Developments in Andhra Pradesh, India

[p.intro]The seminar was entitled ‘Called to Service’ and outlined God’s call to salvation, and into the community of the churches of God. The teaching about churches of God forming the house of God gripped one man.[/p]

Today there are six church companies in his neighbourhood. At one meeting where he gathered believers to hear the foreign missionaries call them to ‘The way of God’ (Acts 18:26; see Acts 9:2; Acts 19:9 etc), one Christian brother said:

• “I have discovered about living stones being built up to form a spiritual house. I want to be part of that. The house of God is liable to judgement and must be a separate entity from the Church the Body of Christ.”

That brother travelled the seventeen kilometres to the church to which he was added for some years, but had an earnest desire for souls; and it was not long before he had gathered 40 or so from his village. This community was formed from two castes and it was delightful to see the two combine in loving expression of being one in Christ. Their hearts, however, were set on the earthly unity of local churches joined together having the same pattern, and they pleaded for the planting of a church of God in their village. They met for a while in a small mud hut until a more substantial building was erected.

17 km in another direction was a retired schoolmaster, who had won the prestigious and much coveted ‘Best Teacher of the Year Award’, receiving his presentation from the President of India himself. During discussions about this ‘new’ teaching spreading in the Godavri Delta the schoolmaster had received a copy of the booklet ‘Ye that are Christ’s’, with its winsome outline of the doctrines of ‘the faith once for all delivered to the saints’. As he read the material, realisation dawned on him that he had received a copy of the same booklet 20 years previously and had been teaching its contents to his congregation for those many years. Now he could be part of the wider Fellowship