Years of
God’s
Faithfulness
David E. Dick
Vice President at Large
For its first 25 years, the OMS-established Evangelical
Church of India (ECI) planted only one church per
year. Today, that rate has increased dramatically to
the miraculous number of 4.5 churches planted
weekly! In addition, ECI’s own mission effort,
the Indian Missionary Movement, supports more than 900 indigenous workers
serving among the unreached people groups
of India.
To celebrate six decades of God’s faithfulness and amazing growth in their ministry, ECI
held a Diamond Jubilee Celebration in June
2016. During the celebration, nearly 5,000
leaders were trained in evangelism, discipleship, and church planting, integrated into an
intense two-day workshop.
Grass-root evangelists were assembled and organized into four major language
groups. Each group met under its own quadrant of a massive five-acre pavilion. The
hundreds of small groups within those language groups then sat in circled chairs with
a leader giving guidance, training, and evaluation.
About 12,000 people gathered on the closing night for prayer and worship, during which Rev. Dr. Ezra M. Sargunam stepped aside willingly and selflessly after
serving as Bishop-President of the church for 44 years. (Read a tribute to Bishop
Sargunam on pages 8-9.) ECI then installed Rev. Dr. Sundar Singh as the new Bishop-President to lead the denomination forward.
The ECI’s 2056 centennial goal, under Dr. Singh’s five-fold strategy for the multiplication of churches, is to establish 100,000 churches with 10 million members. If OMS
is to give at least one billion people the opportunity to hear, understand, and believe
the Good News of Jesus Christ over the next 10 years, ECI must be a major part of this
effort. Our prayer is that this Diamond Jubilee Celebration and training will be another
exponential growth turning point in the corporate life of a denomination that already
has over 17,000 local congregations and more than 500,000 members nationwide.
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