leadership In Obscurity News: 2010

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

leadership In Obscurity News: Are gospel tracts effective today?

leadership In Obscurity News: Are gospel tracts effective today?: "As I promised in the previous blog I posted, I will continue with the answers to the questions I myself raised! Most people approach evangel..."

leadership In Obscurity News: Are gospel tracts effective today?

Friday, June 25, 2010

Indian Bank Notes,ANCIENT COINS,: Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

Patty's Gospel Lyrics: Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

Mahimai children Home Inauguration video!!!!

Mahimai Children's Home inauguration!

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Are gospel tracts effective today?

As I promised in the previous blog I posted, I will continue with the answers to the questions I myself raised! Most people approach evangelism as an event. Starting from tent meetings to big "evangelistic crusades" were all looking at evangelism as an event. This is because people do not understand the dynamics of the process of evangelism. I too did not understand it until I began my study with the LIOs. They consider evangelism as a process. I noticed that they would keep on visiting the same village even when there is apposition. Keep presenting the Gospel often and repeatedly. Most of the time they get a breakthrough. One case study I did was of Evangelist Fondacs. He started visiting a village in India named Retanai. The first time was a disaster. He barely managed to escape from getting beaten up. The said place was a high cast village. That did not stop him, he continued to visit and pray for any one who wanted prayer! One day the headman of the village fell deathly ill. Some one came from the village and asked Fondacs to pray. He prayed and the man got well. From that time the village people started responding. The village now has a church with 48 people worshipping. I asked him "how did you do it?" His answer was, "I kept visiting the village and kept distributing tracts at first they opposed then slowly they became friendly. The Lord healed the headman and that opened the door. The headman is still a Hindu but he has welcomed me to come to his village and pray and distribute tracts!" My learning with the LIOs helped me to formulate a plan for Evangelism. I began to understand the dynamics behind it. 1. They choose an unreached village mostly non-responsive. 2. They keep on sharing the gospel in a non confrontational way. Tools may differ! 3. They invariably start need-based prayer groups. To this they invite anyone in need. 4. This group is nurtured into worshipping group. 5. The worshipping group is evolved into a formative church. 6. The Formative church is eventually established into a Church plant.

The dynamics of Evangelism.

There are two inevitable points in a person's life. A) Birth B) Death. In between man lives his life. We as believers have another point. We call this Born again. This happens at different stages of life for each individual. This point is what I would call Acute point of need. No one comes to christ except through this point. Salvation takes place when a man realizes his own inadequacy and rests upon God's adequacy. He is confronted with his sinful state, he feels guilty, he repents, confesses and asks God to cleanse him from all sin and then in faith accepts Jesus Christ. This happens in a person's life at a particular point but there is life before and after. This does not happen in a vacuum. From the birth of an individual there seems to be circumstances that happens and escalates and the accumulation brings a person to the awareness of the reality that he or she is lost without God. Most often this point is painful and desperate. It is important to note that prior to the point of acute need there are several incidences and events that takes place that seem to propel a man to this point. Man on his own is content and does not realize his true state.

An important fact we need to realize is, more than us God cares for the lost. That is why He sent His son to die for us on the cross! He is at work all the time in individual and corporate life. Most people do not realize that "before me God is in action working towards His intent that none should perish". Before I go to proclaim the Gospel to a particular place or person, we must realize God has been there already.

Another important point to consider is before me someone else has been there. At least some kind of proclamation has been there. Paul in Romans 1st chapter is clear in expressing, before anybody in fact nature too has been proclaiming the existence of God! When I think I am the only person to proclaim my whole approach begins to be different. We join with God and His people in the task of proclamation. It is very clearly like Paul's statement "I planted and Appalos watered and the Lord was the en who let it or made it grow". If we do not realize this as reality we will do more harm than good in our proclamation of the Gospel.

All over India and the world God is raising a group of people whom I call LIOs! They can never be made but they are born! These children of God are the ones who are at the very cutting edge of the Gospel; proclaiming the Gospel through word and life. All others are reaping the benefit of their sowing. It is the ordinary men and women of God living in the trenches of normal life who proclaim the Gospel in unreached areas. This requires a special heart - the heart of a LIO. These people create responsive groups. They are the true pioneering missionaries. Most of them use tracts!!!!

I was told that there are no LIOs in the US! I was going to visit the leaders in the head quarters of a major missionary sending organization in the US. I got off the plane and looked around for a person from the organization to pick me up. There was an old man talking to a black gentleman. He saw me and approached me grinning. He gave me a hug and welcomed me. He said, "I too am a tract distributor. Just before you came, I was able to distribute 8 tracts and shared the Gospel to three people." As we drove towards the office he began to tell me that he was a retiree and was giving his time free to the organization. His Job was to mail letters and pick up guests from the airport. I found the LIO in the US!!! Since then I have been able to meet several in different towns and cities of US.

The LIOs believe in the intrinsic power of the word of God. The Gospel is all you need. Most people believe Gospel plus me, Gospel plus my program, Gospel plus money etc., But the LIOs believe they do not need any plus' - Gospel has all the power that is needed!!! Lifting up Jesus Christ is all they do, as promised He shall draw all men unto Himself.

There is another point to remember - The harvest is plenty this fact should not leave our thoughts. There is a lot of difference in the person, when he or she thinks the harvest is hard and little. He is desperate, driven beyond measure. When a person knows and believe that the harvest is plenty he assumes a very different stance. He is not surprised by the positive response - he expects a positive response.

Another important fact is that salvation comes to man in God's timing not in man's timing. All the other religious beliefs emphasize ways and means to reach God but for our faith God comes to man, man cannot reach God. This is most fundamental to the theology of incarnation.

to be continued.....

Your servant for His sake

Mano Daniel

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Is tract distribution relavent to day?

Is Gospel Tract Distribution relevant to day?

Every time I visit the US and give my report as to the effectiveness of the tracts in India the response is disbelief or surprise! Giving me the benefit of doubt some would say, "well it may work in India but not in the US". Is this a fact? Has tracts become obsolete? I want to explain to you why tracts are still very effective.

I would like to start with basics! What is a Gospel tract? What should it do? How come it is effective in India? or is it?

All through History we find that revival was pre-seeded by tract distribution. Bible was a costly comodity to have until paper and printing came to being. While the OT was available to the early disciples it was available in bits and peaces to rich individuals. The synagogues had them at least in parts.

The NT was another matter all epistles were letters. That would be just tracts - written primarily to individuals, churches or to all believers in general.

Reformation came about because of a tract written by Martin Luther! Calvin first named them tracts! I want you to consider this very carefully Tract has to attract!!! Most people do not understand this.

The reason for this is that they consider Evangelism as an event! If you look at the History of redemption it was a process consisting of many events. The revelation to man was given through a long process. Hebrews is very clear "in the past god revealed through the process by bits and pieces but now in the in the kairos He revealed through His Son" This final and complete revelation took a long process and time. As we see even from the early church the Gospel never spread in a vacuum. 3000 people did not all of a sudden responded to the Gospel. All through History God was revealing Himself but at the proper time ...! The mighty response to the gospel came because of the preparation – prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus’ ministry, the disciple’s ministry, the resurrection etc., set the stage for a mighty revival and response to the Gospel with ushering of the permanent presence of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. If you read John 1 chapter you can clearly this process at work! I will continue this soon! You might wonder what all this got to do with tracts? I beg you to have patience. I will surely answer my own question to your satisfaction! Indulge me to cause l little suspense!

Your servant for His sake

Mano Daniel

Monday, June 14, 2010

Dear Friends to the LIOs!

I have been struggling hard to get this News Blog going! I posted three times but it got wiped out! I have learnt one thing in ministry when there is obstacles to ministry know for sure that the enemy is near! Secondly the reason why he is troubled is because God is going to use you mightily. So as a policy I don't give. I am not going to give up now either. It was frustrating to have lost most of the work I did more than three times!

The Birth of the Title "Leadership in Obscurity!"

Ten years ago Rev. Dr. Paul Gupta who is the president and the director of Hindustan Bible College and Institutes who is also my childhood friend talked with me about getting together leaders who are burdened for reaching this nation for Christ. We formed a group and at first called it “Consultation On National Strategy for Mission”. For the first time Dr. Bobby Gupta introduced me to “Macro Missions”. They asked me to be the National co-ordinator for the same. This appointment was not based on my expertise in the field of missions but more that a) They did not have to pay me salary, b) I was available, c) I was Bobby’s friend d) Bobby could persuade me to do anything. After much prayer and deliberation and with the blessing of Dr. William Scott to whom I was reporting to as a Missionary, I committed myself for two years to this project. Many eminent leaders were part of the consultation.

As the co-ordinator my responsibility was two fold a) To travel all over India conducting seminars with the theme “To plant and help to plant a church in every town, village, thaluk, and Pincode of India." B) While doing this, recruit people to take survey of the "Harvest Force." (Who are planting churches at the very grass root level what are their methodologies, strategies, tools , etc., etc.), I traveled all over India touching every dot in the Indian Airlines map. I also went by train and car. At the end of two years I was to present my findings. I had collected 15 thousand data forms from all over India. They gave me some people with expertise in computers to help me feed in the data and process it and find answers. The sad part was there was no common denominators to be found. Every thing was different. Language, culture, ethnicity, castes, methodology, Doctrines, tools and various differences but no commonalty. The original idea was if we find common denominators we could evolve a national strategy. I was very discouraged. I felt that I had failed everyone including myself. I wanted to be totally neutral in my findings so I had not looked into the data forms prior to feeding into the computer nor was my data form consist of leading questions to get the predetermined answers.

Very dejected I started praying. I spent many hours in my room. All of a sudden I was surprised by one fact — most if not all workers who planted churches successfully in unreached areas and at the grass root level had no formal Bible training. They had not been to Bible colleges or seminaries. One by one other such common denominators began to pop out from the data forms. Most of them were not even High school passed, were all poor, belonged to the local community, passion for souls, totally convinced about the intrinsic power of the Gospel, They interpreted the Bible literally, prayed for everything, were mostly unrecognized by other leaders , etc., Most of the times they themselves were surprised by the church plant. In fact many feared and felt inadequate. They had a strong Identity in Christ.

This surprised me more than I could imagine. It was through the least expected type of people that God was building his church! I had to call them something! I tried several names but one that struck me as true to them was “Leadership In Obscurity”. They were leaders in this that they were leading many to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and planting churches. By virtue of the mostly unexpected Church plant, Leadership was almost thrust on them. They were not know by most people. If you go to their church pastor and tell their names — it is most probable that he wont know who they are. At the end of this I wrote that that the National strategy should be a) Find the Leadership In Obscurity, b) Train them, c) equip them and d) Send them.

When I presented the paper the Leaders told me that while this was a great finding and a good strategy they had no one to do this so they asked me if I would be in-charge of pioneering the same and do the implementation. At that time I realized that they were being polite to me and extremely kind. They were trying to gently drop me. They already had a plan in their mind. I came back and to my surprise I found that my father who was Printing Tracts and Distributing had 8000 LIOs with him who were distributing his tracts all over India.

This began my journey of serving the LIOs. In this journey I learnt more than I taught. They are my heros. I have given my life to serve them. We now have 32,000 such men and women enrolled with us. I am the least of all of them. Yet many of them call me their leader.

a) Finding the Leadership In obscurity. It is not very easy to find them. They are borne not made. God seems to raise them up on His own. You cannot create or train a LIO into being. He is born as such birthed by God. They are so different from most people. When it comes to the Gospel they are ready to die. Nothing seems to matter. They are raw and crude not sophisticated. They will defy all your sense of a successful evangelist. The only test by which you can find them is that they will be successful in planting churches.

b) Train them. What do you say to a person who is a successful church planter? To teach them to plant a church is like reinventing the wheel. In the area of Evangelism and church planting they knew more than most. The areas they lacked was — though they had Bible knowledge they lacked in systematic study and proper interpretation of the Scriptures. They had no idea regarding Doctrines. They did not know how to form a church, Lead a church etc., The approach to training the LIO was taken as fecilitating and coming alongside, empowering, giving them non formal education.

c) Equip. Tools and training to use tools.

d) Sending them was easy.They were feeling sent before anyone came in the picture. This"calledness" and being "sent" was part of their very psyche. Once they felt empowered by training and the recognition the Certificate brings, there in no stopping them.

You Servant for the sake of LIOs

Mano Daniel