Discipling A Whole Nation

Stephen Steele discusses the nation's call to prayer, revival, and revival in India.

The "Ripeness Factor"

For America, Sept 11 was a galvanizing day with people asking, "How did this happen?" Churches filled up. This is a hard question to answer without a spiritual dynamic. People are in a search mode, and a spiritual answer is the only answer. People were faced with a dilemma. Evil no longer is something that occurs out there; it now has happened on our own soil.

People now asking, "Do I feel safe? What does this mean?" At this time in history we are no longer dealing with the status quo. The battle of good and evil is raging. When God's kingdom comes it will displace this satanic kingdom in which the enemy works with fear and doubt. In that context we can't answer without God. Just after the attack the Church responded with compassion for the victims.

What other attributes of God's character must we show to the world to draw them to Christ -- His love, His sacrifice? Stephen says this is a huge opportunity for the Church, and many can be saved if we took advantage of this opportunity. There is a "Ripeness factor" working here -- the fields are ripe to harvest.

One example of the church responding to this crisis: Saddleback Community Church has seen 3,000 new people come into their church since the World Trade Center attack. Regular services went from 20,000 people before Sept 11 to 31,000 right after, and they turned away 5,000 people. Cars were lined up for four miles. Considering the tremendous spiritual hunger the Church must rightly respond.

Reaching The Dalits

Stephen has been involved in ministry to India since the early 1990s, and says that historically, the church has been her own worst enemy there - she has not been united. She is now coming together. In terms of reaching the masses, the church in India is at a phenomenal crossroads right now.

In Indian society the Dalits (da-LEETS) - also known as "the untouchables," number 300 million strong and are making a momentous political decision. Being on the lowest rung in India's social caste system, they have banded together and 15 key leaders have gone to the government asking to be released from the Hindu religion. They say they have not benefited from it as a people in their national condition.

After considering other dates, they have chosen November 4, 2001 as the day when they officially choose a national religion to join. Once the decision is made the Dalits will choose in various ways what religion is best for them, a peculiarity of the Indian decision-making. The Body of Christ should be praying and be ready to move into this void. Sadly, the Church was not ready 50 years ago.

Fifty years ago upon India's independence Dr. Ambedker, a Dalit leader and a co-sponsor of the India constitution went to Christian leaders offering to bring his people to the Church. Amazingly, the Christian leaders said no to the offer. There were other considerations, such as the caste and persecution.

"The Church had a chance and missed it," Stephen says. Since that time many Dalits have risen to influence in the government there are 4 to 5 million in government jobs and they are organized. They went to the government to say they wanted to leave Hinduism because there was no hope for them there, and threatened to strike when the government resisted. The first official conversion ceremonies will be to Buddhism, although "there is not a lot of Buddhism infrastructure," Stephen says.

They recently went back to some Christian leaders again and there was a mixed reaction. When several other Christian leaders heard of this second approach, they stepped in, went to the Dalit leaders and said they wanted them to come into the Church.

They said, "Let them come into the church and we could disciple them there." Don't turn them away because it seems more logical to disciple them the first time rather than trying to reach them later. The Dalit leaders have said they will give their people the free choice of their religion. Stephen's organization and others will work diligently with the indigenous church to help reach whole Dalit communities with the Gospel.

Dawn Ministries' purpose to see saturation church planting become the generally accepted and fervently practiced strategy for completing the task of making disciples of all people.