Saturday, February 4, 2012
Greetings from India!

Our team had an incredible day on yesterday.
After an early morning bicycle-rickshaw ride down to the Ganges river and auto-rickshaw ride back, we headed out to the Varanasi Church Planter Training Center. This is what we were all waiting for. What a morning together with these dear believers!

We were greeted with singing, dancing and flower leis and then had a chance to share the Word and our hearts with these young, committed, passionate men in training.

Over the course of the meeting 6 of our team did an excellent job sharing what God had laid on their hearts to share with these men. One spoke from the story of Elijah confronting the prophets of Baal. One spoke about the importance of Scripture memory. Another spoke about the greatness of God and his care for us from Isaiah chapter 40. I spoke of the blessing of Abraham in Genesis 12 and its fulfillment in Christ and our shared mission to bring the blessing to the nations from Matthew 28.

Around 1:00 we left the training center and travelled around an hour to visit an Empart ladies sewing center. Again our hearts were stirred to see village women being simply taught to sew to provide for themselves. Many of these women don’t yet know the Lord, but are hearing the Gospel day after day as they receive their training. This sewing center, like all Empart Sewing Centers, is the outgrowth of a local church, planted and pastored by a trained church planter.

Next we visited an Empart Children’s Home, yet another expression of ministry of a local church. This home consisted of 8 boys, some orphaned, some who could not be cared for by their parents, living in the home of an Empart Church Planter, his wife and their 4 children. The boys were joyful and well behaved, and obviously very loved.

The work of God in North India came alive for our team today! They all said, “Pictures and videos don’t capture it. You have to see it for yourself.”

Tomorrow we will board a 5 hour train for the Training Center we as a church support in Patna. Thanks for your prayers.

Because of and for the Gospel. . . Pastor Tim (Grace Church, San Luis Obispo, CA)

If you’d like to support one of the Empart ministries mentioned above, please visit our giving page by clicking here.

“It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth.” Lamentations 3:27

Impoverished populations in nations such as India, share a commonality in demographics often over looked. A missing generation exists, yet few have taken the time to notice. Population statistics reveal a startling trend in that the populous of the young and the old are surged, while the middle aged have become a rarity. What causes such an anomaly to happen?  What are its implications for the future of a nation? And how does it affect the way we spread the Gospel message?

Poverty breeds desperate and painful realities. When the main life struggle is to simply earn enough money to feed your starving family, whatever options of income you have, you take. This looks different for each person but the desperation to survive leads to painfully exploitative and backbreaking labor. Life isn’t easy for an impoverished man or woman in India. This harsh reality cuts lives short, leaving children to fend for themselves sooner and begin their life of arduous labor at a younger age. This has brought the average lifespan down, the young population high, and the elderly as the lucky few. Fifty percent of the Indian population is below the age of 25 and sixty five percent of the populous is under 35.

With demographics like this, ministry happens differently than in the western context. In virtually all cultures, age denotes wisdom. But when age is unattainable, who’s left to gain and share wisdom? Young men and women in India have had to work with what they have to gain respect in a world defined largely by age.

As a church planting ministry throughout Northern India, Empart has found the age demographics of this region do not pose a hindrance but a blessing.  Unreached people groups around the world are largely unreached because access is not easy. Youthfulness is helpful when living life in an inconvenient, rural and simplistic way. These difficult locations make it too hard for an older married pastor to relocate. Many regions have inadequate schools, medical care and other necessities that a young family needs. If a young single man moves to a place like this and God prospers him, he can then put down roots and begin a family after he is established.

The realities of persecution also make a younger church planter more advantageous than an older man. Ministry in a society of non-Christians means having the boldness to weather through harsh verbal and sometimes physical abuse. And lastly, a youthful population is often the most zealous and passionate about their mission to save the lost.

(See the update on this situation in the comment section below this blog)

Empart USA Friends & Supporters, we urgently need your prayers.

Over the weekend, an Empart Church Planter and two church leaders were kidnapped.

The Church Planter and two leaders (names withheld) were taken by force on their way to an evangelistic outreach event. At this stage, we do not know who took them or what their demands are. Local witnesses were unable to identify the perpetrators as their faces were covered.

The kidnapping occurred in the Udaipur Region, in an area dominated by militant Naxalites – a Maoist party considered to be the most dangerous terrorist organisation in India. Many people suspect that Naxalites were responsible for the abductions.

While this is a serious situation, we serve a mighty God who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:19-21).

Please join us as we lift these precious brothers in prayer. Pray for their safety, protection and for God’s comfort and peace to rest with their terrified families until their safe return.

This is the first time any of our workers have been kidnapped. Please also pray for God’s divine wisdom and direction for Jossy Chacko and the Indian leaders.

Please encourage your friends, family and church community to mobilise prayer for these men. How can they face such situations without us standing with them?

Together in prayer,
The Empart USA Team

Friends and Supporters,

Isaiah 50:4 tells us it is the Lord who enables us to rise each morning – not our alarm clocks! He gives us life and purpose. In 2 Peter 3:9 we discover, “It is not God’s will that anyone should perish but that ALL should come to know Him”. In John 20:21, Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, I also send you”. These scriptures give us a clear picture of our call, privilege and opportunity to share God’s love with the world.

At Empart USA, we are passionate about helping you fulfil the greatest privilege and opportunity in the world – to share God’s love with the lost and needy. I have just spent two months with Empart Church Planters and I can assure you that they are ready to do anything – even give their own lives – for the sake of the Gospel. They are filled with fresh visions and dreams to reach more unreached people. They are also ready to start new projects to help the poor and needy. But opportunities often come with challenges.

Unfortunately, 2012 has not started well for some of our brothers and sisters in Asia. One of our Church Planters in Nepal has recently gone to be with the Lord. After Madhu graduated from an Empart Transformation Centre, he planted two churches. Sadly, he passed away last week after a short battle with diabetes and a mystery illness. Madhu leaves behind his grieving wife, Pampa, and three sons Amarit (15), Sunil (12), and Negral (5).

Pampa experienced miraculous healing last year and her faith in Jesus is so deep that she said to Empart leaders, “I want to continue serving God the way my husband did”. Pampa and her eldest son Amarit are continuing to look after the young church and minister to the new believers. They trust the Lord to provide for their future needs.

Church Planter Rajesh is also grieving. His 11 year-old son, Anju, was riding his bicycle home from school last week when he was run over by a tractor. Anju died at the scene – before his family even had a chance to say goodbye. Pastor Rajesh has faced many threats throughout his ministry. It is feared his son may have been killed to force the family out of the area. But Rajesh remains committed to serving God and he simply asks that we pray for his work.

Will you join me in praying for God’s peace and comfort to rest with the families and co-workers who are grieving the loss of these precious loved ones? Will you also encourage your church, family and friends to pray specifically for the families of Anju and Madhu? You can bless these special families through prayer or by supporting our cause to save the lost and needy in Northern India and Nepal by clicking here.

For the Lord and the lost,

Jossy Chacko

Dear Friends,

As I read these reports I am reminded that, in a very real sense, we are all a part of every story coming from our team in India. Your prayers and financial support allow our pastors and leaders to use their God given energy and creativity to advance the Kingdom of God among people who often don’t know another Christian!

I think of Sister Sameeksha in our Lucknow Mercy Home. Homeless and pregnant with serious mental illness, she had been utterly cast adrift by her Hindu culture. One of our pastors and his wife were able to take her in, nurse her back to health and help her give birth to a son in a loving Christian context. I look forward to seeing what great things God has in store for her and her son in the years to come. We are praying that God will use her to bring Christ to her high-caste Hindu family!

Thanks for continuing on the journey with us!

Yours in Christ,

Jeff Cannon and the Empart USA Team

What’s the one thing you feel committed to completing in this New Year? What are the area’s of spiritual growth that you feel called into and how do you plan to walk that out faithfully and to completion?

It seems for many followers of Jesus that the major area of progress needed is in our thinking. Scripture encourages us to fall in line with right thinking about Jesus, our witness and our mission.

Wrong thinking is when we see the world through the eyes of our fallen flesh. We deny specific sins as being sinful, we lack empathy for the lost and the poor, and we justify our ignorance and omission as permanent and unchangeable attributes of our fleshy nature.

Right thinking rears its head in the moments of complete surrender to the movement of the Holy Spirit in and through our lives. It is nothing gained by works but received when we cried out to the Lord to save us from this dying world. When Paul wrote to the people of Corinth to remind them that “… we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) he did not commission anything new. The gateway to seeing the world through the eyes of Christ begins with our ability to surrender fully.

Paul’s appeal to the Romans to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2) speaks volumes on how we get off the track of right thinking and also how to get back on it. We conform when we lack renewal of the mind. We are transformed when we do renew the mind.

An immensely practical way that we can and should be renewing our minds on a daily basis is through the reading and study of the word of God. Study of God’s word helped Jesus fight temptation from the devil while he was in the wilderness, it helped the new testament authors see the promise of the old testament fulfilled in Jesus and it helps you and I today by correcting, teaching and encouraging us to think God’s thoughts and see the way Jesus see’s.

As a challenge to each one of us in this New Year, let’s recognize our gifting of the mind of Christ. Let us allow that gifting to be lived out each and everyday as we surrender more fully to the power and work of the Holy Spirit.

The past two Christmases have seen a surprising surge in a product used for an activity many Americans have put on the back burner. E-Readers have now become such a legitimate and significant competitor to print books that they are slowly changing the way publishers and writers are producing content. What does that say about our culture and society at large that we’ve had to invent a new way to read? Has the ability to read become so common place in American culture that we no longer appreciate it or recognize its importance?

Think about your day, how much do you use your understanding of the written word just to make it from point A to point B, or to accomplish projects at work or school? Do you send or receive email? How about instructions, bills or contracts? Without a basic functioning of literacy we can easily see how extraordinarily difficult it becomes to accomplish even the minutia of the day-to-day.

What comes as a shock to many Americans is the reality that much of the world is still illiterate. The gravity of this reality cannot be fully understood until we recognize how much of our world is centered on the expectation of being literate. How much of your day wouldn’t happen if you couldn’t read or write?

For Empart, teaching others to read and write has been a keystone to what we do and how we minister the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With much of the population in poor and remote villages in India falling into the category of illiterate, it is vital that we help in creating a culture of literacy alongside the teaching and proclamation of the Gospel message.

Much of our spiritual journey is centered on our ability to read and understand the authoritative word of God as found in the Bible. Think about your relationship with Jesus – where would it be without ever reading the Bible? Our goal at Empart is to encourage a sustainable method of evangelism that teaches, encourages and builds the foundation needed for personal and community growth in relationship with Christ.

Teaching people to read, write and know Jesus is just the start of what literacy helps to accomplish in and through the lives of villages and communities. These skills help impoverished peoples and families find jobs, move to larger communities and set in motion a new course in the family tree for generations.

We’re excited to see what God has in store for India, Nepal and the ministry of Empart through the expansion of our literacy programs. Pray with us as we ask the Holy Spirit to move mightily through this program. Pray that generations from now families would look back and see the change that was brought through the Gospel message and the literacy programs that were brought with it. Pray about your role in helping Empart accomplish this vision and how you can best help bring the Gospel of the Kingdom to the unreached people of India and Nepal.

To donate to Empart Church Planters workings to eliminate illiteracy in Indian and Nepal through the spreading of the Gospel message, please click here.

During these days that follow Christmas, the weightiness of the birth of Jesus must remain heavy on our hearts and minds. For this is the heart of the Christian message – the birth of a Savoir and a God that takes on flesh.

This devotion by A.W. Tozer titled, Determining the Personal Meaning of Christmas, helps to clarify what specifically we must reflect on and examine within our own hearts. We are praying for God to continue using Empart in a radical away throughout Northern India and Nepal, but we are also asking God to use this ministry to encourage, sharpen and equip supporters in the West. We pray that this season is a time for increase in your relationship and fellowship with the King of Kings, our Lord and Savoir Jesus Christ.

While faith contains an element of reason, it is essentially moral rather than intellectual. In the New Testament unbelief is a sin, and this could not be so if belief were no more than a verdict based upon evidence. There is nothing unreasonable about the Christian message, but its appeal is not primarily to reason. At a specific time in a certain place God became flesh, but the transcendence of Christ over the human conscience is not historic; it is intimate, direct and personal.

Christ’s coming to Bethlehem’s manger was in harmony with the primary fact of His secret presence in the world in preincarnate times as the Light that lighteth every man. The sum of the New Testament teaching about this is that Christ’s claims are self-validating and will be rejected only by those who love evil. Whenever Christ is preached in the power of the Spirit, a judgment seat is erected and each hearer stands to be judged by his response to the message. His moral responsibility is not to a lesson in religious history but to the divine Person who now confronts him.

“Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight.” But Christmas either means more than is popularly supposed or it means nothing. We had better decide.

Lord, You came as a baby in a lowly manger. But You were and are God. I bow before You.

Dearest Empart Friends & Supporters,

As I reflect on all that God has enabled us to achieve this past year, I am so grateful for your prayers and partnership. “Partnership” – this one little word doesn’t begin to express how important you are to us, but it comes closer than any other word we know!

Over the last three months sustaining a busy schedule of traveling, meetings, planning and ministry development with our leaders in India, it is wonderful to finally be home to enjoy Christmas. We have had plenty of highs and challenges, and also have much to thank the Lord for.

December is always a special time for our churches in India. The lead up to Christmas focuses on outreach and evangelism activities, with three days of prayer and fasting for all Empart churches and ministries.

Pastor Sandeep shared his excitement with me about the Christmas Carol service that took place through the Slums Ministry. “The neighbors who used to get angry when we sang were very cooperative this year and asked us to come visit their homes as well. It was such a blessing – we shared the message of hope with many people and many have come to know Jesus personally!”, he says.

Last week, we had around 1500 pastors coming together for a major Pastors’ Conference. Regional Leaders’ meetings, Management Team meetings and Board meetings immediately followed this. God has been so faithful and we had the pleasure of witnessing many exciting breakthroughs – I look forward to what God will do in 2012!

We could not do what we do without you – thank you for your prayer, financial support, encouragement and love. You truly are an integral part of our service to the Lord. I pray that you will know an even greater blessing from the Lord because of your partnership with us!

From my family to yours, may you have a safe and blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

For the Lord and the lost,

Jossy Chacko

Dear Friends and Fellow Workers in Christ,

I had two very encouraging conversations with Prayer Warriors over the weekend! Both of them expressed their appreciation for the hard work that goes into these Regional Reports. They both told me that the reports make them feel a real connection to our ministry.

We have purposefully made them slightly less location-specific in recent months to better protect our workers from unwanted attention. Putting things on the World Wide Web can be problematic, as some ministries in Africa have learned this year in tragic ways. We are aware of Church Planters having been targeted and martyred on the basis of information derived from certain websites.

Our team is confident that the powerful support of our praying friends outweighs these dangers as long as we write our reports with care. We hope you enjoy these latest reports as much as we have.

Merry Christmas!

Jeff Cannon and the Empart USA Team