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