Archive: Here Comes Jesus
Mission & Evangelism in South India
By Carroll Ferguson Hunt
It is Sunday morning in Madras. Sixteen ceiling fans stir the heavy coastal air as people choose their places on the wooden benches that fill the sanctuary of the Tamil Methodist Church. Gothic shaped windows framed by blue-gray painted woodwork let in light and humid air while two musicians—an organist and a violinist—lead hymns as worship gets under way. Pastor Samuel Royappa, whose vibrant pink shirt and clerical collar compliment the atmosphere of his church, as well as the climate of his city, calls some 50 children and young people to the altar rail where prayers are offered on their behalf. During the coming week each person kneeling there will face school exams, and their pastor wants them to know that God cares about such common things.
Beyond the front door, framed in a rectangle of color and sunshine, India passes by as the service progresses. There are rickshaws, lorries, women dressed in bright saris, bicycles, head loads, heart loads. Meanwhile, a spotted dog with thin legs and comical ears set at right angles to his head, meanders down the center aisle and across to the side door. A pair of birds swoop in and perch on steel rafters beside the swirling fans.
Peaceful, placid, predictable. Just another Sunday morning in a warm corner of God’s beloved world. Or so it seems.
But there is much, much more to the life and outreach of Madras’ Tamil Methodist Church. Since 1981, Pastor Samuel’s church has given itself to mission and evangelism. What does that mean? How do Christians involve themselves in missions in a land physically racked by poverty, and spiritually oppressed by three million Hindu gods?
Messiah Dhas
Dhas, an ordained minister sponsored by the Tamil church, is responsible for 21 villages in India’s South Arcot district. He grapples with caste problems among his people, with their alcoholism, and their lack of education. The caste system in India prevents hereditarily distinct Hindu social classes from dealing with one another.
In 1989, a Methodist church was established in Kallakurchi, the main town in his area, and now there are 500 Christians among the 25,000-person populace. Only low caste people attend worship (held in a house), however, because high caste people will not come to the neighborhood in which they gather.
Dhas shepherds eight centers of worship, where he teaches baptism preparation classes among his Hindu converts. Persecution against Christians is on the rise in the area, mainly from militant Hindu political groups. High caste people dislike Dhas because of his aid to the lower caste people whom they have traditionally controlled like serfs.
But through his loving, caring ministry, Dhas represents the Master in the eyes of the villagers. When they see him walking along their dusty paths, the people say to one another, “Jesus is coming.”
Selvaraj
Himself a Hindu convert, Selvaraj has been a Tamil Methodist Church missionary since 1989. One of the two churches he pastors is the only Christian lighthouse among 25 villages. “The people are poor,” he explains. “The women, for example, earn about six rupees per day” (mere pennies in U.S. currency).
Selvaraj’s shepherding in his region includes praying for the sick, sparking youth meetings and children’s open air rallies, and distributing gospel tracts. His 41 church members are farmers who attend nights of prayer on Fridays and Mondays. “Thirty to forty people attend,” he says, “including even children.”
The work of evangelism is going quite well for Selvaraj. His congregation owns the land on which their church stands. The sanctuary itself is a mat shed, woven straw mats laid over a superstructure of poles. They dream of building a proper church some day soon, a bigger space than the present group needs so they will have room to grow. About ten young people attend confirmation class, and the congregation backs Selvaraj’s ministry in three other outreach centers.
John Joshua
The Tamil Church’s third missionary representative graduated from Madras Bible Seminary, and is an experienced evangelist. He and his two co-workers specialize in training young Christians for evangelism ministry, aware that they are future leaders under formation.
Joshua is also aware of his leadership role in dealing with untutored villagers. “People come to us for deliverance from evil,” he says. To make clear the difference between Christianity and India’s traditional religions he says, “I tell them ‘no mantras, no sutras, only prayer and fasting.’”
This missionary pastor knows that prayer is of crucial importance in the spiritual maturation of those in his care, as is knowledge of God’s Word. In Sunday school his people take yearly exams, and he gives prizes to those who excel. Each Thursday he offers Bible studies; and early in the morning on the first day of each month, Pastor Joshua gives his people a promise verse for the month—some biblical truth to memorize and incorporate into their daily lives.
Joshua is equally creative in his evangelism efforts, utilizing magic shows and dramatic skits, along with more prosaic methods of tract distribution and open air meetings. His methods work. In recent months, Christian workers in Joshua’s district baptized 53 people from 10 villages.
This glimpse of work and workers sponsored by the Tamil Methodist Church contradicts our Western assumption that mission work in the rest of the world is carried out exclusively by those we send to the “unchristianized.” It also alerts us to the fact that in south India, some Methodists are committed to telling their world about Jesus.
“Personal, holy living and evangelism are two sides of our Methodist coin,” says Pastor Samuel Royappa. “People come to our church because it is reaching out. They say, ‘Let us go to the Methodist church and let us give.’” By “giving,” they mean not only finances, but time, energy, and witnessing skills as well.
Royappa claims that there are no caste problems in south India among Methodists in established fellowships—a remarkable feat, since for centuries the Hindu caste system has divided and oppressed Indians to a degree impossible for a non-Indian to comprehend. But at the Tamil Methodist Church in Madras, people of all castes attend services together. Some members are poor and uneducated, but they participate—even in giving toward the church’s mission outreach. They are partners along with the wealthy contractor who, from his affluence, gave land on which to build a daughter church.
“Pray for us,” Pastor Samuel asked; and then he sketched out the petitions that he holds before the Almighty.
- The Tamil Methodist Church supports nine other churches, three of which expect to become self-supporting next year.
- Six missionary pastors also draw financial sustenance from the TMC in order to evangelize and shepherd in twenty-four target rural areas.
- A new industrial/residential colony in Coimbatore is requesting Methodist evangelists to come and evangelize, with an eye toward planting churches.
- Christian education is needed for poverty-ridden children; also, land upon which fledgling groups of believers can build their sanctuaries, and more leaders to show them The Way.
Along with his other responsibilities as city church pastor and district superintendent, Pastor Samuel is training 19 people to be lay preachers. It is no wonder this remarkable Madras congregation is successful in spreading Christ’s redemptive love into the pockets of misery that afflict India—they put feet and hands to their faith.
Slum Reclamation
Madras, like most of the world’s great cities, is afflicted with dreadful slums where people struggle to survive on marginal incomes in extremely poor housing. Filth and disease abound. Most parents cannot afford to send their children to school; so the boys and girls idle their lives away in the squalid alleys and open sewers of their neighborhood.
The lay Christians of the Tamil Methodist Church, in seeking to light lamps of knowledge and faith in the restricted, untended lives of these children, sought ways to help. So, every weekend you can find several men and women on a rented Samuel and Shanti with Dhas, Selvaraj, and Joshua rooftop teaching songs and Scriptures to a noisy, wriggling batch of kids who have nothing else to do.
It is a wonder second to none, when the volunteer teachers put their pupils through their paces. A teenage girl with smooth black braids welcomes those who come to visit, while the children present them with flower garlands—a gracious Indian custom. Then, tiny boys and girls quote in unison memorized verses from the Psalms; and shout out at the top of their lungs the words of gospel choruses, embellishing them with all of the motions.
Older children pause long enough in their whispering and pushing for a better view, to repeat whole Psalms (after all, they’re older and are not allowed to settle for just a few verses); and then sing their songs, longer and louder (if that’s possible) than the little ones.
Washed, combed, and intensely focused, these precious, underprivileged children gallop through the paces set by their volunteer teachers, illuminating the biblical truths they are learning—truths that the people of TMC pray will come to govern and inspire their lives always.
Samuel Royappa and the Christians he shepherds, ignoring slum dirt, rural privation, and limited funds, are doing their best before God to tell their neighbors and their nation about Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life; for they know that no one comes to the Father without a relationship with his Son.
Carroll Ferguson Hunt is a freelance writer and author of Absolutely! and From the Claws of the Dragon. She and her husband were missionaries with OMS international in South Korea for 20 years.
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