The church in India is as old as Christianity, itself and has spread from sunny Kerala in the south to all the other provinces. Today there are more churches being planted than ever before in history.  The Gospel has a bright future in India, say many national leaders.

As the light breaks through the morning mist over the Indian countryside, dark-skinned people with their bodies wrapped in thin blankets are gathering outside a make-shift church in the biggest city of the region. There is an open area where they are standing in little huddles drinking chai, their traditional sweet tea, exchanging small-talk before making their way in under a concrete roof without walls, where plastic chairs have been set out on the floor.
The meeting place is a part of a church building under construction, which is going to seat thousands of people. It’s winter, and even though the temperature is several degrees above zero, it’s quite chilly. The houses have no heating, and this winter people have frozen to death. But as soon as the sun appears, their faces melt into smiles and the blankets begin to slide off their shoulders.
This weekend we’re in northern India, and people have arrived by bus, moped, car, bike or on foot to a gathering where there’ll be two days of teaching from the Word of God. Pastor “John”, the leader of a movement that serves a large number of villages round about, is welcoming us all and leading us in prayer.
For the next four hours they listen to teaching. This is the second year this leadership course is being run, which has as its aim to equip Christian leaders for their service out there in the countryside.

The official number of Christians in India is 24 million, which represents 2.3 percent of the entire population. But many believe the actual figure to be much bigger.
“We believe the figure is more like six percent”, says pastor “Blesson”.
He is a Baptist and one of the most respected leaders of the nation’s largest protestant denomination, which was started by the father of modern missions, William Carey.
Blesson previously worked at the Baptist’s university in Serampore – started by Carey with the purpose of training up national Christian leaders. Today, the denomination represents a nearly two hundred year-old tradition with educational institutions and hospitals in several of India’s northern provinces.
“I believe we have a bright future in India” he says.
“A woman in our church had a vision from God about a fifth of India’s population being saved by 2020. This is what we’re working towards.”

Christianity has a long tradition in India. It was Thomas, the apostle of Jesus, who first came here as a missionary. He joined up with an Indian merchant from Israel, and in the year 52 AD arrived in Kerala, where he found some Jewish colonies. These Jews spoke Aramaic, his own language, and many of them became Christians.
Thomas also preached the Gospel to Brahmins – a special caste of priests, high up in the Indian caste system. Many of them received Jesus resulting in the birth of the church in India. Thomas is said to have converted 17,000 people during his ministry which was characterised by great signs and wonders. He was martyred in southern India in 72 AD.

Today, the Indian church has many branches and off-shoots. The biggest of these are belong to the Catholic and the Orthodox denominations, the Catholic church being the largest with its more than 16 million members. The Orthodox church is the nation’s third largest denomination next to the Protestants.
For us, in the western world, the Catholic church in India is known first and foremost on account of Mother Theresa and her “Mission of Charity”, which today has 19 homes for the poor, the dying, lepers and orphans in Kolkata.

In northern India the Protestant denominations formed a union, called the CNI (Church of India), including denominations such as the Methodists, the Baptists, the Anglicans, the Congregationalists and the Presbyterians.
A similar union had been formed in southern India (CSI) as early as 1949 and has today 3.8 million members, whilst CNI count 1.25 million. Thus the CNI is the second largest group, after the Catholics.
Hindus and Christians have by and large lived in peace with each other throughout Indian history, but now and then there have been persecutions against the Christians.
The most recent examples of this, news of which has reached western media and caused much dismay, are from the province of Orissa. The atrocities reached their height in September, 2008 when thousands of Christians were forced to flee from their homes into the jungle because of their fear of the persecutions from the Hindus.
Nuns, priests, pastors and ordinary Christians were murdered, and thousands of homes and Christian buildings were burned down.
To this day, many of these Christians are living in camps, afraid to return to their home villages to rebuild their homes.

India has a clause in its law about religious freedom, and you can see the Christian influence in several of the provinces, both in the southern part of the country, Kerala and especially in the province of Nagaland in the northeast. Here, the majority of the population is Christian.
“You can see the evidence of this when you look at society as a whole in Nagaland”, says “George”, one of the protestant leaders.
“Many politicians are Christians, which is a blessing for the whole province. We’d like to see more of that in our nation.”
But there are also provinces where they’ve introduced laws against “converting” anybody. Blesson, the Baptist leader is therefore careful to explain how they in their ministry address this problem of ex-Hindus and others confessing their Christian faith.
“Faith is something people are free to embrace, or not. You can never force it on anybody”, he says.
“We see many churches raised up where the believers are first generation Christians. In some of these churches we ask the people to go to the courts where they sign a document to prove that they have become Christians of their own free will – that nobody has forced them to it.”
“We’re not doing this to hurt anybody. You have to be sensitive with people. India is a God-fearing nation, something we have to respect when we give them the Gospel. People believe in God, but they need help to come to know Jesus Christ”, he adds.

The two days of teaching are over. Pastors, evangelists and cellgroup leaders are drinking their last cup of chai accompanied by some dry biscuits before they get on their bikes or mopeds again and disappear from view as darkness falls over the land. Back home, the simple village farmers are waiting to hear the good news about Him who loved them so much that He was willing to give His life for them.
And equipped with the knowledge they’ve acquired during the course, the leaders can now preach the message even more effectively.
This was the essence of William Carey’s vision, when he first set foot on Indian soil – to establish a mission through which national believers would be trained up to preach the Gospel to their own people.