Testimony of a Viable, Indigenous Church-Planting Movement R. Rekedal Smith

R. Rekedal Smith (pseudonym) and her family serve with Beyond, a missions organization wholly dedicated to seeing Acts-like movements birthed among the world’s unreached peoples. She is the author of Dear Mom and Dad: an adventure in Obedience.

Ralph D. Winter once said,

The essential missionary task is to establish a viable, indigenous church planting movement that carries the potential to renew whole extended families and transform whole societies. It is viable in that it can grow on its own, indigenous meaning that it is not seen as foreign, and a church planting movement that continues to reproduce intergenerational fellowships that are able to evangelize the rest of the people group.¹

A viable, indigenous church-planting movement . . . in India? My husband, Steve, and I didn’t believe it was possible. Until it happened.

In 2011, our sending agency conducted a two-week disciple-making training with one purpose—to spend time looking at nothing but Scripture. No manuals. No quotes from famous authors. No missional theses. Just a deep dive into what the word of God has to say about reaching and discipling the lost and about church-planting strategies.

After the training, Steve and I compared the Bible with our missional strategies and outreach tools, determined to let go of assumptions and approaches that weren’t in Scripture. For outreach, we began to apply Luke 10:1–12. Why not try going as Jesus had done and taught His disciples to do? As obvious as it sounds, we had to actually go. In Luke 10, Jesus’s disciples went.

It is common to go out to invite people to Bible programs for children, medical drives, literacy programs, or skills training. None of these activities are bad in and of themselves. However, those sent out in Luke 10 did not use this approach. They were instructed to leave all of their possessions at home. They went with a sense of vulnerability to lost people, as sheep among wolves (v. 3).

Jesus’s strategies are so rich, but I’ll touch on just one here. In verses 5–7, Jesus instructed His disciples to enter a house and stay in it. The Greek word for house, oikos, refers to a household or community. His disciples were to meet with families or other existing relationship groups.

The Philippian jailer and his whole household were saved (Acts 16:31–34), but we had never considered households as strategic for reaching those without Christ. A search of the Scriptures shows that the Philippian jailer’s family isn’t an anomaly. Whole households are saved from Genesis to Revelation, including but not limited to Rahab and her whole family, the Samaritan woman and her village, Cornelius and his family, as well as Lydia and her family (see also Josh 2:18; 6:22–23; John 4:39–42; Acts 10:27–33; 16:15).

We began to look for others who also wanted to see more households choose to follow Christ. The Lord led us to a small group of Christians from India who were willing to try this “new” outreach strategy from Luke 10. This story is their story.

God has worked much more through the Christ-following Indians than He has worked through us to complete this essential missionary task. In six months, the original group of fifteen Christians who were willing to use Luke 10 as an outreach approach started sixty-five Bible studies in Hindu households. Many of the newly believing house-holds received baptism, even though they knew persecution might result. Many of the new believers became co-laborers in the harvest. Soon there were two generations of disciples going and starting new churches. Multiplication of disciples and churches had begun.

That was twelve years ago. Now there are more than three hundred thousand churches planting churches and three million baptized followers of Jesus across sixteen states in India (more than half the country). Disciples of Jesus in this movement come from many walks of life: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and even Christian. More than 250 caste groups are represented in this indigenous, viable church-planting movement. As many might expect, there are Dalit (“untouchables”) and tribal households (with animistic, non-Hindu practices), both of which have traditionally been fruitful harvest fields. But, contrary to expectations, new believers also come from higher castes such as Brahmin, Rajput, Jat, Thakur, Baniya, and many others—castes that historically have had few or no followers of Christ.

How are so many caste groups being touched by the good news? Some households become Jesus followers because someone from their own caste reaches them. Others become followers because of outreach across caste or religious lines. In caste-layered, religiously divided India, doesn’t reaching across caste or religious lines cut people off from their families? It certainly can and does when individuals act in isolation. But when the gospel flows through existing social relationships, broken family relations do not often happen. So we are praising God for including house-holds in His outreach strategy.

When households are discipled together, they support and encourage each other. They spur each other on to love and good deeds (Heb 10:24), applying God’s word to their lives in practical ways—even difficult verses like “love your enemies” (Matt 5:43–48) and that, in Jesus, “there is neither Jew nor Greek . . . slave nor free . . . male nor female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28 ESV). They learn to obey Jesus, even when doing so is different from accepted cultural practices.

We want to celebrate what God is doing through our Indian co-laborers. He is doing great things. They face intense opposition. Some have had their homes burned to the ground. Many have been beaten or imprisoned. Others have been killed for following Jesus. In response to this hostility, the new churches are caring for widows and orphans in their communities. They visit those who are imprisoned and pray for their persecutors. Meanwhile, they continue to multiply and do not shrink back. We are honored to know them.

With around three hundred thousand house churches, there are countless other stories we could tell. The only way this movement has grown is because households are actively engaged in the essential missionary task of establishing a viable, indigenous movement that renews whole extended families (and whole villages, in some cases). Rejoice with us! God is building His church. Indigenous movements are happening on every continent today, with over forty in South Asia alone. Hallelujah!

RETURN TO LESSON 13: Organic Multiplication of Churches

Notes

1. Ralph D. Winter and Bruce Koch, “Finishing the Task,” in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, 4th ed. (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Publishing, 2009), 538.