Dr. K.P. Yohannan - Gospel for Asia

Dr. K.P. Yohannan, President and Founder of Gospel for Asia, joined The Matt Friedeman Show to talk about the spread of Christ in India and how you can help.

What is the most significant thing happening with Gospel for Asia?

In the Indian subcontinent, 1/3 of the country — nearly 300 million people — are known as the untouchables, or the Dalit.

What is happening right now is that significant numbers of the Dalit are accepting Christ.

There is a whole new world with Muslims opening their hearts to the Lord. Especially the children; some 60,000 children are being reached. I am very excited.

Why is this happening now?

It's like in the book of Exodus, they lived in such slavery for such a long time, and finally God heard their prayer.

These people lived in these conditions for some 3000 years, and finally there is hope for them.

Now they realize that the only way out of slavery is to change their faith. Jesus offers hope and a new beginning. It is nothing short of a miracle for these people right now.

Tell us about Gospel for Asia's "Critter Campaign".

This is one of our high points of the year during the Christmas season. We identify people living in horrible poverty, with absolutely no hope.

We give them buffalo or cows or a sewing machine. When we give these things to them, it gives them incredible hope. They are able to find hope in Christ after we minister to them like this.

What does something like that do for a family?

I was just hearing a story from one of the remote areas of Nepal the other day.

It was this man and his wife and five children, and just looking at them you could tell they are broken. The whole family was so shocked that someone would bring them these things; they cried and cried and cried.

They said, "Don't leave us; tell us more about the Jesus who brought you here." They were so surprised when they learned that Jesus was not a politician; he was God. It was a beautiful thing.

What about clean water?

There are literally thousands of villages where people die from sickness just because they didn't have clean water.

When you dig these wells, it's not just one family that is helped; through one family, many families around them get clean water.

To help save a family in India, visit Gospel for Asia's website and click on the "Christmas Catalog".

Confession: the biggest barrier to my ministering

I had just finished up preaching out at the prison and something dawned on me. I had noticed it plenty of times before but this was the first time I had ever actually admitted it to someone.

I told a fellow prison preacher (who was also a seminary student of mine) that "when I preach, I feel His pleasure." We both thought back to the movie 'Chariots of Fire' when I said that. It was a line in the movie Eric Liddell had uttered to his sister.

But then I said to the friend, "before I preach, getting ready to leave the house and come out to this place, I don't feel his pleasure."

We both laughed. He admitted the same feelings just the hour before coming out with us to the facility.

Getting ready to go and minister in difficult places is not very fun. The actual act of ministry is great. Now...why is that? Is it our selfish self that has yet to bend to the beauty of reaching out to the disenfranchised and won't feel good about it until the time for grumbling has dissolved away at last?

Or is it - can we say it? - the devil.

I am not apt to blame the Evil One for much, to be honest, although I do think he exists and thwarts much good. I didn't grow up in a theological tradition that pondered much about Satan.

But in the case of my ministering to the 'least of these' I have to wonder.

Ministry is enjoyable. I actually love it, particularly the preaching and teaching aspects of it. The preliminaries are not so pleasureable, for whatever reason. The painful thought for me is wondering how much life-changing ministry I missed out on because of the supposed discomfort of those preliminaries...getting out of the easy chair, tying the shoes on, traveling to the location, flashing the badge to get by the guards, the slight anxiety of what might go wrong, etc.

But the actual communicating for changed lives? Priceless.

When do we have the form without the power?

Interesting question, here. And these are some perspectives. Others you might share?

When do we have the form without the power of religion?

· When we develop church growth strategies that target the middle class instead of the poor and marginalized, then we have the form without the power.

· When we spend more of our resources on constructing and maintaining Church buildings and property than we do on feeding the hungry, then we have the form without the power.

· When we spend more on pastor’s salaries, benefits, and pensions, than we do on clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless, then we have the form without the power.

· When we turn stewardship into financial campaigns for the Church, rather than sacrifice for the poor, then we have the form but not the power.

· When we blame poverty on the sloth of the poor rather than the avarice of the prosperous and the indifference of the comfortable, then we have the form but not the power.

· When we furnish our sanctuaries and social halls in such a way as to make the prosperous comfortable rather than make the indigent welcome, then we have the form but not the power…

· When we preach a grace which saves us without changing us, then we have the form but not the power. (Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. in Theology and Evangelism in the Wesleyan Heritage ed. b James C. Logan)