By Mathew Victor
February 27, 2009 | 01:53:36

THE last time we met P G Vargis, Indian Evangelical Team (IET), an organization he founded and nurtured, had 1,750 workers and over 2,250 pioneer churches. That was in 2005. Today, IET has over 2,300 evangelists and 4,000 churches all over India. Bro. Vargis handed over the charge of his ministry to Joy Thomas and is now the mentor of the evangelical team. The Christian Messenger spoke to Vargis recently. The senior evangelist, who has authored over 40 books and produced some quality Christian movies, shared the secret of success in his ministry. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:

 

 

Tell us how you started the Indian Evangelical Team?

 

I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior in Oct, 1971. Thirteen months later, I stepped into full time ministry. That was on Nov.6, 1972. In the Christmas of 1971 I was sitting on a mountain of the Himalayas. I was working in the Army then and was posted in Kashmir. My wife was beside me and we were looking at the blue mountain ranges and praying. Then along the mountains I saw lights burning. It was evening and people who had come home after a hard day’s labor were cooking their supper. You don’t get to see them in the mornings but when it’s evening when they prepare food you can sight the cooking fire. I started counting them: One, two, 50, 60, 70. That’s when the Lord spoke to me. ‘You are going to celebrate Christmas next week but what about those people who have never heard of something called Christmas?’ I started to cry. Later, I thought about it. I realized that we had failed to take the Gospel message all over the country. There were hundreds of thousands of people who have never heard about Jesus.

 

I spoke to my wife about it and she started to cry too. Later, we dedicated ourselves to be fulltime preachers. ‘Reach the unreached at any cost’ – that was our motto. We quit our jobs (my wife was a trained teacher) and went to Kashmir as a pioneer missionary couple. We called our ministry ‘Katra Evangelical Mission’. Katra is the name of a place in Kashmir. Three years later, a few brothers joined us. So, I changed the name to ‘Kashmir Evangelical Team’. I did not want to have a mission organization, I wanted to have a family of believers and workers. Slowly, our work expanded to Punjab and other states and then we decided to call our organization as ‘Indian Evangelical team.’

 

How many full time workers do you have in IET?

 

We have 2,300 men and women. We count the women also as missionaries, that is if they are not working elsewhere. Out of this,1300 are men the rest are women. They are spread in all over north India. We have no desire to come to south India. We may come some time later, but we have no desire to do that now.

 

Why do you say that?

 

You see there are so many missions here. They are all fighting each other. They are competing with each other. They can do their job very well. Why should we come down and compete with them? Our motto is to plant a church where there is no church. Of course, I know there are many places in northern Kerala and northern Tamil Nadu where there are no churches. But we have no desire to come down to the south.

 

Do you have any ministries outside the country?

 

We have them in Nepal and Bhutan. Other than these, we have no desire to start ministry in any foreign countries.

 

How is your work in Orissa?

 

It’s very good. Our best ministry is in Orissa. In Kandhamal district, where a lot of Christians are persecuted, we have 13 fulltime ministers and 500 Christian homes were affected. They are now living in tents. Persecution hasn’t taken away people’s faith in Jesus Christ. One pastor professed he’d become a Hindu again because of persecution. There were only 5 Christians in the whole of the village. However, he says he is still a believer. He embraced Hinduism under pressure. Other than this incident, all the others are standing very strong in the Lord. We have lost 7,000 youth to Maoism, the Naxal movement; and 40,000 people were affected in the violence. They are living in tents. As many as 4,000 young men have joined the Naxalites because they have nothing to do and they are all angry.

 

Our leader Joy Thomas, who felt bad about this, called the people together and told them: ‘Those who have gone are gone. At least we have the rest of them.’ He organized a challenging 3-day seminar. As a result of the seminar, 120 youths dedicated their lives to Jesus and became fulltime missionaries. These 120 youths are being trained by Joy Thomas in a village in Andhra Pradesh. I cannot disclose the name of the village because I don’t want to expose them. We provide accommodation to them and train them for two months. Thereafter, we’ll send them back to their own people to be witnesses unto them.

 

What is a Christian supposed to do in these times of persecution?

 

We must be prepared because the Bible says this the end time. Many people think that at the end time there will be a revival. My Bible does not teach that. It says when the Son of man comes it will be very difficult to find faith on earth. So the number of believers must go down. But that will make the church very strong. At the same time, the Bible says that the whole world must hear the gospel. So those who are remaining they will evangelize everywhere. We must be prepared. We must teach our believers to be strong, not to give up their faith. We must pray and at the same time we must not forget to evangelize. This persecution will lead to evangelism. There will be a worldwide persecution before the second coming of the Lord.

 

Sometime ago, you designated Joy Thomas as the president of IET. What qualities did you find in him that worked in his favor?

 

Right from the time my work was progressing all over north India, I had this desire to hand over the ministry to someone whom God will show me. I have been asking God, ‘Lord who is this person going to be?’ And everybody, my supporters and co-workers included, suggested that I select my son. He is a good leader and will do well as my successor. But I did not feel it in my spirit, I did not see any such instance in the Bible.

 

In the Bible, the kingdom went from the father to the son but not the ministry. The first one to do the ministry was Moses. His ministry did not go to his son. It went to Joshua. Elijah, Peter, Paul you name anybody it did not go to the second generation. I am not saying it should not be so. Perhaps, sometime God may show a Timothy to be the successor. In my case, however, God did not point at my son to be my successor. Likewise, my eldest son Aby Kallimel Vargis also did not feel it in his spirit. So, I kept asking God to show me the person to whom I can hand over the ministry when I turned 60.

 

What was it about being 60?

 

Nothing. I just felt in the spirit that when I am 60 I must hand over it to someone. I was preparing another person for the work but it did not work out well. I believed that it was God’s decision. Then I had to prepare four others. They did not know why I was taking them along with me and sending them to foreign countries. I took them everywhere I went, to Orissa, Kerala everywhere. They thought I was just giving them opportunities but my intention was to see who was going to be the man with holy hands. I believe in faith and holiness. Just like I stand on my two legs, I stand on faith and holiness.

Many faithful people don’t have holiness. They slip up somewhere, perhaps in the area of handling finances. When I started the ministry I had a fairly good amount of money that I got from 11 years of service in the Army. I also had some land in Kerala that my father gave me. I earned and had money in the bank. But I gave away everything. I started the ministry with only 42 rupees in my pocket. When I landed at the mission field, I rented a room for 40 rupees and purchased one litre of milk for two rupees. And there was nothing left. Then, I made a covenant with God that I will not ask anybody for my personal needs. I send out newsletters for my ministry but I never use them for my personal needs. Even if someone comes and asks me if I need something, I don’t list my needs to them simply because I don’t such practice mentioned anywhere in the Bible. Talking about the needs of the ministry is fine. Moses, David and Paul talked about their ministry needs but never about their personal needs. I wanted such a person who will have a holy life, be faithful in finances, women and power. So out of the four I started preparing for the task, I found Joy Thomas to be the right man.

In 1983 I told my leaders that I was going to select the next successor. I told them that I would nominate him. My leaders said he must be elected. I told them it may backfire. It’s possible that people may elect a wrong guy. Election of Christian leaders is not biblical. But that’s the best system we can apply now. However, that’s not biblical. So I said that the best way is for me to appoint him. The leaders agreed. Hence, I appointed him as the president designator. He worked as a president designator for a year, then I gave my leaders the privilege to elect him or reject him. They elected him. He is doing very well. And I am happy that they selected him. And he has proved that he can manage on his own.

At this point, I have to tell you that it is big mission. With 2,300 missionaries, we are the largest church-planting mission in India. Our pastors come from all over India. They speak Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Oriya, Malayalam. We don’t have many Malayalees, maybe 100 or so, But there are several of them from Kashmir, Punjab etc. and yet we have never had a fight or a split. People left our organization but there was no split. If somebody left us, he left alone he did not take a group of people along with him. We never had such things because of the family fellowship we have and Joy Thomas is doing very well. Now, I know that it was God who prompted me to select him. | Await the 2nd part of this interview | 

External links: Indian Evangelical Team's website | P G Vargis' website |

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