In 2008, when I first came to London, I attended the London Mission Conference where missionary Kanghee Ahn came as a speaker. He gave a lecture on missions to unreached and unengaged people groups. As I listened, my heart stirred at the big-picture vision of completing global missions. Over the past decade, major mission organizations had been actively engaging in ministry to unreached people groups. But in hindsight, they realized there were still regions and ethnic groups untouched by the gospel. In response, leaders of prominent U.S. mission organizations decided to focus intensively on reaching those yet-unengaged groups, inviting Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church to serve as their chairman.
More than half of these unengaged unreached people groups are concentrated in India. So, in 2009, missionary Ahn entered India and began planting churches. I also personally visited India that year for an exploratory trip, and subsequently led short-term mission teams there in 2010, 2011, and 2015. Initially, our outreach focused on revival meetings centred around already-established local churches. But over time, we began partnering with churches planted by leaders trained by missionary Ahn. As the number of churches increased, it eventually led to the formation of a denomination-level Indian General Assembly.
In 2012, due to my involvement in the London Olympic Mission Conference, I was unable to return to India and started seeking God’s direction for missions in London. Nevertheless, we continued to increase our church’s mission giving, and during the pandemic, supported the ministry through online prayer meetings and leadership training via Zoom. Now, after 10 years, I’m filled with anticipation to finally visit India again.
This visit is particularly important because the local church landscape has changed significantly through the pandemic. The purpose of this trip is to properly assess the current situation, reorganize, and prepare for more strategic mission work moving forward. India’s population exceeds that of the entire African continent. It’s more accurate to view India not as one nation but as a continent. Some individual states alone have populations exceeding 100 million — more than twice the population of South Korea. This makes it difficult and costly to gather all the state leaders in one place. However, thanks to the mission offerings from our congregation, we were able to organize a gathering of 30 key leaders from across Indian states in the central city of Bhopal. Missionaries Kanghee Ahn and Sukheon Lee will also participate.
I’ll be flying out Monday morning, arriving in Delhi around 11 p.m., and then moving early the next morning to Bhopal to join the retreat. Over the course of three days and two nights, we’ll have morning and evening worship services, and during the day we’ll hold lectures, ministry reports, and planning sessions. I’m scheduled to lead three worship sessions and also participate in the strategy meetings to hear about the current state of local churches and help plan for future work. Once the program concludes on Thursday, I’ll return to Delhi and then fly back to London the following day.
The mission field is a battleground of intense spiritual warfare, and we need a lot of prayer. There are often obstacles like travel accidents and sudden illnesses, and spiritual and physical attacks during gatherings are not uncommon. So I humbly ask our church community to pray throughout the week as often as possible: that the leaders attending the retreat would be deeply blessed through the worship services, that unity would be strengthened among them, that we would be given wisdom as we review the past and plan for the future, and that all things would proceed in peace, guarded from every spiritual attack. With your prayers, I will go to India with confidence.
