Gospel Multiplication Among Hindus

There is a great need for the gospel to reach and bless the Hindu for whom Christ died. In the past India has seen encouraging response to the Gospel from the oppressed communities and from tribal. In our day we are seeing a new response to Christ from the caste Hindu. One of the approaches to Hindu ministry that is facilitating many Hindus coming to Christ is through T4T. We have been using T4T and seeing response among the Hindu.

A small group of us took T4T in January of 2003 from author of T4T. He told us very simply how he used T4T to see incredible response in Asia where there was no response before. In November 2000 he trained 30 people in an area of Asia with no churches. By the end of 2001 there were 906 small groups and 10,000 new believers.

Since that time we have trained many Hindu background believers and we have been seeing many Hindus coming to Christ and new house churches started by these new believers. T4T stands for Training for Trainers. In T4T every believer becomes a trainer. The new believer is transformed into a multiplying trainer by using very simple concepts that can be passed on from new believer to new believer.

1. Evangelism

The Engine that drives T4T is evangelism. In T4T we address two major reasons why most Christians do not share their faith. The first reason is that they do not know what to say. The second reason is they do not know who to tell the gospel too.

We give a simple but thorough training to help each believer share their testimony. The term story is used rather than testimony to emphasize the simplicity and to incorporate the telling of the gospel to any situation. Now the new Hindu background believer knows what to say in sharing the gospel, tell your story.

We use an exercise asking each new Hindu background believer to list and write down one hundred family and friends they know who are not believers in Christ. For the Hindu background new believer this is an easy exercise. I have seen generational Christians struggle to list even a few unbelievers in their circle of family and friends. After they make this list we ask them to prioritize the list and to identify the top five and challenge them to share Christ with those five people in one week and follow up to find out how it went. Now we have answered the second questions that keeps new believers from sharing faith, who do I say the gospel too. Now they have thier list of family and friends to tell.

Using T4T with Hindus captures the power of transformation in the new believers. Those who come to Christ are taught to share their faith right away. Those closest around them have seen a change in the one who shares with them and this adds impact to the words they speak.

In one case I was training a group of 10 Hindu background believers in T4T. They came back after the training and reported 30 Hindus high caste Hindus had come to Christ. This was exciting in itself, but what happened next was incredible. I told them that when we meet next time we would not discuss who they had led to Christ. We would only discuss who they led to Christ and had trained to share their story and helped them in telling others of Christ. When they came back they reported that those 30 new believers had led 270 people to Christ, including those who the new believers taught also to share their faith who in-turn led others to Christ. This is where evangelism turns from addition to multiplication.

Why did the number of new believers grow so much? There was a major shift in how evangelism was done. Even though the 10 people I was training were new believers from Hindu background their T4T was part of a more comprehensive two year training that made them “experts”.

When Eshwar shared the gospel with Ramesh there would be a change in Ramesh when he came to Christ. Ramesh’s cousin Shivakumar would see the change in his cousin Ramesh. After this Ramesh would ask Eshwar to come and share the gospel with his cousin Shivakumar. Probably Shivakumar would have come to Christ, but Eshwar would be so stretched he could hardly find the time to get to all the places to share the gospel.

In T4T Eshwar trains Ramesh to share the gospel through simply telling his story of how he came to Christ. When Shivakumar becomes a believer in Christ the gospel has come through Ramesh. If Ramesh can share the gospel then Shivakumar realizes so can he. He is challenged to share with five family members right away. There is a powerful dynamic at work when the new believer begins to share his faith and evangelism becomes normative and contagious.