This past January 2010, I had the pleasure of joining Joe Price and Dan Torres with a number of Indian brethren in Bangalore, South India to teach classes to more than 120 liberal gospel preachers who expressed interest in leaving their institutional backgrounds. Having never preached or taught the gospel of Christ in another country I found the experience much more rewarding than I ever would have thought. I would like to highly recommend the potential and the validity of this extraordinary effort that after following this work from its inception from afar I have now had the chance to witness it and join in to do my part.
Of course, Joe Price had been on four previous trips to India and Dan Torres had been previously as well, so I was the new guy. This work was originally pioneered by Bobby Holmes and Stan Cox back in 2004 and faithful brethren had come nearly every year in the intervening years. On my trip I was filling in for Bobby, who requested me to come to fill in for him, since his health has become perilous and he has decided because of the sometimes difficult aspects of such travels he cannot return. Bobby has been indefatigable through his many trips to India and his devotion to the spread of the truth throughout India is unquestioned. In fact, if you spend some time with Bobby you will learn that his enthusiasm for India is infectious!
Critically important to making our team effective, are the hardworking and longsuffering Indian brethren themselves. I was privileged to meet and work with the brethren in India who are the beachhead of the spread of truth there. In Bangalore, a city of more than six million, are two workers in the Lord’s vineyard who are such a treasure. Joshua Mahendranath one of the key brethren who is able not only to ably preach, and is an excellent Bible student, but is one of those rare individuals who is the right man at the right time. Then there is “salt of the earth” Yerramallah Balaswamy, the faithful gospel preacher, who began the faithful congregation in Bangalore twelve years ago who is always a rock to lean upon. He stood virtually alone for all those years until he was able to team up with Joshua and then the network began to spread. Brothers Francis and Lenin Babu who live many miles away in the state of Andhra Pradesh and in the district of Guntur preach for two separate churches whose meeting houses are about nine miles apart in village settings. You would be hard pressed to find more faithful men anywhere. Lenin and Joshua, along with some other wonderful brethren too numerous to list here are essential translators and guides in so many things. I cannot stress more the confidence I have in them after being with them during our stay there.
Why Preach in India?
Sometimes I am asked by brethren here at home why preachers want to go overseas when there are so many in our country that need to be taught. This is a legitimate question but the answer is not obvious until one has had the experience. I hope I can give a worthy answer for those who have thought this and I will try to relate in the rest of this article why I think the work in India is worthy of our going there and also financially supporting those who do.
As the proven practice has developed, our group rented a hall and dorms in a crowded Bangalore neighborhood where side streets of gravel and dirt are bordered by apartments and condominium type buildings very close together. Your favorite tropical plants like rubber trees and climbing philodendrons are lushly interspersed everywhere. In front of many entrances to homes and businesses are hand drawn chalk symbols scrawled on the sidewalk to guard against the threat of roaming demons. Packs of wild dogs and “sacred” cows eat garbage swept up into piles in some of these side streets and one must beware. My first morning there I saw seven macaques eating fruit on a wall but had left my camera in my room and missed recording my only glimpse of monkeys while there. This rented place does not have air conditioning and in fact the windows are essentially open to the outside air with small re-bar type grills on the tall narrow windows. This openness allows for clouds of tiny voracious mosquitoes to invade the place around dusk with always the worry of them bringing the ever present blight of malaria.
The two groups we taught in this place consisted of about sixty men each; most of them preachers from fairly remote villages in the countryside and are already working actively with congregations. Their open and ready smiles and earnest and sincere manner lacked citified sophistication which was so refreshing to me. All of them had accepted invitations from the faithful Indian brethren to come and take part in our classes which would feature lessons to beef up their respect for Bible authority, to show them denominational error and to give them scriptural reasons for leaving the institutional church of Christ backgrounds most of them were trained in. You see, most all of them had already had their experiences being trained in liberal schools there in India which have been cranking out preachers for decades but in a system that is alien to New Testament truth. The system they had been educated to preach in also placed them in the churches they preached for and provides their salaries which come from the U.S. Most of these men did not know that churches are to be autonomous and elders are almost unheard of in these congregations. The regional leaders are their bosses and “ride herd” very closely on the activities of “their men.” But I want to tell you, their joy was almost palpable when the truth became understood to them. The system, from which they come, though thought of as the church of Christ is essentially denominational in nature and hierarchy.
Many of these gospel preachers had come from hundreds of miles away travelling by train in stuffy and bone jarring railcars; others by bus, with long travel times and some of more than twenty four hours duration. These men had to be weary after such travels and then having to sleep on simple cots in our rented facility. The food they were fed for the week they were with us is the simple food of the people of India, mostly rice and curries, very highly spiced and peppery hot, and always accompanied by flat breads and the favored beverage, steaming urns of tea.
As a gospel preacher with about three decades of experience preaching in our own country I am used to audiences made up of a good percentage of indifferent people, maybe sleepy from staying up too late the night before, having to borrow a Bible because they forgot to bring their own and those who are chronically late because they live such busy, self involved lives. What I will always remember about the Indian brethren is that during these classes almost without exception, they had nothing more important to do in the world than being there for these lessons, and it showed by their rapt attention. Several times per day the power would fail for a few minutes and so the Power Point projector would go down but this did not discourage our students who were so dedicated to getting the most they could from what we were teaching.
As I mentioned previously, we competed with lots of noise through those open windows. A new apartment building was being built with all the sounds you can imagine being part of that scene. The intermittent sound of metal being ground with power equipment and compressors running without mufflers was almost deafening. Then there was some worker who occasionally beat on some plate steel with a big hammer. This racket was common through the whole time we were there. Also large jungle birds shrieked outside, Bangalore having been built right where a magnificent jungle once stood with huge spreading jungle trees lining the streets where these birds roost nightly. But no matter the cacophony of outside noises came into that room with us, the students leaned forward, straining their ears to hear our words or the words of the translators after we had spoken and they made copious notes as each had to squint in the weak light. I have never, ever, had a more attentive audience than these men. As absolute proof, if any was needed of their interest, were the thoughtful questions and discussions we had in our Q&A sessions. Their clearly obvious attention is the thing I will never forget about those classes. And that is the reason we should be there! These people love the truth and want to glean all they can. Rather than we Americans doing a lot of baptisms and proving the work we have done by pictures of people we have baptized and bragging about our talents, it is better that these men are armed with the sword of truth and go about adding converts more readily themselves. One day our part will quite likely not be necessary because I can see the Indian brethren being completely self-sufficient one day in every way.
I have no doubt at all that many of these men gained fundamentals and knowledge beyond this during our time together and that many of them made the final steps to leave their institutional fellowship. Where formerly hundreds of liberal churches were are now many sound churches of Christ. We are receiving news since coming home of elderships being established meaning that some have taken to heart our urging to ordain worthy men to serve in that capacity. This is clearly a rejection of evangelical oversight the liberals have promulgated.
On the 2010 trip I was privileged to take part in the giving away of about 3,000 Bibles printed in the native language of this portion of south India, called Telugu. Provided by the generosity of caring brethren in our country, each of the preachers took back to the churches they preach for, 22 Bibles to give to their fellow members along with the 44 lessons and charts the three of us presented while there.
Going Back to India
The invitation to return with Joe and Dan has been accepted by me and we plan on going back toward the end of January, 2011. Already a list of those preachers invited gives us about the same number as last time to teach in the same format as before. I have always heard that when you are successful repeat what you did and you’ll be successful again. This time, when the two weeks of classes have been completed, we plan to travel to some of the churches out from Bangalore and visit the preachers in the places they preach and see how they fare. We also hope to provide any additional edification we can at that time at their locations. In particular, we wish to help in the equal grounding of the men of these congregations so that they can be doing their part for the growth and stability of the churches and not just the preachers. This follow up will be invaluable to us to know of our effectiveness and should serve to encourage those we visit.
Quite frankly, last year when I made up my mind to go I did not know how I would gather the funds to make this trip because it is expensive. But God’s providence made it happen and I was able to not only go but share in the overall cost of what it takes to teach these classes. All my support came from churches wanting to support my work and four non-related individuals who believe very much in the work being done. May God bless all these wonderful souls who aided in this work!
Just think of it: India is rapidly advancing in technology and commerce; her people prospering as never before. I instantly fell in love with these kindhearted, hard working and very intelligent people. They are as fine a people as any in the world. India (Bharat, which is Hindi for “The Republic of India”) has about one billion people and this incomprehensible number makes me think of the Lord’s confident urging to believers in John 4:35, where he said, “..behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.“ If we claim to love Him, how can we resist this opportunity?
