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What an awesome start to our time here in India teaching the concepts of healthy small groups to about 150 pastors in three cities! Today we started our tour of three day seminars in Cuttack, Orissa. The first thing we did is ask the attendees to tell us how the Purpose Driven principles we taught back in February had impacted their ministries. They had some unbelievable stories to share!

One pastor began implementing a feedback card for new guests. On the feedback card, instead of just inviting them for coffee, he invited them to have dinner at his house. He started doing this at his own expense. Through this process of sitting down with new guests over dinner, three people have accepted Christ! One church member has been so impacted by what these “dinner with the pastor” experiences are doing that he has donated the funds to help the pastor continue with this way of connecting to new people!

Another pastor oversees eight different churches. Most of these churches had a very hierarchical structure where members, deacons, committee members, etc. fought for control of the church. People who donated land for the church buildings felt they should have greater say in the direction of the church. Since PDC in February, this pastor has been able to break this structure and this spirit within five of the eight churches. As a result, these five churches have launched a total of 28 house churches!

Still another pastor talked about how he had 60 displaced families move into his area. These are extremely poor and often outcast people, in this case all Hindu. He used the principles of looking at your target and “understanding what fish you are trying to catch.” Since the children in these families have been unable to attend school, he has created an educational program to help keep these kids from falling too far behind. Because of his care for their children, it has given him an avenue into this community to share the gospel.

One pastor shared how he (like most people in India) was raised to look down on lower caste people, and had always done so even though he was a pastor. Since February, he has seen these people with new eyes, and has opened conversations with them, given them water when they were thirsty, and more. These things are very unusual in India across class lines. Recently circumstances have prevented this pastor from going into specific areas to evangelize. The lower class group he had opened himself up to found out about it and went into those areas on his behalf, bringing the people to him!

Another attendee from February is in charge of all of the medical students across three states. He is using the PDC materials as a leadership development curriculum for all of his trainees!
One more pastor began teaching the PDC principles to his church and they have begun to embrace them. Word spread and through connections to members he was asked to teach in a church over 400 kilometers away. He preached to them the principles of Purpose Driven. His teaching had such a profound impact that by the time he returned home the teaching was already spreading to other churches, and they were calling him to come back and teach them more!

The final story is one that is very cool to me personally. In February in this city there was one pastor who wanted to be fairly argumentative on certain points of our teaching. At one point I had to close the back and forth pretty firmly with an “agree to disagree” strategy then moved on. I could tell this brother was disturbed and so later in the day in the context of something else I was sharing a walked over to this pastor, placed my hands on his shoulders, and expressed how we can see things differently but yet still have love for one another as Christ taught.
On this trip when I arrived at the church I was to preach at Sunday night, guess who came out of the church to greet us? You guessed it! The argumentative pastor! I thought “oh boy, this is going to be interesting!” As it turns out his church is the largest church in Orissa with over 3,000 members! Everything appeared very cordial, and I was well received in his church. The next day as we opened the floor for people to share stories of implementing PDC over the last six months, this pastor was the first to jump up! I was shocked! Even more shocking was what he shared. He confessed to the group that he had been disagreeable and disruptive in the last seminar with me. Since that time he had read, researched, and prayed over what he had contended with me over. He admitted that I had been right, and he had been wrong. In had occasion to implement the very principle we disagreed on and it had worked exactly as I described. For this pastor of the most prestigious church in the state to do this in front of his peers was a major event. It was also a humbling one, as I had assumed the worst instead of keeping an open mind. God is so amazing!

Day One continued to go very well. The participants are eager and enthusiastic over what we are sharing with them. We programmed in a lot more group discussion time and two way interaction, which they seem to really be enjoying.

Tomorrow will be a long day as we have been invited to dine at one of the pastor’s homes after the conclusion of tomorrow’s seminar. I hope my stomach can handle what is served!

Stay tuned for more…

Pastor Steve