South Asian Forum of the Evangelical Alliance Newsletter
Issue 18: March 2015
The South Asian Forum (SAF) is a grouping within the Evangelical Alliance, set up to provide a place for South Asian Christians in the UK to encourage, support and equip each other for mission, and to represent their concerns to government, media and the wider Church. With the support of both individual members and church members totalling more than 20,000 people, SAF is steadily growing. Visit saf.eauk.org to get involved in supporting this wonderful
Growing healthy churches, learning to work together Three months ago the leader of a South Asian Church in Nottingham shared with me his heart for greater unity amongst South Asian Christian leaders. I came away with a deep sense that God was calling the South Asian Forum team to focus our energy in helping to facilitate this. Why is unity so important? In John 17:11 we hear Jesus’ heartfelt prayer that we may be one as God is one. As followers of Jesus, baptised by one Spirit into one body, we are called to live in unity with God and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Through our unity we reflect the love of God and become a signpost to Jesus, the one who gives life in all its fullness. So unity matters to God. It’s also vital for mission among South Asians. It’s difficult to tell exactly how many South Asian churches there are in the UK, as the majority are independent and not part of a mainstream denomination. So making connections is important, especially as new churches are continually forming. At the same time Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs now make up over 7% of the UK population and this is set to rise significantly. It is our hope and prayer that as unity grows this will lead to greater collaboration for the gospel. The task is immense but much can be achieved if we love one another and desire to work together for His glory. In 2015, sponsored by The Leprosy Mission, South Asian Forum is facilitating 3 events in Wolverhampton (April 25), London (September 26) and Bolton (October 10) to gather existing and upcoming leaders of South Asian churches and organisations. The theme is ‘Growing healthy churches’ with a heart for working in partnership. Pray for us as we embark on this exciting journey. Wolverhampton: http://bit.ly/1zT2kZ6 London: http://bit.ly/1AQYZh7 Bolton: http://bitly.com/1N9JfuV
Interview with Rev Johnson Paul One in Christ Church, Nottingham What is your background and how did you become a Christian? I was born in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and brought up in a Roman Catholic family. After my secondary school certificate, I joined St Mary’s Seminary to train as a Roman Catholic priest. However, after four years of training, I felt my calling was not to the Roman Catholic Church. Despite this, my heart was full for the love of God and I still had a strong sense that God
S outh As i a n F orum of the
Evangelical Alliance
connecting, uniting, representing
ministry by becoming a member of SAF. Once you become a member, you will receive idea, the Alliance’s bi-monthly magazine, as well as regular newsletters from SAF detailing our progress. If you are already a member of the Evangelical Alliance you can add SAF to your Alliance membership at no extra cost. In this instance please send an email to saf@eauk.org
was calling me to Christian ministry. Up until this point in my life, I had opposed the perspective that one had to be ‘born again’ to have life eternal in Christ. However, God gradually brought a change in my thinking on this matter when I took on a new role as a radio programme producer in the Christian Recording Ministries, Faisalabad where programmes for FEBA radio were recorded. Here I encountered Christians from other denominations with differing views to the ones I held. But it was in Libya some years later that my perspective became radically changed. Here, as a newly married man, I listened with interest to an evangelical preacher as he spoke on Matthew 6:33, “But seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His Righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”. The Holy Spirit made me understand this verse and I became a born again Christian in October 1992. It was almost two years later in 1994 that God powerfully spoke to me through Galatians 3:28 “… we all are One in Christ Jesus”. Despite moving to the UK, I was unable to shake what I sensed God was calling me to do in terms of sharing his heart for unity in Christ. Here in the UK I received theological training at South London Christian College, and in 2000 was ordained as a Minister of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. In 2002 I moved to Nottingham and planted the One in Christ Church. In addition to leading the church, I am grateful to serve God where He desires me to be and I am thankful for the opportunities He continues to give me to share the message of Jesus Christ on radio and television. What is your passion? Nothing excites me more than preaching the gospel message and sharing God’s goodness to those who do not yet know him. In addition to this I am hugely passionate about the importance of having greater unity amongst South Asian Christian Ministers here in the UK. As followers of Christ we are called to be one and I pray I will see that in my lifetime! Why are you a member of SAF? I am delighted to be a member of SAF because its objectives match my passion for Christ and unity. I am convinced that the South Asian Forum has an instrumental role to play in strengthening the Asian church for mission and I look forward to playing my part in seeing this happen. My hope is that other leaders of Asian churches will choose to join the forum so that together we can have greater impact for the gospel.
SAF profiles its work, partners and resources in the quarterly Newsletter and on our website saf.eauk.org
Hope is rising In the midst of the dirty and dangerous life of work in the brick kilns of Pakistan, hope is rising. Amongst the weakest and the most forgotten of society, hope is taking root and rising up. Hope of a better future, hope of freedom from servitude, and the hope that comes from truly knowing the Creator God.
know about the word of God. For me it is very encouraging that now these women know their value in God’s eyes”. These groups need your continued prayer support. Ask God to hold these groups together, that they would not crumble under pressure but that these women would continue to meet together. Pray that they would be encouraged by sustainable change, that as they grow in faith they would identify with Jesus, that they would be encouraged and supported by other local Christians visiting their communities. Pray that when oppression comes they would continue to be a help and support to one another. Hope is rising in Pakistan. Find out more about Release International’s work amongst persecuted Christians at www.releaseinternational.org, or get in touch via info@releaseinternational.org or call our Supporter Relations Team on 01689 823491. You can also find us on Facebook or follow @ReleaseInt on Twitter.
In Pakistan, the price for being a Christian can be steep – blasphemy laws increase the likelihood of arrest and imprisonment, as in the well-known case of Asia Bibi; communities can respond with deadly force to rumours of blasphemy; churches are under threat of violence as they meet together. For many Christians there is the double trauma of not truly understanding the faith that they follow – being identified as Christians more because of community tradition than because they know Jesus personally – combined with the social oppressions of poverty, lack of education, gender imbalance, and modern-day slavery, which means that life continues to be an often brutal struggle for survival, particularly in the brick kilns. Here men, women and children are kept in bondage, owing a debt to the owner of the kiln, and forced to work to pay off the debt. Often they don’t know how much they owe or whether they have paid it off, nor do they earn enough to support their families. But out of this earthly misery, hope is rising. For more than five years Release Women, a part of Release International (an organisation that serves persecuted Christians around the world), has been planning, preparing, and praying for a Self Help Group project and in 2014 the project got under way. Group facilitators are Christians from the local community who have been identified as having a heart to bring change; they spend some time being trained and volunteering before going back to the brick kiln communities where they are employed to establish and facilitate groups of women to come together to help and empower one another. They begin to save their meagre income and to lend to others what is needed. They begin to understand the power of education and seek to ensure that their children are getting to school. They share their emotional and mental burdens, learning together and supporting one another to seek changes firstly in their homes, then on their streets, and then in their wider community. But most importantly, many women are coming to know for the first time what it is to be in relationship with Jesus – not only are they experiencing a social empowerment but they are also becoming spiritually empowered. One trained facilitator said: “Many women who were far from God are now growing Christian faith day by day, and regularly pray with their families. They cannot read and write but they love to hear and
“One day Jesus spoke to me and told me he loved me.” Nepal is a beautiful country dominated by the Himalayas. But like so many developing countries, it is wonderful to visit but a challenging place in which to live. It has a population of 30 million with more than half of the population living below the poverty line of US$1.25 a day. Leprosy is a disease intrinsically linked with poverty and therefore it is of no surprise that around 3,500 new cases of leprosy are diagnosed in Nepal each year and the country hSorryu, as one of the world’s highest rates of leprosy-caused disability. Rup Lal comes from a Hindu family and was training to be a Hindu priest when he started to display outward signs of leprosy. When his family feared he had this much-stigmatised disease, they disowned him. He had to leave home and live on the streets. He went to his local government health post but they would not help him, nor did any other hospital he travelled to. Finally he caught a bus to Kathmandu. But because he had visible signs of leprosy in the form of a bad ulcer on his foot, he was told he could not travel inside the bus but must go up on the roof with the luggage. Eventually he made his way to Patan Hospital and they told him to come back when The Leprosy Mission was holding its clinic. He slept on the street until then. At the clinic he was diagnosed with leprosy and was given the cure. He was also taken to The Leprosy Mission’s Anandaban Hospital where he was nursed back to health and his ulcers treated. After the devastation of being cast out by his family for simply having a curable disease, it was quite baffling for Rup to read the sign at the entrance to Anandaban Hospital which states: “People affected by leprosy are the most important visitors in our premises. They are not dependent on us. We are dependent on them. Service to them is the purpose of our work. They are not outsiders to our service. They are part of it. We are not doing them favour by serving them. They are
South Asian Forum of the Evangelical Alliance giving us opportunity to do so”. At Anandaban Hospital Rup was treated with the upmost kindness and respect. Having experienced so much rejection as a result of having leprosy, this intrigued Rup and he asked a Christian doctor why people seemed to care about him. The doctor explained that Jesus loves everyone and that every person is valued. He explained that by serving some of the world’s most rejected people through his work, he was serving Jesus. Rup was soon discharged from Anandaban Hospital but on return visits for inpatient and outpatient care, he would ask people about Jesus and the Gospels. He said: “Then one day Jesus spoke to me and told me He loved me. I became a Christian. I then prayed that the Lord would show me what to do and He told me to share this good news.” The Lord enabled Rup to set up a church near to Anandaban Hospital which now has more than 100 members, including many people affected by leprosy. It meets in four locations. Rup now has a vision to plant churches in India and China. After experiencing the pain of rejection, Rup felt in his heart that God wanted him to provide a home for orphans, many of which are leprosy-affected children who had nowhere else to go after being abandoned by their families. Many of the staff at Anandaban Hospital support the church and orphanage and even serve as trustees. For more information visit www.leprosymission.org.uk
Filthy Rich
by Manoj Raithatha On the inside front page of Filthy Rich is a dedication from the author: “to my wife, Maria, whom I failed many times. I am so sorry that it took so long to appreciate the gift you are in my life”. Filthy Rich is Manoj Raithatha’s personal story of ruthless ambition, of risk-taking and restlessness. It is the story of one man’s belief that ‘money trumps morals, money equals power’ and his desire to become as rich and powerful as possible –whatever the cost. But it is also the story of what happens when everything falls apart – of new beginnings, re-evaluating priorities in life and emerging a better man as a result. Praised by Steve Clifford, General Director of the Evangelical Alliance, as “an amazingly encouraging account of a life turned around by a powerful encounter with Jesus”, it has just been published by Lion Hudson (paperback, £8.99). The book has been sensitively written so that it can be given to those of other faiths as well as people who have no faith. Manoj Raithatha was raised as a Hindu in Watford and in Kenya. Interested in business at a young age, he started selling alcohol and cigars at school, and soon realised the power of money to ‘buy’ school friends. ’Now that I had started”, he writes in Filthy Rich, ‘there was no going back’. He seemed to have achieved success when his debut play BBA
Become a member - saf.eauk.org
and Proud, written when he was a student, won an Edinburgh Fringe First prize and led to a contract for the BAFTA-winning, Emmy-nominated children’s TV series, My Life as a Popat. But Manoj wanted more. Money became a ‘real-life magnet’ in his life – a factor which intensified when, after working briefly as a teacher, a playwright and a furniture salesman, he became a buyer of new build properties. In his desire to become “filthy rich”, he started taking bigger risks, making higher profits, becoming more addicted to the heady buzz of the business world – and neglecting his wife and family as a result. At one point, he bought 220 apartments in Leeds in a deal worth over £30 million – believed to be the biggest single deal in the North that year - and was the focus of a major feature in the property section of the Daily Telegraph in 2005. Manoj soon had a substantial property portfolio stretching across the UK, including properties in Leeds, Manchester, Bradford, Sheffield and London. He owned his dream house, took luxury holidays with his family and enjoyed an enviable lifestyle. However, while Manoj was ’lost in an increasingly unreal world”, his wife Maria was desperately unhappy: “I felt each day I was losing my husband; the kind-hearted guy… who promised to always cherish me… I felt powerless to stop the growing chasm between us… Money is good – you need it to get by and to help others with less. However, it can also change people and families for the worse overnight. I felt like a stranger in my own home”. Manoj’s professional and personal world came tumbling around him in 2008 when the mortgage market collapsed and his 2 year old son Ishaan was hospitalised with breathing difficulties and nearly died. In desperation, Manoj prayed to God for the first time in over 20 years – “in recent years,” he writes, “I had made money and success my God. But at this point, all the money in the world would not make a blind bit of difference”. Deeply touched by the prayers and concern of a Christian couple from his daughter’s school while Ishaan was ill, Manoj and his wife Maria went to church with the couple after Ishaan’s recovery to thank them – and a few weeks later, Manoj gave his life to Christ. Maria’s Christian faith of her youth was reignited too, and they were both baptised in the same ceremony. The path ahead was not easy. Manoj suffered chest pains and anxiety attacks as he slowly worked through his business affairs and numerous negotiations and compromises to prevent losing everything. He had to learn how to relinquish control to God and to learn obedience and humility – which did not come naturally to this ambitious businessman, especially when he was turned down for ordination training. Manoj admits that he is still very much a ’work in progress” as a husband and as a Christian. But he is now passionate about using the world of business to shape the world for good and for God, as well as working to reach the Asian community with the Christian message. He is the National Coordinator of the South Asian Forum team at the Evangelical Alliance and has set up and runs Instant Apostle, a publishing company which specialises in releasing books quickly to allow Christian writers to comment on topical issues. Filthy Rich (9780 85721 590 1), paperback £8.99, is published by Lion Hudson and is available from high street bookstores, Christian bookshops, South Asian Concern, Kitab and online retailers. Rhoda Hardie
SAF profiles its work, partners and resources in the quarterly Newsletter and on our website saf.eauk.org
Discovering Jesus through Asian Eyes Training Event Saturday 30 May, 9:30am-1pm Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, Northampton Discovering Jesus through Asian Eyes is an 8 week course launched in May 2014 in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia. The course is unique because it is the only resource of its kind, exploring key questions that the main religions of South and East Asia have about Jesus. The course materials include an outreach booklet answering 16 common questions Asians have about Jesus and the Christian faith, which can be given away to Asian seekers and used to invite people to a course, a leader’s guide for those leading the course and a discussion guide for course participants. This training event, sponsored by The Leprosy Mission and run by South Asian Concern, will provide participants with an overview of the course and practical advice on how to use it effectively. Participants will also be given tips on building relationships with Asian communities and shown how the course can be used to reach Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Buddhists in a culturally sensitive way. Leaders who have already run a Discovering Jesus through Asian Eyes course will also be sharing their experiences. You can find out more about the Discovering Jesus through Asian Eyes course at www.discovering-jesus.com Donations of £10 on the day will help cover costs. To book your place go please visit: https://djtaetrainingnorthampton2015.eventbrite.co.uk
Training Event Saturday 30 May Northampton
Prayer Fellowship for South Asia Spring Prayer Day Saturday, 14th March, 2015 11am - 4pm The Good Shepherd Mission Bethnal Green, London The Prayer Fellowship for South Asia is a fellowship of those committed to pray for the peoples of South Asia and the Tibetan Buddhist world. It was established in the 1950’s from an alliance of several prayer groups. Many of our members have spent years working in these areas, and others have joined out of a desire to reach and support these people groups through prayer. We aim to pray, to encourage and to facilitate prayer, for the nations and peoples of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan & Sri Lanka; British Asians, recent immigrants, Asian students studying in the UK and Tibetan Buddhists, wherever they are. We welcome prayer partners of all ages and from all walks of life to join us in membership. No special knowledge or experience is necessary. The annual subscription is £7 (students £5) or life membership £85 The annual prayer conference is a weekend to get together and share prayer requests and to pray together. Members and their invited guests are encouraged to stay for the whole weekend, but, for those who are unable, day visitors are made welcome and are fully included. Regional Prayer Days are usually held in the spring. These too are for fellowship and prayer. Here and at the conference, members are invited, by arrangement, to bring brief presentations, so that we can be better informed for prayer. The next one is on March 14th at Good Shepherd Mission, 17 Three Colts Lane, Bethnal Green, London E2 6JL All are welcome without charge and booking is not required. We look forward to seeing you!
This training event, sponsored by The Leprosy Mission and run by South Asian Concern, will provide participants with an overview of the course and practical advice on how to use it effectively.
For more info or to book your place:
djtaetrainingnorthampton2015.eventbrite.co.uk
Have the wheels come off your website? Give us a shout at:
webbuilder.eauk.org