Article on Probationers Program

Begin Your Ministry:   Plant a Church

In 2000-01, twenty-one young men graduated from seminary in our partner church in India , the India Evangelical Lutheran Church .   The usual practice has been that they serve a 3-year probationary period in a local congregation before being approved for ordination.   However, the Concordia Seminary faculty, Nagercoil , India , decided to give these newly trained, future pastors a new challenge:   start your own congregation.

Only 2.6% of India is Christian.   All over India are villages where no church has been planted.   The IELC is our oldest partner church with about 400 congregations and 50,000 members.   Most of these congregations have “preaching stations” in their nearby villages.   However, there are thousands of remote villages where congregation programs do not reach.  

The seminary faculty and the IELC leaders met and identified unreached villages.   The LCMS World Mission and the LCMS-related India Mission Society stepped forward to provide the stipends ($60/month).   The graduates were given the option to take up a regular probation assignment in an established congregation or to go off to some remote corner and start a new congregation.   Twenty of the twenty-one men eagerly and courageously accepted the opportunity to devote the first three years of their ministry to bringing the Gospel of salvation to new souls.

The young men have now completed their probation period.   God has richly blessed their venture of faith.   Instead of just one congregation, God has used them to start two to four congregations in most places, worshipping 20-100 newly baptized believers.  

Even more amazing is that most of this work is being carried out in a state that passed an anti-conversion bill last year!   These young evangelists moved boldly forward in the face of daily persecution by Hindu radicals and with the possibility of imprisonment by the government.   Converts come forward knowing that they and their children will lose the government benefits provided them if they remain as Hindus.   It is truly a work of God’s Spirit in the hearts and lives of these people.  

Two or three should soon have self-supporting pastorates.   All of these new pastors have had the supreme joy of church planting.   They will bring that zeal and skill into all their future ministry.   They will have the eyes and the heart of St. Paul for the rest of their life.

The pressing need now is to help these new congregations purchase sites so they can erect a church building.   All of the men report that more are ready to come for baptism if they have a church building in their village.   They want to be assured that the church will be with them when they take this huge, life-risking step of faith.   The faculty director of the program, Rev. Dr. D. Monikaraj, ( dmonikaraj@yahoo.com ) wrote in his 9-page report in November the IMS:

“The probationers go ahead with the work trusting the Lord.   But their work in the new fields due to oppositions from all corners could have gone to waste.   In the past we have had some bitter experiences.   Our workers worked very hard and started some house churches and the effort to buy a site for putting a building did not materialize.   One fine morning some other denominational people come and put a building and own the center.   Many congregations were lost in the past.”

Also in November, the General Treasurer of the IELC, Mr. S.L. Bright ( ielc_ngc@sancharnet.in ), was in the USA seeking to raise funds for these church sites.   The cost is from $2000-10,000, depending on how urbanized the center is.   If anyone is interested for more details, they can contact Rev. Monikaraj or Mr. Bright, or our LCMS Area Director for India , Rev. Dr. Herbert Hoefer ( hhoefer@cu-portland.edu ).   Funds should be sent either to LCMS World Mission or to the India Mission Society (Rev. Alvin Lange, President, Jefferson City , MO , ahlange@myexcel.com ).   For on-going updates on the mission work in India , one can subscribe to the IMS e-newsletter.

This summer a new set of seminary graduates will be entering the probationers-as-church planters program.   Some of the present set of church planters will be remaining with their congregations, seeking to build them up to self-supporting parishes.   Some new probationers will pick up where past probationers receive calls to older congregations.   The seminary faculty and IELC leaders are eager to choose new sites and send out new “workers into the fields ripe for harvest.”

As part of our LCMS “Ablaze” program, the church in India is eager to provide dedicated, self-sacrificing manpower.   They seek to reach one-fourth of the “Ablaze” goal of reaching 100 million souls by 2017.   If we all let God use us as fully as these young men in India , that goal will be far exceeded, by His grace.  

Submitted by Herbert Hoefer , Jan. 12, 2004

 Note: 

     This program has now been undertaken by "Jesus Is Lord" mission society.  See details at:  <jilmission.org>