Providing food to desperate Indians — while also offering them the Bread of Life
Introducing my friend Pastor KP, who is right out of the Book of Acts.
I am the co-founder of a Christian ministry called The India Pastors Project.
For the last four years Chuck Myers, Tim Brown and I have used Zoom to teach pastors in India about Scripture — from about 9pm to 3am Eastern Time, which is morning in India.
Our liaison is a man we call Pastor KP, who translates everything we say to Telugu. Of course, the Holy Spirit also is doing some translating along the way, thankfully.
Sometimes hundreds of pastors will gather at a conference center for three days of teaching, and sometimes 50-100 of them will gather in a village for a one-day conference. We do at least two conferences a month.
The pastors we teach have only a surface level understanding of Scripture. They also are poor and don’t have money for commentaries or seminary. We raise money in the States so the pastors never have to pay for our Zoom teaching.
Does our ministry have an impact? We have taught more than 1,000 pastors, and Pastor KP says many of them have taken our teachings and their new-found confidence and double or tripled the size of their churches. Many are doing more baptisms than ever before. Pastor KP estimates that more than 300,000 people in India have given their lives to Christ through the preaching of the pastors we have taught.
I don’t know if that is an exaggeration, but even if our teaching resulted in 3,000 new Christians it would be worth it. In God’s economy, it would be worth it if that number was only 1.
I will have much more to tell you in the future about our ministry — we use the acronym TIPP informally — but today I want to tell you about the great work KP and his church have done this week in an area of India that has been devastated by the worst flooding there in 20 years.
TIPP raises money for the teaching conferences. We pay for each pastor’s travel, food and hotel — which is all incredibly cheap by American standards.
But on rare occasions we dip into our funds to pay for urgent needs for pastors who have attended our conferences and their families. During the pandemic, when India shut down the country for a month and provided zero support to its citizens (no $1,400 checks coming from New Delhi), we bought bags of rice for our pastors, keeping some of them from starving to death.
Pastor KP called me several days ago and told me about the severe flooding in Vijayawada, India, leaving thousands homeless and without food. The Indian government provided bottled water, but nothing else.
KP asked if we could pay for rice, vegetables, milk, candles and blankets for 85 Christian families in Vijayawada. We agreed to do that, with the number of families eventually doubling to 170. It cost us $37 to provide a family food that would last three to four weeks.
Click here to learn more about our relief efforts.
For today, I want to show you this short video that gives a good overview of the situation and KP’s efforts (he’s the one in the long-sleeved white shirt), plus a text that KP sent to me.
"Thank you so much TIPP family for us giving us a great opportunity to share the Gospel along with flood relief supplies.
"The government has totally failed to meet minimum relief supplies to flood victims. The flood victims gave us a testimony that we are the first team that brought very, very essential relief supplies such are rice, vegetables, warm blankets, candles and fresh milk.
"When we rode through the city, we preached the Gospel. We told them that we have food that will last you three or four weeks, but that Jesus offers the bread of life, which lasts forever."
“We declared to all the flood victims that we are living in the end times and that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. Jesus paid the price on the cross of Calvary for the remission of our sins. Accept Jesus as your Lord and personal savior. 🙏❤️ 🙏 You shall be saved no matter what sins you have committed.
“Many people responded to the altar call. We prayed for them and blessed them in Jesus' name."
Ed again: I love working with KP. It’s like working with a First Century pastor in the Book of Acts. God has blessed me with an opportunity serve next to him, and I can’t wait to see what we together will do next.