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Passion for Madurai Glimpses the Spirit of God at Work in India

By Dallas Anderson

In the time that it will take you to read this sentence, the world’s population will grow by eleven people. According to the United States Census Bureau, 141 people are born every minute, meaning that over 200,000 people are born per day for a total of 6.2 million people per month being added to the world’s population. Since 1950 India has been the largest contributor to the growth of the world’s population. It is estimated that at the current rate of growth, the population of India will not stabilize until it hits 1.5 billion people. Already the second most populous nation on earth at 1.02 billlion, India is expected to soon surpass China in numbers of people. With so much growth, the challenges India faces are huge.

Even though the literacy rate has grown fromsixteen percent in 1947 to over sixty-five percent in 2001, India still lags behind many other developing nations. Many residents of India are caught in a caste system that will not allow personal or professional advancement. In contrast, India is becoming a world leader in high-tech software development. Further disparity is seen daily in the marketplace, where oxen compete with sport utility vehicles (SUVs) for road space. For US$1 you can get a ride across town in a crude rickshaw to check your email on a high-speed Internet line at the cybercafé. In rural areas you can watch an aged man beat out kernels of grain by hand. In the field across the road a John Deere Combine harvests more grain in five minutes than the aged man can in hours. The list of contrasts is seemingly endless, but perhaps the greatest contrast of all is when the light of Jesus Christ comes face to face with the powers of darkness.

Vendors in a Hindu temple.

An Overview of India
India is a birthplace of four distinct religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Brahmanism (Hinduism), with its accompanying social caste system, evolved from the Vedic religion of Aryan invaders. Hinduism eventually became the dominant, and later the state, religion of India. Janis and Buddhists were persecuted as a result of Hindu domination.

Islam gave rise to several new Indian sects that preached against idolatry, polytheism and caste. One of these sects was the Sikh community founded by Nanak (1469-1538), a Punjabi born in Talwandi in Lahore District (now in Pakistan). Nanak is credited with being the founder of Sikhism. Additionally, Jews came to India before the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem. It is commonly thought that there was a wide dispersion of the Jews in the years following the great disaster of AD 66-70. It has been said that Christianity in India (brought by Thomas, Jesus’ disciple) is as old as Christianity itself.

Seeing India through the Eyes of Christ: Passion for Madurai
“Love and Care India” and its founding pastor John Arul invited the Luis Palau Association’s “Next Generation Alliance” to bring member evangelists and teams to assist the Church of India in reaching the least-reached villages of Tamil Nadu during February 2006. I was privileged to be a part of the team as one of those evangelists. The project was called Passion for Madurai. Over a period of several weeks some twenty festivals were held across the region. Schools and orphanages were visited, the sick were ministered to by medical personal and covered with prayer, pastors encouraged and Christians engaged to reach their communities. I was invited to preach and also to help mentor some younger evangelists and their teams. Below is a brief overview of God’s workings during the Passion for Madurai.