crying out whoever you are, lord, help me. And that cry from their heart has really changed lives.
Speaker 1:And so, within that cry of their own heart, there's a marrying with a local believer who's there to now disciple them. What does that discipleship process look like?
Speaker 2:So, when they experience that, they go back to the person who shared the story and then they share their experience and then they go through the devious process wherein they sit and learn the stories and the scriptures. They expound the word, they discover the truths of the word by themselves, which helps them to understand that the scripture is true and is alive. And the scripture becomes alive to them. It changes lives and it impacts them in such a way that they hold on to it with zeal, saying, no matter what we have experienced, that this word is alive and we have experienced in our life.
Speaker 1:So then they, having had this zeal, having had this experience with God, and now, full of passion, they go on and communicate that with their family, with their friends, that their circles of influence.
Speaker 2:They don't, they are. They cannot be quietened, they cannot be shut down. They go around proclaiming this. I have a story where people one lady was healed miraculously, where both her walls in her heart was miraculously healed, and she went down to each and every relative and she said you see, you know, my heart was dead, I was about to die, but I prayed to Jesus and I was healed. And now that entire village consisting of her relatives have come to the Lord. And that's the way they just go and proclaim the message of God.
Speaker 1:That's so beautiful, isn't it? And when it's that way, when it's been caught tasting caught tasting and seeing, experiencing God, now sharing, and it continues to build, it's like a wave that builds up and momentum begins to take place yeah, even local people tried to burn or shut them down, but they couldn't, because they saw it live, they saw it in action.
Speaker 2:They saw how the lives changed, how people improved, how sick were healed automatically, without any external influence. And so it just keeps growing and the wave just goes from one village to the other and the message goes that okay, in that village somebody got healed. So people come in search of what happened, because the other village also has some cases which they are really fighting, which they are really concerned, and they come seeking how can we be improved, how can we be helped, how can we have that change? So this has been spreading and God has really been faithful to make that happen.
Speaker 1:Which is super exciting.
Speaker 2:Exciting.
Speaker 1:What other things are you seeing as training needs or things that needed to be developed in these new believers so that the gospel can continue to expand?
Speaker 2:Just having that initial experience is not enough, but to have a real deeper dive into the word, to know the truth and to be firm. Because while this revival wave is happening, there is also the counter wave happening, trying to snub this. Persecution is on the rise, opposition is on the rise. So unless they are firm in the word and strong in their faith, they cannot survive. Survive that that wave is quite painful. People have been deprived of their homes, they have been driven out of their houses. So it's challenging.
Speaker 2:But we've seen that when they come together and study the word on themselves by themselves, the Holy Spirit speaks to them, encourages them. The historical background of the word, the Acts episode from the scriptures, have been quite influential in making them strong in their faith, saying that if they could experience that and still be firm, we can do it because we have experienced God in our lives. And that is the real way forward just not having a shallow experience of deliverance, but after that continuing with the word and going and taking a deep dive and going deep with the word and scriptures.
Speaker 1:That has really helped and that's fantastic, and they're building themselves up in the Lord. This way, they're giving themselves spiritual weapons to fight and resist again what's coming to them, what also has been helpful with people facing this challenge of persecution that's on the rise in India, to help them endure and stand.
Speaker 2:The greatest help, strength that they have had is the hope that God is with them and the hope of eternal life, that their life is secure in Christ, the adoption into the family of God that has really given them the strength to endure the wave of persecution that has hit them.
Speaker 2:And they have been very innovative in ways to, you know, escape from persecution. Incidentally, in one village on Sundays you cannot worship because the patrol of those people are on the road seeking who is praying. So they, incidentally, changed the day they meet. They changed it to a different weekday wherein they are not on a patrol. Then house churches started building up, coming up. They don't gather in large numbers, they gather as a family, so when family members come together they don't have a reason to stop them and that they gather under any pretext or some celebration or some point of encouragement. And that way they have been able to, you know, grow in the Lord and face the persecution, at the same time encouraging one another to grow in faith and be strong in the Lord. That has been very instrumental.
Speaker 1:So it's very much what we see in Acts 2, 42 through 47, coming together, being creative, gathering together in homes to meet, and that's really exciting from that perspective of going forward. What's exciting you about? What's taking place with the gospel in India right now.
Speaker 2:It's really. You know, I'm really excited to see how God is working because people are seeking God. Indians generally are seekers of God. They have that passion to seek a deity, a superior being. They want to have that relationship and when they come at a roadblock where they have no answers to their questions, they are seeking out of their cultural boundaries, which is actually bringing seekers and generating seekers. And that is really helping us to reach them and helping us to go out with the message and train our people to go out to them and help them to understand who God is and who the living God is, how they can experience that.
Speaker 2:And I'm really excited because people are thirsty. They are willing to hear while there is persecution, while there is opposition, which is opposition, which is a reality. On the other hand, people are willing to hear, they are ready to hear because they are tired. They are, they have hit a roadblock, they have tried everything, they have gone to mountains, they have done sacrifices, they have followed rituals all their lives, yet they don't see an answer. And so they say one person told me we have tried all this for so many years and yet we don't have an answer. But now we have got the answer and that was quite encouraging for me that they have not given up. They have. They're still seeking. There are people who have given up, but there are a major chunk who are seeking to see what way they can get out of their present misery, and that is really exciting. The harvest is plenty and it's all ripe to be harvested.
Speaker 1:So now we need workers to harvest, yes, so what? What are some of the key challenges to overcome into mobilizing a next generation of workers into the heart.
Speaker 2:I would start to say that the passion of the lost soul is key because in the time that we have been sharing and discussing, every minute 106 people die in this world and out of that, 20 die in India. And in the few minutes that we have been together, around 50 to 100 people have died without a chance to hear the gospel. That's quite a sobering fact that so many people can never ever get a chance to hear the gospel. The passion to reach the lost, that is something that can really move people, mobilize people today.
Speaker 1:How are you going about stirring up this passion within people? We?
Speaker 2:need to mobilize churches. We need to mobilize the churches today with this intention. Give them training courses or speak to them and plant the seeds for missions in their heart. Churches are comfortable in their particular areas because the last decade a visionary came, founded the church. Now they are secure, but they have lost the vision to go forward. Now it's on us to go and plant the seeds of that mission and mobilization in their heart that they can actually see that it's on them to go out. If they can't, they could actually send somebody support the missionary to expand the work that is so vast and so few people are there to do inspiring.
Speaker 1:You have to be example. Yes, we have to do it ourselves. But we also have to invite them along, and so what does that look like? I know you've taken people on trips and you're bringing people with them to maybe even see an unreached people group in the very first time, or even exposure to villages and communities. What's been people's responses as they come in?
Speaker 2:People have been overwhelmed seeing the need and I had a visitor last month who had never been exposed to a UPG before and they went back with a passion for missions. They went back changed. They went back and said if we can't go, we'll make sure we support somebody. Because that is the impact and I have seen people's lives change. Some have committed to go out as missionaries, full-time missionaries. They want they made sure, they want to be on the forefront, on the front line, because the need is so vast and the task is such huge task ahead of us that people are impacted when they see the reality. So it's upon us to take them, take the risk of taking them into those volatile areas, show them the reality and expose them to what the facts are and give them a chance to have a taste firsthand, and then God does the remaining.
Speaker 1:When you do that and people go and they see, and there's a big challenge presented before them and now they're up against these. I don't know if I can do this. They have these questions, they have these challenges. What would you say to them about your experience of walking in ministry for 20 plus years now?
Speaker 2:It's always a step of faith. When God called me for ministry, it was the God, the call of Abraham, that he gave me and he said leave everything and follow me. And it was quite, very intense when the Lord first told me that. So it's always the first step of willingness to obey God, willingness to be obedient to the call of God, to the nudge that God, the Holy Spirit, gives us. It could be a silent nudge, but if we are sensitive to that, god will build on that and that has really, you know, helped me to guide people in the right direction to go into missions. And I'm very, you know, excited to say that many of the people who have journeyed along with us, many young people whom we have had a chance to mentor, are in ministry in various places today because Holy Spirit works in their hearts even after 10 years. Some have come into ministry after 10 years, but the seed that was sown has borne fruit. So that has been great to see that.
Speaker 1:How, over these years, have you continued to fan this own passion in your life and to continue to stay strong in the Lord and the vision he's given?
Speaker 2:I have been intentional. We as a family have been intentional to upgrade ourselves, to train ourselves, to equip ourselves, to make sure that we keep the zeal going, we don't lose it. We have done courses that have really strengthened us. For example, the Kairos course has been quite an eye-opener where people can be really challenged to think out of the box. The Nations course offered by World Outreach is amazing tool, amazing course. It changed, it questioned my way of working, which has helped me to rethink and to revisit my strategies, so that these steps have helped me to keep my updating myself and to keep the zeal and the passion for the lost. Daily devotion is a key tool to help me and my family keep the fire burning and to keep sharing the passion to others. That has been really instrumental to help me to continue in what I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and keeping the passion, keeping the spiritual relationships going is so key.
Speaker 2:Very key.
Speaker 1:And even continue to be exposed to new ideas and new thoughts helps us continue to grow as people and to practice, you know, learning, continuing to grow. As we kind of wrap up this conversation, what would be some closing thoughts of words of encouragement for those today?
Speaker 2:Missions is alive and waiting for people to go, even if, for once, if people can go on a mission trip or an internship and see the need of the field, their people are screaming out for help, if not vocally from their heart, to be able to align ourselves with the heart of God and to look at them with the eyes of God and be passionate. Don't be complacent. If God has blessed you and given you an ability, use it for God. Be able to be willing to take risks, because God is with you. He won't let you down. He says I am with you till the end of the age. Be not afraid, because I have overcome the world.
Speaker 2:Yes, we will have challenges, we will face obstacles, but God is with us and that's what has kept me going. We have hit roadblocks, but we kept reminding ourselves and saying we're doing it for God, not now, for eternity. It is not for now, it is for eternity. It is not for us, but it is for him, and that I would encourage anyone who wants to go out, experience it. Go on a trip, go to see, go and see their lives. Connect with somebody who is in missions, wherever they may be. Connect with them. Go on once One trip can change your life.
Speaker 1:Thank you, John, for your time today and sharing your heart for India, for sharing how God is working and moving and how you're making a difference. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Listener, thank you for tuning in today. I hope you're encouraged by our conversation with John and him just sharing about his heart for the lost and the unreached and his great nation and how God is working and moving and challenging us to step out and to invite others to step out with us to make disciples amongst unreached people group. As always, if you have any questions or thoughts on this podcast. Thanks for watching.