DAWN Fridayfax 1995 #35

News from Colombia, India, England

Colombia: "Baptise me, or I shoot"

Ramiro lives in an area of Colombia controlled by guerillas, and joined them while still young. With tears in his eyes, he tells of the times when crying mothers and children could not keep him from murder and plunder. On one occasion, he had to blow up a church: "but before the attack, the people inside began to sing. One of the songs was a bible text which reminded me of my childhood. I fought with myself, and knew that I could not attack the church. I persuaded my accomplice that we should return to the camp. The following morning, heavily armed, I forced my way into the church, where the pastor and a few others were praying. I threatened the pastor with my gun and ordered him to baptise me. He didn't know what to do, and murmured something about bible classes which I would have to visit first, but he changed his mind when I pushed the barrel of my gun into his ribs. I was baptised on the spot, and have served God without interruption since then." Ramiro is now in a so-called "mountain brigade", in which a few Christians join together to visit and encourage persecuted Christians in Colombia's mountain areas.

Source: Open Doors, Sept. 1995

Madras: 240 new churches in the last 12 months

There has been a new church-planting initiative in Madras (southern India), a city with a population of around 6.8 million. 240 new churches have been planted in the last 12 months. The pan-Indian strategy movement "Council on National Service" (CONS) invited 130 of the city's pastors to a strategy conference on 1. August 1994. In 1989, the church growth researcher Albert Vasantaraj counted 700 Christian churches in the city, which had already doubled to 1400 in 1994. The interest in planting new churches grew even more as the pastors confirmed that traditional evangelisation methods such as literature distribution, radio evangelisation and so-called large-scale crusades had contributed very little to church growth in the last few years.

The pastors accepted the challenge of mid- and long-term co-operation with the aim of planting an active church for every 1,000 of the population in the rapidly-growing city. Pastor D. Mohan's Pentecostal "New Life Assembly of God" with 7,600 members has planted 21 churches alone in the last 12 months, and now has 90 daughter churches alongside the mother church.

Source: Pastor Subramaniam Pillai, 91, Dr. Besant Rd, Madras 600014, India
More from India

Maranatha: sleepy denomination wakes up

Henry Josef, founder of the Maranatha church, reports of a new era in the denomination which he leads, which is a grouping of 190 southern Indian local churches with headquarters in Madras. Up until now, the main attention has been on the consolidation and expansion of the existing churches. The new initiative was the result of a church-planting seminar with Subramaniam Pillai, one-time engineer and now pastor and strategy coordinator of the DAWN-like CONS (Council On National Service).

Following ten years during which almost no new churches were planted, 52 new churches were founded in the two months after the seminar. Finny Josef, Henry's son, is so convinced of the strong connection between evangelisation and church-planting that he has become CONS Co-ordinator for the state of Tamil Nadu. The state's largest ever pastors' conference for early 1996, at which 10,000 pastors are expected.

Source: Subramaniam Pillai, Madras.

England: Churches change their plans, favouring church-planting

Chris Forster, Director of "Challenge 2000", the English DAWN project, reports that the official position of many English denominations and churches regarding church-planting has changed dramatically in the last few years. At the time of the first English DAWN congress in 1992, only the Assemblies of God and the Salvation Army had a strategy and target for planting churches. In the meantime, every large Protestant denomination has incorporated church-planting into its strategy and in some cases set a specific target. According to Mr. Forster, the results cannot be overlooked. Over 1,500 churches have been planted since 1990, mostly since the DAWN congress in 1992. The Salvation Army alone has started 57 new churches in the last two years.

Source: Christ Forster, FAX +44-181-789691

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