World Missions Partners to Start Churches in India
Christian Reformed World Missions is working with three partner organizations to establish and support a church growth and training project in India.
The Timothy Institute will provide training materials and trainers for the project. Mission India will fund translation work of the training modules done by a partner in India.
“There is an explosion of church planting going on in India” and this project will enable the church planters to be part of the process in a more successful way, says Ron Vander Griend, vice president for advancement for Mission India.
For this project, experienced missionaries will use mainly Timothy materials to teach evangelism through practical, small group, discipleship and Bible study techniques. They will do their work in a way that is more inductive, meaning in a way that the many people can easily grasp, says Vander Griend, a former CRWM missionary in the Philippines.
The first master trainers, who will be training indigenous church trainers, travel to Nepal inSeptember to start the project. “The trainers will be given practical, skill-based training ,” said Vander Griend.
In January, 600 Indian church planters will come together to undergo the first of four trainings by the trainers who are to be schooled in Nepal. After each training session, the pastors and evangelists will go into the countryside and communities to start and then maintain the process of beginning a new church.
After a period of time, they will return for additional training to help them respond to the needs of a new congregation. The goal is to train indigenous church leaders how to plant new churches and build healthy and vibrant congregations that can reproduce in other locations.
Hogan said that CRWM will provide expenses to send trainers to India to train the trainers. “We will report the expenses of providing master trainers and we will report on how we are mobilizing the CRC to pray for this ministry,” he says.
To help spread the message of the work being done in India, CRWM will solicit and distribute anecdotal stories about the impact this new ministry is having.
The Timothy Institute says that its mission fits with this project. The institute, currently located at Calvin Theological Seminary, has the focus, it says, of training “developing world evangelists and lay leaders for the purpose of building viable and healthy congregations and communities.”
The institute holds a strong biblical worldview and is committed to helping develop “sustainable congregations and capable congregational leadership,” says a memo of agreement between all of the parties. The memo lays out the roles each will play.
As for Mission India, it will help underwrite translation of materials, initially into the Bengali and Telegu languages. "We believe this curriculum will enhance our ability to not only plant new churches but will encourage self-supporting congregations that care for themselves the capability of reproducing,” says Vander Griend.
Mission India has no expatriate missionaries. They work entirely through a partner organization in India. Vander Griend says that Mission India already has some training materials of its own that it will use. But overall, he is excited about the collaborative nature of the venture. “Different organizations working together, adding their own expertise, is the new way to be doing missions. No one organization can afford to do everything.”
Back to God Ministries International, the electronic media ministry of the CRC, is also launching a new ministry in India. Geared to people who speak Hindi, the effort will be in partnership with other Christian ministries.
In this new effort, BTGMI will be partnering with Good Books Educational Trust and Words of Hope, a media ministry of the Reformed Church of America, to reach Hindi-speaking Indians with the message of the Gospel.
BTGMI anticipates building partnerships with CRWM and the Timothy Institute in its new ministry.
-Chris Meehan, CRC Communications
