CHURCH GROWTH IN CLOSED LANDS

One of the big arguments used by traditional missions to perpetuate their existence as "sending" agencies has to do with "unreached people groups." Over and over I have heard or read statements coming from executives of traditional missions to the effect that the so called "nationals" in "mission field" countries have no concern for reaching the unevangelized tribes and nations within their respective countries, or in neighboring countries. Those conclusions are based on observations of branch churches of colonial missions, which do tend to be apathetic as long as the rich foreigners are around. "Let the foreigners do it," say the hired clergy of branch churches associated with foreign denominations. "That's what they're getting paid all that money to do."

While I agree that colonial branch churches tend to lack missionary vision and motivation (with a few notable exceptions), the exact opposite is generally true of indigenous evangelical churches (and their associated missionary ministries) that have never been affiliated with foreign colonizers. The consuming passion of several thousand indigenous missions is to plant a witness for our Saviour among those people and in those places where as yet He has no people for His name. And they are ten to one more effective at doing it than are missionaries from industrialized countries.

One notable example of how God works apart from traditional missionaries sent out from wealthy countries may be seen in the isolated, landlocked country of Nepal, nestled among the high Himalaya mountains between India and China. Until 50 years ago there were no roads into that country, and foreign visitors were not allowed. The Hindu king had absolute power, and his subjects were forbidden to change their religion. I believe this rule might have been intended to maintain the status quo between the Hindu majority and the Buddhist minority. Some foreign missionaries had stations along the Indian border from time to time, but none have ever been allowed to enter the country recognized as missionaries. Several foreign agencies formed a consortium called the United Mission to Nepal which concluded an agreement with the Nepalese government by which they were allowed to do social work (mainly schools and medical clinics) within the country. But in order to gain admittance, all UMN representatives had to sign a document by which they agreed that they would not try to propagate their religion while in Nepal.

Of far greater significance for the cause of Christ in that country was the marriage of John and Edith Hayward in Canada about 80 years ago. Edith had been a student at the Christian and Missionary Alliance Bible Institute, where she told her classmates that she planned to be a missionary to India. But then she met John Hayward of Winnipeg, and was led of the Lord to become his wife. Her roommate at the Bible Institute refused to be her bridesmaid. The reason given: "You have given up your call to be a missionary." Little did she realize that, as a result of marrying John Hayward, Edith's influence for the cause of Christ in India would eventually be greater than that of any other Canadian who ever lived. Yet she never went to India. Nor did she go to Nepal, but she became the spiritual grandmother of thousands of believers there.

The story began in the Winnipeg YMCA gymnasium in December 1929. While John Hayward was getting a workout he noticed Bakht Singh, a Sikh from the Punjab area of northern India, who was studying agricultural engineering at the University of Manitoba. John asked this stranger how he was able to maintain such an excellent suntan so late in the year. Bakht Singh replied that he was born with it, and so began a casual friendship. In due time, John invited Bakht Singh to his home for dinner and during family Bible reading that evening Edith Hayward began her astounding career as a pioneer missionary to the unreached people of India and Nepal.

The Haywards invited their new found friend back frequently, and eventually gave him a New Testament. Bakht Singh did not tell them what had happened when a British missionary gave him a leather bound Bible back in Punjab. He associated that missionary with the British rulers who had conquered India, "So this Book must be part of their propaganda," he said to friends. Whereupon he tore out all the pages and burned them. The fine leather cover he kept to put other papers in. I was moved to tears when I first heard Bakht Singh tell about this incident.

As the Great Depression crippled the economy of British India, Bakht Singh's previously prosperous father was unable to continue sending funds to his son in Canada. But the Haywards came to the rescue. They invited Bakht Singh to live with them in their home in order to continue his education. Out of courtesy he reluctantly sat through Bible reading and prayer at the dinner table every evening. Sometimes discussion of the Scripture would take place, and Bakht Singh would argue vehemently against what the Haywards were trying to teach him. This went on for about a year, and then the Spirit of God broke through Bakht Singh's shell of resistance. Alone in his room one night he saw the Lord, accepted Christ as his personal Saviour, made peace with God and was born again. He really surprised the pastor of a Baptist church attended by the Haywards when he showed up in the middle of the week requesting to be baptized.

On April 6, 1933 Bakht Singh arrived back in Bombay and was met by his parents from Punjab. They begged him not to tell anyone of his conversion lest he bring disgrace on his family among the Sikhs. When he refused they told him he could not come home with them. So they left him alone in Bombay. Twelve years later Bakht Singh would baptize his earthly father and hear him say, "My natural son has become my spiritual father in Christ."

With a university degree after study in both England and Canada, Bakht Singh could easily have found favorable employment. But he wasn't interested. He struck out, house to house, door to door, village to village, preaching Christ. First it was to very small groups, then to hundreds, then to thousands all over India. He is credited with being the spiritual father of many thousands of local assemblies of believers in his native land.

In the early years of his ministry, Bakht Singh would gather a team of about 20 disciples and go to a town where there was no church. To get there they would hitch rides on bullock carts, which were to India in those days the equivalent of what trucks were in more industrialized countries. About all they had to take along would be a big bag of rice, and twice a day they would build a fire out of grass and twigs to boil enough in their portable pot for each man to have a little. Any other food they ate would be courtesy of the Hindus or Muslims with whom they were sharing God's Word.

When they reached a given town they would borrow or rent a vacant lot and erect a simple pundal (brush arbor) of palm fronds. There they would sleep on the ground at night, while during the day the team would fan out house to house and in the market places sharing the gospel. Preaching meetings would be held every night at the pundal. Since monsoon rains last only about three months, they had nine months of dry weather every year for apostolic work planting new churches. Their favorite months were April to June when temperatures rose above 100 degrees every day. Few people could keep working in the oppressive heat, so Bakht Singh could find an audience anywhere he went.

I traveled over 5000 miles throughout India in 1948 visiting foreign missionaries who were still there. I met dozens of them who had spent several years in Hindu communities trying to get churches started, but without success. Bakht Singh and his teammates would have a congregation of up to 200 disciples meeting together after only two weeks in a predominately Hindu town or large village. He would leave two teammates behind to meet with them daily for prayer, and for several hours on Sundays to build them into a viable church after he and his team had moved on to the next town. They would take along two new disciples, who would grow in grace and knowledge quickly, then within a few weeks or months return to their original homes where each would serve as an elder or teacher within the church that had been formed there by the team.

Edith Hayward was an integral part of these teams, though still home in Canada. Every month Bakht Singh would send her a letter giving reports of his ministry and she would mimeograph it to be distributed among her Christian friends. In response many would give her a dollar or two which she sent on to her co-worker on the India field. Bakht Singh's tremendous ministry was made possible in large part during those early years by the faithful support of praying friends in Canada recruited by Mrs. Hayward. She thus inaugurated a form of foreign missionary operation which has recently been shown to be more effective than any other. Organizations which follow her example, such as Christian Aid and Partners International, are today sending support for indigenous missions which have deployed over 100,000 missionaries to serve Christ in poorer countries.

Although he held an engineering degree from the University of Manitoba, Bakht Singh never attended a Bible school or theological seminary, yet he had a working knowledge of the Scriptures which exceeded that of any professor I have ever met in such institutions. He memorized hundreds, if not thousands, of verses in the King James English. And not having to unlearn a lot of medieval theological traditions, Bakht Singh very quickly grasped the meaning of the local church as the body of Christ in a given community, as revealed in the epistles of Paul. As I came to know him and sat under his ministry, I was astounded at the similarity between his teachings and those of Watchman Nee in China. Believing that God gives graces to every believer to be exercised for the local church body, neither had any place in their assemblies for ordained ministers.

Since he had not been brain washed by rationalistic Scripture twisters who interpreted God's Word in the light of their own limited experience, Bakht Singh's ministry was not crippled by the "not for today" heresy. He prayed for the sick, and God answered prayer. Mrs. Samantha Vedanayagam told me how her father was deathly sick in a hospital in Madras when the Christians offered to pray for him. The family gave permission and she said the whole building seemed to vibrate as Bakht Singh prayed with power. And her father took up his bedding and walked out of the hospital, to serve the Lord for many years. Thousands of Hindus, and Muslims also, have turned to Christ as a result of miraculous healings in answer to prayers by indigenous church leaders such a Bakht Singh.

On the other hand, Bakht Singh was not a Pentecostal. He believed the Scripture that teaches how God gives different graces to each believer, "dividing to every man severally as He will" (I Corinthians 12:11). He did not try to channel all of God's graces through the single ecstatic experience of "speaking in tongues."

While sharing a time of prayer with Bakht Singh over 40 years ago, I made intercession for the closed countries between India and China: Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet. I prayed that our Lord might yet have a people for His name within each of them. After we had prayed, my dear brother said gently, "You should not pray for those as closed lands; rather, you should remember the saints of the Lord who bear witness for Him there."

I was astounded. This was still early in my Christian experience, and I knew that no European or American missionary had ever worked in any of those countries. To some extent, I was still at that stage where I thought that if we didn't do it, nobody would. "What?" I asked. "Do you mean that believers are located in those places now? Did you send missionaries there?"

Again my Indian brother responded gently. "No, that's not our way," he said. "That's your way, and the British way, and the Canadian way, and the Australian way." Then he told me how visitors and traders from all those areas came into India, and how Christians in local assemblies were alerted to be on the lookout for them. While other Indians might sometimes take advantage of them or treat them in an unfriendly manner, the saints of God showed love and kindness to strangers in their midst. And won many to Christ. In fact, I met a score of them who were staying temporarily as trainees (along with about 80 Indians) at Bakht Singh's home base in Hyderabad. After a few months of discipleship they would return to plant churches in their homelands.

Many citizens of closed lands go abroad seeking employment, and that provides an excellent opportunity for missionary minded Christians to recruit native missionaries. Large numbers of Nepalese, called Gurkhas, found employment as mercenary soldiers with the British forces for 100 years, and later in the army of India. One such Gurkha was Prem Pradhan, who served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and then was commander of a tank regiment in the Indian army after India gained independence in 1947. In June, 1951 Prem took his annual leave so he could visit his family back in Nepal. While passing through Darjeeling he heard some street preachers say, in the Nepalese language, "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after that the judgement" (Hebrews 9:27). They were from a local assembly started by Bakht Singh. As a Hindu, Prem believed he would die and be reborn many times and in many forms. So what new teaching was this? He went to see the street preachers so he could inquire further.

Within a few days those native missionaries had won Prem to the Lord, baptized him and sent him out to tell others of salvation in Christ. In fact, when he shared the good news with his family back in Nepal and gave them Nepali New Testaments, he was put in jail for three days. Such activity was not allowed in his country. That was the first of 14 imprisonments that Prem would suffer, including one term of five years (reduced from a six year sentence).

Prem returned to his post in the army, taking along an English Bible (KJV) which he read through 12 times during the next three years. He grew in grace rapidly, as he met together at every opportunity with fellow believers in local assemblies started by Bakht Singh and his fellow apostles. Then in 1954 Prem resigned his commission and returned to his homeland as a missionary among his own people. Without any instruction from missions professors or missiologists, he was given wisdom from the Holy Spirit how to plant churches in a totally alien environment. Had someone of European ancestry had a chance to "train" him, I fear he would not have been nearly as effective. His fellowship with Bakht Singh and other Indian believers had served to bring him toward maturity in Christ, but in the completely virgin field of his homeland he would receive wisdom from God which no man could have given him. However, I should mention that he would later spend one year at the OMS Bible school in Allahabad.

Prem walked hundreds of miles over the mountain trails of his country, since there were no roads at that time. He often slept in temples, and sometimes in trees. Occasionally a Hindu family might let him sleep on the dirt floor of the lower part of their hillside house, where they kept their animals. If they knew what he was teaching, they could not invite him to sleep with the family on the hand hued log floor of the upper room lest their family gods (idols) become angry. An entire family he stayed with turned to Christ when a lady whose right side was paralyzed rose up and walked after Prem prayed for her. A Buddhist lama who knew this woman saw what had happened and knelt at Prem's feet, saying, "You are a great lama." Then he offered money if Prem would teach him the “magic” by which this paralytic was healed. But Prem led him to Christ without money and without price. After Prem baptized him he was killed by other lamas.

When Prem would arrive at a village he had never visited before, men of the village would be sitting around talking. Naturally, they would inquire of the stranger, asking who he was, where he was from, and what was new. Prem's reply, "I learned a new thing. A man died and rose again." Their curiosity awakened, the men would then learn immediately of the Lord Jesus, resurrection and eternal life.

Prem Pradhan's introduction of Christian faith into the hostile environment of his native land brought untold suffering to him and his disciples. Younger people were put out of their homes. Older families had their property confiscated and were expelled from their villages. The first assembly halls to be constructed were burned by the Hindus. And since most churches were located in rural villages, the believers had no source of cash. None held paying jobs. They exchanged goats for clothing or chickens for salt within the barter system by which the Nepalese economy functioned. Financial help was desperately needed to care for refugees, pay for building supplies, support schools (there were few public schools at that time) which Prem and his co-workers started, and for many other purposes.

But would any foreign agency help meet the urgent financial needs of these infant churches? Not on your life! All followed the competitive free enterprise model. None would share their wealth simply because they were fellow members of the universal body of Christ. The mission boards associated within the United Mission consortium were eager to collect and spend $60,000 (adjusted for inflation) a year each sending American families there to do "social work," even though each one signed an agreement with the Nepalese government that they would not "propagate their religion" in Nepal. If they were caught doing it they would be put out of the country. But here were all these Nepali Christians openly spreading the gospel and paying the price for so doing, yet hardly any of the foreign agencies would share their largesse with the Nepalese believers. If the millions of dollars expended for the support of these "social workers" had been made available to the Nepalese churches, far more would have been accomplished for the cause of Christ in that land.

Although foreign mission board executives could not enter Nepal as missionaries, many went as tourists, and some of them contacted Prem Pradhan. Half a dozen leaders of independent interdenominational missions made him offers: "Just join us, and we will help you financially." Some Lutherans made the same offer. As did Baptists. And Presbyterians. None seemed to be able to think in New Testament terms, that Christians should help their fellow believers solely on the basis of being one in Christ. All were locked in to colonial tradition of every agency seeking to build its own empire and expand its territory. If anyone could gain a following he could put a star on his world map back home, and proudly say, "We are in Nepal now!"

Had Prem accepted any of these offers it would probably have cost him his life. During his five year prison term he was taken to the King's palace for interrogation. The first question: "Where are your headquarters?" Prem could honestly answer, "In Heaven." Had he been affiliated with any foreign agency he would probably have been executed.

Early on, the only U. S. or Canadian mission that contributed financial support on a regular basis to the ministries of either Bakht Singh or Prem Pradhan was Christian Aid (although some individuals and a few churches sent help directly). Christian Aid sponsored Bakht Singh for visits to the USA in 1959 and subsequent years, while Prem was brought over several times after 1968. While I had Prem with me in Canada in 1970 I took him to visit John and Edith Hayward. Upon entering their house I said, "Mrs. Hayward, meet your grandson."

Many church congregations were thrilled to hear how our Lord was building His church in Nepal and India, and joyfully gave love offerings to help our fellow believers there. But, as I explained in Chapter Seven, missionaries "on furlough" and administrators of colonial missions have expressed vehement opposition to any financial help being given to ministries based in poorer countries. "Let them be supported within their own countries," is a chorus repeated over and over like a broken record.

Almost all of those U.S. missions raise support in other industrialized countries. But the colonial tradition of trying to make their branch churches self supporting in poorer countries is so strong that they are blinded to the fact that indigenous missionary ministries based in those countries should find support abroad on an equal basis with mission boards based in affluent countries. Any other policy is sheer selfishness based on pride and bigotry. "We are superior," the attitude says. "We are deserving of your missionary dollars. But these 'nationals' from third world countries are like inferior children. If you give them money you will spoil them; possibly make them dependent upon you [as we are] for continued assistance."

Several missiological lessons can be learned from indigenous ministries like those headed by Bakht Singh and Prem Pradhan.

First of all, growth of indigenous churches in Nepal has been almost entirely the result of witness from native missionaries and individual local believers. Their development demonstrates the falsehood of colonial mission executives who say the "nationals" don't plant churches among unreached people. The number of believers in Nepal has grown from zero to 600,000 in the past 50 years, and foreign missionaries are still not legally admitted. Believers have been won and churches planted among every one of the 70 or so tongues, tribes and nations there.

Secondly, church growth in Nepal has not been by frontal assault of invading a different culture. Other key men besides Prem found the Lord while away from home and returned to plant churches within their respective tribes. I visited Prem in the Jaliswar prison in 1973 (serving a 50 year sentence, later commuted) and he told me that being there was a great opportunity for him. All prisoners were crowded into a common hold where Prem had a captive audience for Bible classes. But the great thing about it was that his fellow prisoners came from many different tribes and nations. Some of Prem's most effective missionaries were men he won and discipled in prison and then sent back to their respective tribes with the gospel after they were released. But they didn't start branch churches of some denomination. They began and continued the body of Christ in that locality. Prem would not send a Gurung to invade the Tamang nation. Rather, he encouraged the Gurung believers to reach Tamangs who were away from home, and then send them back as apostles to their own people. The same was true regarding most of the other nations among whom he and his disciples planted churches during his lifetime (Prem went home to glory in 1998).

Third, financial support sent to indigenous missions serves to strengthen and greatly multiply their outreach and effectiveness. It does not in any way lessen or reduce the sacrificial giving of the people in their churches. Bakht Singh and Prem Pradhan both lived in utmost simplicity. Neither owned a private home or personal property. Everything was shared with their respective missions. Prem slept on the floor of a school building during the last ten years of his life (even when a guest in my home in America he would sleep on the floor). I visited the closest thing to what Bakht Singh might call "home" in Hyderabad. It was a tiny room in the main building of his home church training base. It had one single bed, a small desk and a chest of drawers.

Colonial mission executives have continually spread the idea that sending financial aid to missions based in poorer countries will cause dependency and deter their own people from giving. That happens only when a comparatively rich foreigner is living in their midst. Time after time I have seen the poorest people in the world give sacrificially of everything they have to support their churches and send out missionaries. A little help from abroad tends to cheer them on and inspire them to give even more.

It enabled Bakht Singh to build dormitories and other facilities in Hyderabad so he could keep over 100 trainees in residence from various parts of India and surrounding countries. Help from abroad enabled Prem was able to build schools and pay teachers for the education of thousands of Nepali children (especially those from high in the mountains) who otherwise would never have had a chance to learn.

Nepalese Christians voluntarily supply all the labor to make bricks and construct meeting halls and school buildings, but while living on a barter system with no paying jobs there is no way they can come up with money to pay for importing structural steel, cement, glass windows, nails, carpentry tools and sheet metal roofing from India. So when funds arrive from fellow Christians in America, it helps them appreciate the oneness of the universal body of Christ. It also brings a capstone of joy to their sacrificial gifts and labors which would have remained unfinished had not fellow believers far away joined hands with them in supplying materials for completing their projects.

The missionary gifts and offerings of God's people in industrialized countries will accomplish from 50 to 100 times more for the kingdom of God if sent to indigenous ministries rather than being invested in the much more expensive and far less effective tradition of sending Americans, Canadians, Koreans, Europeans, Australians or others overseas to work in foreign countries.

Around 1955 I shared in the annual missionary conference of a church in Michigan. Among the "candidates" there for consideration was a fine young fellow who had received a "call" to be a missionary to India while he was attending Moody Bible Institute a few years earlier. To be better prepared he had then gone to a Christian college and after that to a theological seminary. Along the way he had gotten married and now had four kids. Meanwhile, India had gained independence and didn't want any more missionaries. But he was sure he had been "called" years earlier while in MBI. So he was going right ahead with plans, sure that miraculously "the door would open." What he was seeking was (in 2004 dollars) $60,000 annual support, $20,000 for equipment and supplies, $10,000 per year to put his four kids in English language boarding schools and $8000 for passage money to ship the whole lot and his family to India. If he could obtain a visa to get in.

I asked what he would be doing once he got there and he replied that, of course, he would have to spend the first two or three years in language study. Then he might be able to do some "real missionary work" for about a year, after which it would be time for him to come back home again "on furlough." That is, if he or his wife or one or two of their kids didn't first get so sick that they had to come home earlier. I figured it up for him: he was going to spend over $300,000 (in 2004 dollars) of God's money so he could possibly do about one year of "missionary work" somewhere in India. If he could get a visa to get in.

I asked what he planned to do if he didn't get the visa. He had no alternative plan. So I gave him a suggestion. Why not keep right on doing "deputation" to raise money for missionary support and equipment, but then send it to an indigenous ministry instead of using it all for his own family. What this dear brother's mission board was going to spend to send this one family to India would, in the hands of Bakht Singh or other indigenous mission leaders, provide full support and transportation for more than 50 missionaries who were already there. They would already know all the major languages of India, and any one of them would accomplish ten time more for the kingdom of God than this brother ever could within that culture.

Obviously, he had never thought of such a thing. During ten years studying "missions" in three evangelical institutions, the only thing he had ever heard was the 19^th century colonial concept of "going." Not one of his teachers had ever enlightened him concerning the fact that all true believers are one body in Christ, and that if God was truly "calling" or leading him to further His eternal purpose in a foreign country it should be by helping our fellow believers who are serving Him there. Being bound by the colonial traditions of another century, most mission boards, denominations and evangelical organizations in industrialized countries just keep on perpetuating this tragic misuse of God's resources. Most tend to ignore the needs of our fellow Christians in poorer countries because, I believe, we are so preoccupied with doing our own thing, and want to perpetuate our respective organizations.

For more about wise and unwise allocations of God's financial resources, read on in the next chapter.