Continuing the Conversation…

Here is more of the interview with YM and Joy:

FD: You are seeing
many miracles: Tell me a story. 

YM: You reach a tipping
point in a situation when you see an answer to prayer.  Miracles play a vital role in planting churches.
The Book of Acts has come alive.

Joy: A lady came to one
of our women’s trainings by following a crowd to where we were baptizing 29
women from a Brahmin background. (We baptize women if they are ready to take
baptism. because it teaches them the importance of immediate obedience.) The lady
was mentally ill. She came from around
150 kilometers away and she survived by eating garbage. On the third day of the training, we taught
about healing prayer and when we prayed for her she was healed—back in her
right mind. On Day 5 she was
baptized. On Day 6 she went home. Now her whole family has come to Christ. There are three other believing ladies in her
area and they get together with her. They
have talked with her husband and because she was healed from her madness, the
whole family accepted Christ. Her son
was 2 years old when she left and for 18 months she was completely crazy. The family is very happy—the father has his
wife back and the son has a mother again. 

Another lady had been bitten by a snake and her whole hand was
swollen. She went to a village healer. He cut her hand to take blood out and told
her she would be fine. Later her hand
became hugely swollen and very painful. As soon as we prayed for healing, the pain disappeared and the swelling
went down immediately. Then she went
back to her village. When we called her
to see how she was doing, there were whole families who had become Christians
because of her testimony. “What do I do
now?” she asked. “What did we teach
you?” we asked. “The Great Commission,”
she answered. “Can I baptize them?” “If they are ready,” we answered. This lady is non-literate. 

YM:  Back in the 1990s I had one traditional church which was
dismantled by Victor. Now in that same
city there are 73 churches. Joy is
involved in training them. In May 2007,
we had a gathering of 45 women house church leaders. A militant Hindu outfit came. They surrounded the area and they wanted to
beat the ladies for their activities. The newspapers and radio were there too. Joy called me and asked what she should do. “Go and stand by these ladies.” Joy went there. During that time the ladies stood for their
faith. The newspaper printed that these
ladies said, “We will worship who we want to worship.” They did not run away but stood their ground
for their faith. They were not weak but
even threatened to retaliate. The newspaper
reported that 60% of ladies of the area are Christian, and that the women are
brainwashing them because now all the ladies are following Christ.

FD: Training
obviously is very important to you. Tell
us something about your training. What
do you cover?

YM: We had a 40%
attrition rate before we started training. 

FD: How do you
account for this attrition rate? 

YM/Joy: There are
several reasons: 

1. Because not enough leaders are raised in the church. When the main pastor figure leaves a church, the church dies because there are no leaders. There need to be enough trained leaders to sustain the church.
2. Because there is no other church in area. There must be another church in the area because in that way if the leader leaves they can join the other house church and keep multiplying.
3. It sounds strange, but miracles can work as a negative. Lets say a person is healed when he came
   to Christ. If he is not rooted deeply into the Word and something else happens and he is not immediately healed, he may go to a witchdoctor or faith healer. We used to teach them that God is a God of miracles. Now we teach that there will be suffering, that it is always a path of thorns.  

After we started more vigorous training, our attrition rate
dropped from 40% to 10%. We recognize
various different levels of leadership and the training for each is different. 

Type 1 and type 2 leaders are basically leaders of house
churches. Type 1 leads an individual
house church and type 2 is a leader of 5-10 house churches. With them we cover topics such as

• Their identity in Christ—they are a new creation, a son of God, a friend of God and fellow worker with God.
• They are an ambassador of God for the Great Commission.
• Everyone is a church planter and disciple maker. (They are not just sitting in chairs.)
• How to conduct a house church
• Accountability as an elder
• Good stewardship of money (50% of the money given goes to support a level 3 leader, 20% goes to house church maintenance and 30% goes to raise up a new missionary.) 

A type 3 leader is a church planter too and has
responsibility over many churches. He is
responsible to train type 1 and 2 leaders. We train the type 3 leaders quarterly. These are the topics that we cover: 

• Leadership is influence. How will they lead others? What does good leadership involve? We start with Paul and show how he did not control others but released them.
• Good stewardship. How to be accountable to others.
• Prayer—how to pray and the different kinds of prayer. 

A type 4 leader is what we call a master trainer. He or she is responsible for training the
others.

When it comes to finance, we oversee the money but we do not
handle it. We do not have a prosperity
gospel—we teach that you have to lose what you have. We live like the people so they feel at home
with us. We have created a situation
where nothing is for show, but it is real life.

Our church planters have now started releasing others. Our thinking process has changed. We network
with others. We bless those who poach
our people because we are building the Kingdom, not an organization. The Lord is the one doing the building—we are
just a tool in His hands.