India: mentoring pays

Recent research reveals that new churches have been planted in almost 50% of the villages in Punjab, a state in northern India. That is an almost unbelievable development. An ever-increasing number of Christian leaders are joining REACH PUNJAB 2007, which aims to plant a new Christian church in every Punjabi village. Besides such reports, we regularly hear news from India such as this:

• in the past three months alone, 1,500 people in Uttar Pradesh State have been saved, and almost 300 new house churches planted. This month, 125 people from Chandoli Block have been baptised. The people are being discipled intensely, and we have been able to train 500-600 people to plant churches through intense prayer, constant training and long-term mentoring;
• 3,758 people have been trained as leaders in Uttar Pradesh;
• 2,765 Muslims who now follow Jesus have been trained as leaders;
• In 2004, 1,997 people were trained for the harvest work in north-western India, making a total of 6,697. The number of people being trained each year grew by 43%;
• In central India, 8,748 men and 1,978 women were trained last year, making a total of 27,186. Annual increase: 65%
• There is a church-planting initiative in around 50 of New Delhi's Colonies (neighbourhoods). One network of 48 newly-planted churches totalling 600 baptised believers is led by 20 people, who are training another 30 new leaders...
• Sanjeev was a young taxi driver before he joined Operation Agape, where he started as a chauffeur. Something in him began to burn as he listened to the conversations in his car. He started praying for the Farukkabad District in Uttar Pradesh and began training a few young men. Since then, over 30 house churches have been planted, and a network of 18 churches formed, united in the vision to plant new churches in all of the district's 2,000 villages...
• Of the 10,000 women who attended training, many have become effective witnesses for Jesus and are directly involved in planting new churches in their surroundings. They were trained mainly by women trained by women to train other women...
• In central India, 200 women are trained as church planters every month, as well as two church planting trainers.

"The key to this historic explosive growth, besides the simply-reproducible house churches," explains Dr. Alex Abraham, one of the human motors in the northern Indian church planting movement, "is the consistent mentoring. This mentoring model tries to follow Jesus' and Paul's training model:

1. Jesus selected 12 disciples from up to 7,000 people who followed him;
2. He showed them a model of ministry,
3. corrected them,
4. prayed with them and held retreats with them,
5. sent them out as practical training, and discussed successes and failures with them,
6. spoke into their lives prophetically,
7. commissioned them and sent them to multiply the process.

The apostles also trained their "Timothys" (2. Tim. 2:2) by working multiplicatively, thinking in terms of several generations of disciples, finally handing the baton on to them, to be passed on to others. Paul (1^st generation) taught Timothy (2^nd generation), who taught reliable men (3^rd generation), who in turn taught others (4^th generation). This is a basic Biblical principle, as shown in the following table, published in the quarterly Operation Agape newsletter:

Leader	1st generation	2nd generation	Effect
Moses	Israel's elders	The people of Israel	A holy people
Moses	Joshua	Israel's soldiers	Taking the land
Deborah	Barak	Israel's army	Victory over the Canaanites
Eli	Samuel	Saul	Establishment of the Kingdom
Nathan	David	Solomon	The temple was built
Elijah	Elisha	King Jehoash	Worship reinstated
Mordecai	Esther	Jewish people	Genocide prevented
Jesus	The apostles	Elders	Rapid church growth
Aquila and Priscilla	Apollos		Solid Bible teaching
Paul	Timothy	Reliable men	Orderly growth

"A healthy, obedient church is like a plant which grows and endlessly multiplies itself" (Dr. George Patterson)

Source: Agape Voice, Dr. Alex Abraham, June 2005, e-mail AgapeLdh (at) aol.com