India Report

Here's a great overview of the recent trip to India through the lens of Dave Browning...

From November 27th through December 10th four of us traveled to India to encourage the CTK leaders there - Pastor Dave Browning (CTK Burlington), Pastor Jonathan Oleson (CTK Oak Harbor),Duane Youngren (CTK Burlington) and Gerard Post van der Berg (CTK Lopez Island). Our time in India was a whirlwind adventure throughout the state of Andhra Pradesh, involving 20 meetings in 10 days, including a large womenʼs conference and four large pastors conferences (1500 pastors in total). We spoke at both CTK and denominational churches. We made presentations at Hindu and Christian schools. We also presided over a dedication of the CTK headquarters in Hyderabad, and a groundbreaking ceremony for a CTK Bible College at Mirasapally. The CTK story is expanding rapidly, and leaders we met were excited about what CTK represents.

Beginning with a shirt.
The CTK story in India began when Yedidya Parker found a Christ the King t-shirt in a used clothing bin on the streets of Hyderabad. Having seen the magnitude of that city (6.5 million people), it is miraculous that Yedidya would find this shirt, particularly considering Yedidyaʼs call from God to rapidly expand His kingdom. Now, a couple years later, it is startling to see CTKʼs logo not just on shirts, but on church buildings, trucks, motorcycles and handbags.

A modern day apostle.
I consider Yedidya to be a modern-day apostle. He has preached in over a thousand villages, many places where the gospel has never been preached before. He has baptized thousands of converts. He has deployed scores of evangelists and pastors. He is courageous though regularly threatened for his witness by both the Hindu and Muslim population. He is revered throughout the country as a man of God who gives himself sacrificially. He follows in the footsteps of his godly father, Abraham Parker, who pastored for many years in Hyderabad in spite of persecution and hardship. Yedidya is the greatest legacy of his fatherʼs ministry, as he is now raising up hundreds of leaders in his wake. Yedidyaʼs family is very supportive in the work. His wife Sondra, daughters Shimeath (18) and Priscilla (17), and son Jeyson (13) and Eg (12) are all very dedicated to the Lord.

An existing relational network.
Yedidya has developed many personal relationships throughout India. We saw approximately 25% of his network during our two week trip. Many of his colleagues are “converting” over to CTK now that Yedidya is affiliated with us. Yedidya is vetting possible leaders as they express interest. He wants to make sure that leaders are willing to sacrifice and are not wrongly expecting financial support, etc. There are approximately 100 leaders on board at this time, but this could easily swell to 1000 in the coming months, particularly now that we have visited and raised the level of awareness further. The Bible College may also prove to be a very strategic development, as it will be the first one in that district of A.P.
Yedidya is shifting in his personal ministry from being a leader of people, to a leader of leaders. Many of the leaders with which Yedidya is working are dynamic in their own right. One man that I met from Tamil Nadu (the most southern state in India) has plans to develop CTK leaders in each of the 18 districts in south India. He has leaders identified in 8 districts already.

A different posture.
The church in India is fractured around competitiveness and denominationalism, and CTK is having a unifying effect because we are “keeping the main thing the main thing” and walking in humility. In one district where we held a pastors conference we were told it was the first time in recent memory that pastors had gathered in that district without the meeting ending in a fight. Everywhere we went we were treated like royalty. We were uncomfortable with this attention, of course, but the Indian culture is certainly a culture of honor. This quality needs to be balanced by the leaders honoring the people. Yedidya made a point of getting on his knees and praying for the pastors at many meetings. This sort of servanthood is being blessed by the Lord and needs to be modeled going forward.

Pakistan, here we come.
While I was in India, I spoke by phone with a prospective CTK leader from Pakistan. While it may be prohibitive for American CTK leaders to go to Pakistan to meet with him, Yedidya is looking to make a trip in the next couple months to support this new leader. India may prove to be an excellent avenue to reach into other Muslim countries, as well.

A technology partner.
Many companies in India are on the bleeding edge of technology. It may be that believers in India end up giving support to the web/technology needs of the entire CTK network. While I didnʼt have time to explore this in depth, I believe that Yedidyaʼs daughter Shimeath may be key to this possibility, as she is top of her class in a technology university

Funding options.
The leaders in India walk by faith and are leveraging the few hundred dollars that we send from America to good effect. With those funds they are not only assisting pastors, but supporting an orphanage, a 700 student Christian school, and sustaining a number of blind believers. Of course, one of the challenges is to see the ministries in India self-supporting, without increasing funding from other countries. One possible option might be to leverage the rising economy in India for kingdom expansion. For example, there is a businessman in India who exports slate, and is willing to arrange proceeds to go toward the ministry. If we can find an outlet for this slate in the U.S. we may be able to develop a viable business strategy to support the expanding ministry in India. Until then I see us continuing to support India with modest resources and then giving them some additional backing for projects like the Bible College through special offerings.

Six parts work, one part rest.
The leaders I met in India are working hard to spread the gospel and build the ministry. I believe we can learn a greater work ethic from them, and that they can greater balance from us. I encouraged Yedidya to take a week off when we left, and his response was, “Can I do that?” There is a sense of passion and urgency that is refreshing, but we also need to plan for the long haul if the Lord tarries.

Future visits.
Yedidya and Sondra intend to come to the Arrows Out Ministry Conference in Mount Vernon February 2nd, and perhaps to invite some other leaders to join them (if those leaders can raise support to come). I would anticipate leaders going to India annually to support the key leaders there.

CTK India

Just recently I had the privilege to spend several days (Nov25-Dec11) in India to witness first hand what God is up to through this movement we call CTK. I was really encouraged by the dedication of the people there to the faith. Also had some very powerful experiences of God's presence there.
Here's just one:

We attended a ground breaking ceremony for a CTK India Bible College in the state of Andre Pradesh near Hyderabad. The land that we were on is across the street from a CTK orphanage. So of course the kids from the orphanage were the main attendees at the ceremony. During the ceremony an overwhelming sense of God's presence surrounded us and myself/traveling companions were all moved to tears at the sheer magnitude and awesomeness of the moment in history that we were about to witness. If only words could describe it without sounding cheesy... we didn't really know what we were getting into until we arrived on the site and begin to take in all the facts and realities around us.

We were nestled on this lonely dusty little plot of land in the middle of nowhere. It just happens to be situated directly next to a major freeway which serves as a main thoroughfare between to major districts in the state. Since the purchase of that land the government decided to undergo a massive freeway expansion project. This improvement greatly increased the value of the property and also influenced the seller to try to reacquire the land (sorry, too late.) The Christ the King banner in this location will be seen by countless people and cars passing by each day. What a huge calling card to the mission of CTK in this part of the world.

During the ceremony I began to think about all the students and faculty that would one day call this college home. I had the sudden realization that we were sitting before many of the potential Bible college students and future leaders of the CTK movement in India. All of the bare footed, dirt poor orphans before me had been completely discarded and forgotten by their families and society. They were valueless to their world. But God in his great compassion saw to it to engineer a future, a hope, and a purpose for each one. This Bible college was for them. Most of them were too young to even realize it.

Looking out at them I cried out with thankfulness for God's goodness in the epiphany of my own orphan-ness before him and what He has done in my life.

Pizza Factory

just left a great mtg with the 'dream team' finalizing some ideas to start a ctk location at the pizza factory in oak harbor. the plan is to launch a worship cafe there on dec 16th at 10.45am. there have been some really cool things that God has brought together since our last mtg. one of the things we were waiting on God for was an operations director and a worship director to step forward. and it happened. now we're laying out some plans to have a presence at the pizza factory before the worship cafe begins. we're going to host two "pizza and a movie" nights on dec 1 & 8. there is also a slew of legwork around those dates to help advertise and let people know what's going on. seems like short notice but this is something we've been discussing and praying about for the last two months. also by taking a deliberately simple approach shouldn't be a big deal to put together. if failure is not trying then we don't have much to lose. worse case scenario: we step out in faith and nothing happens. then we go back to the drawing board and learn from it all...

Communication

wow, the first blog ever. well not really but can't remember the address of the other one I put together a year ago.

i'm starting this out of necessity. i keep hearing people say that something that would help our mini-movement more would be more communication. how do you do that in a way that is simple without all of the meetings that we loathe?

wa-lah! blog o brain... i guess this is a way for me to think out loud. and not assume that everyone else is tracking so easily with me.

so i'm going to try to type out my thoughts from time to time as a way to create more communication. i'm going to purposely avoid correct punctuation to symbolize the
incomplete nature of some of these thoughts. alot of the vision casting we do is out there somewhere. some of it physically manifests...

more later. thanks for reading.