For 15 years, Mars Hill Church has supported the gospel in India through planting churches in partnership with Vision Nationals. We couldn’t be more thrilled with how God is choosing to work through this great organization. Since 1997, Vision Nationals has planted over 500 churches, primarily in India’s largest state, Andhra Pradesh, where more than 84 million people live.
This year, for the first time, they will send church planters to Odisha, a large state north of Andhra Pradesh in the eastern part of the country. This state has a different language and culture than Andhra Pradesh so it poses a new set of challenges. Please pray for Vision Nationals’ director, Pastor Arjuna Chiguluri, and his network of pastors as they seek to plant in this new area.
In 2013 Mars Hill supported 23 church planters in India. They have the difficult task of working in a country where Hinduism is the primary religion and very few people know anything of Jesus Christ or the Bible. We are very excited to increase the number of Indian church planters we support to 33 in 2014.
The work Jesus is doing in India is amazing. Here are some of the evidences of Jesus’ work in India over the last year.
- 80,000 people heard the gospel
- 4,000 people joined one of their churches
- 800 pastors and church planters trained
- 700 people baptized
- 40 new churches planted
- 7 new churches built
- 2 pastors miraculously saved from death (we recently reported about one of these amazing stories)
Here are some photos that our friends at Vision Nationals sent us from this past year:
Pastor Arjuna prays over a meeting of church planters and evangelists.
A new Vision Nationals church—the first church in the history of that village.
Pastor Arjuna leads a dedication of the new church.
The congregation in Vadavasala holds a worship service to dedicate their new church building.
Pastor Arjuna and other church leaders baptize people in Khammam.
