40 Bicycles

We had an Indian missionary speaking at our church last night. We have known him for a while as a church. Meeting him you are soon struck by how different he is from almost every other Christian you have met. He has a sincerity and reality about him that I have never seen elsewhere. He spoke to us for a long time about his work in India. One thing that I was immediately struck by was the pattern of evangelism that he follows. He spent time living with the people and getting to know them. He did this by building a house in their community. As people got to know him they wanted to find out about the Jesus he kept speaking of. Whenever someone wanted to become a Christian he would send them back home and give them Luke 14:25-34 to read. He had a notorious drunk in the village come to him and he told him to go home, read this passage and, if he was still interested, to return in three days time at six o'clock in the morning. The man returned and the huge change in his life has caused others to come. I was struck by the contrast between this approach and the weak decisionism that pervades much evangelism in the West today. The reality of discipleship is seldom presented to the convert, in contravention of the Great Commission.