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Overseas Ministry Projects Open Door Church Project
India is a vast land that has been on the hearts and minds of missionaries throughout the centuries, from St Thomas (thought to have been one of the first missionaries to India), to Amy Carmichael, William Carey, Henry Martyn and the hundreds of missionaries currently serving in the country. It is a land associated with extreme poverty, industrialisation, pollution, Hindu temples, religious fighting and Christian persecution... it is a land on God’s heart.
LMI’s partnership with Dr Stephen Devakumar, founder of Open Door Church, India, first began when he co-ordinated an Overseas Ministry Programme for LMI in November 1999. Since then subsequent trips to India were undertaken resulting in many Christians being challenged to play their part in mission and hundreds of pastors and church leaders being further equipped for Christian ministry through LMI’s leadership seminars.
LMI’s partnership with the Open Door Church has been both spiritual and practical. Through the generosity of the mission’s supporters, LMI helped Dr Stephen provide much needed relief to some of the Indian disaster victims of the tsunami that hit South East Asia in December 2004, as well as supplying funds to assist with the rebuilding of a church that had been destroyed. In more recent years, LMI launched the Home for the Boys Project, which aimed to help ten boys who had been rescued from the streets by Pastor Job, one of the Open Door Church pastors. Thanks to the support of God’s people LMI raised £10,000 for this project and subsequently a permanent building was erected for the boys to live in, giving them much needed space. The boys are living in a secure Christian environment and are benefiting from being under the loving care of Pastor Job and his wife Aksal.
As a mission we want to continue to partner with the Open Door Church in India. Our goal is to support it in the following ways:
Dr Stephen has been responsible for the planting of over fifty churches in India, and LMI would like to assist his church-planting ministry by providing funds to help erect church buildings and provide motorcycles for some of the needy pastors.
There are almost four hundred million children in India, thirteen million of which are homeless and two million are orphans living on the streets (statistics taken from Operation World.). The Open Door Church has been ministering to street children over many years through evangelism and their ‘feeding the street children’ programmes. Operation World states that of the young people in India there are, ‘100 million school drop-outs, 50% living below the poverty line, [and] 24% malnourished.’ What an enormous task the Christian Church in India faces as it seeks to demonstrate the love of Christ in a practical way to the outcasts, the poor and the needy. As a mission we want to help the Open Door Church further develop their ministry to India’s street children by providing funds to support this vital aspect of their outreach work.
Ten boys became twenty as another ten very needy children were welcomed into this Open Door Church Children’s Home. Please, pray for Pastor Job and his wife Aksal as they seek to provide for the boys’ physical, spiritual and emotional needs. LMI would like to continue to assist these boys in a practical way by helping to provide them with a new set of clothes and/or school uniforms.
If you would like to support LMI’s partnership with the Open Door Church by contributing to this project, click here - Thank you!
