Norfolk pair in Big Life mission to India
Norwich-based Eastern Daily Press journalist Steve Downes (pictured on left) and lawyer Ian Dyble (on the right), both members of Cromer Parish Church, have just returned from two weeks in India with the Christian Big Life Ministries. Steve reports on a faith-stretching fortnight...
Christian life can be pretty demoralising at times in England. Maintaining current church attendance levels is like making water flow uphill: recruiting new believers sometimes seems beyond our wildest dreams.
If 43 people signed commitments cards after watching a Jesus film or 14 people were baptised together in a lake, we would be heralding revival and being hired by churches to host conferences.
 But in the villages around Kolkata in north-east India, and in Pakistan and Nepal, these are everyday events for those working with Big Life Ministries.
My link with Big Life goes back to July 2007, when I was part of a Baptist Missionary Society summer mission team in Kolkata. I spent the best part of the fortnight working with Good News Children's Education Mission, delivering basic English and maths lessons to street children from this sprawling city.
It was a fulfilling and humbling time. But one afternoon with Big Life really touched my heart. The Big Life South Asia director Benjamin Francis took the 10 of us to a Hindu village called Bamungachi, where nobody had ever heard the gospel.
 We presented the good news through sketches, testimony and a message and saw 45 people give their lives to Jesus. The location and the response made us feel as though we had been taken in a time machine back to the New Testament, when Jesus sent out the apostles and Paul and Silas went from place to place proclaiming the good news.
When I returned to England, I couldn't put the experience behind me. So I recruited a friend, Ian Dyble, and headed back to Kolkata for two weeks with Big Life in January.
During a whirlwind two weeks, we visited 13 villages that had been untouched by the gospel.
At each location we did simple Bible stories like the lost sheep and the lost son, shared testimonies and took part in games with the villagers. Local church planters and co-ordinators shared the gospel more directly, and everywhere we went we saw dozens of people commit their lives to Jesus.
 The organisation has seen more than 600 churches planted in four years. The way the local people are being discipled and followed up means that number is likely to at least double and probably treble by the end of 2008.
The principles are simple, but hugely effective. The Big Life workers are simply being true to the instructions of Jesus. And the harvest of souls is extraordinary.
We took part in kids games in one village, where the Jesus film was then shown, projected from an ancient projector onto a bed sheet strung between two trees. Despite the crackly transmission and numerous distractions, 43 people signed commitment cards and will be meticulously followed up by their own people.
We also saw a mass baptism in another village. Each of those going through the waters faces the possibility of ostracism from their communities and families for their decision to follow Christ.
 Another string to the Big Life bow is medical camps. We saw two in Muslim villages, which allow entry to potentially more hostile territory. In one of the Muslim villages, I shared my testimony of God healing my unborn son of cystic fibrosis.
If I'd thought about it in advance, I would've run a mile. But the story was well received, and we were blown away by the sight of Muslim men, women and children praying to receive Christ, and accepting tracts and Bibles.
Everywhere we went, there was a hunger for the gospel. The good news was received as just that.
The contrast with Britain was stark. Here, we have so much and think we need so little. But in north-east India, life is not cluttered by so much money and belongings. The power of God is readily believed and acted upon.
It may be hard to believe in secular Britain, but when Jesus said "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it", he was speaking an eternal truth.
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