i brought the video camera with me and have recorded several interviews with people. i’m not sure what i’ll be doing with them yet – i’ll see how they turn out when i look at them back in england. i interviewed ganesh today who told me two wonderful stories today in a workshop i was doing on emerging church. i haven’t got the details of place names until i look at the video again. but i hope to liase with him to make sure i get them right and then will suggest them as stories for www.emergingchurch.info

what i particularly liked about ganesh was that he was from a hindu family. none of the rest of his family are christians so he has not grown up in the culture of the mainline churches. he seemed to have a much greater clarity about how the church wearing western clothes makes it very difficult for a lot of indians to even consider christ. he is a missionary and has worked in tribal areas. he said that there  are about 35000 indian missionaries working in india. he shared a dream of his to open a temple where the symbols and ceremonies were like that of a hindu temple but without the idols. prayer would be done with the ringing of a bell and so on. i thought this was a great idea and hope he does it some day – he seems to have a vision of a new movement of this kind of indigenous expression of indian christianity that will culturally appeal to hindus. the two stories are incredibly sketchy for now…

the first story was of a cell church. the founder of this is opposed to church buildings – he sees them as expensive, alienating, and restrictive. all the cell leaders are tent makers – i.e. they have jobs and lead cell as volunteers. they don’t even employ an administrator. ganesh said that he had been going to get involved but was told that they didn’t want any missionaries. the cell sit on the floor, use local music and songs – and get involved in witnessing and inviting others. they are easily replicable and multiply. this cell church now has about 10000 cells…

the second is near hyderabad. again this is an initiative by someone who feels that the expression of christianity in many churches is too culturally alien for many indians particularly muslims and hindus. so he has developed an outdoor garden type of venue that is known as christian but hindus and muslims come and pray to the one god. there is prayer for healing and many prayers have been answered. this has quickly grown and is now 20000 people.

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