1. 
2. Ghuna Kumar
3. Ministries

Native Evangelists and Bible Women

Gospel Friends oversees 320 native evangelists and Bible women who travel throughout the villages of India proclaiming the gospel.

Choose a Native Evangelist to Sponsor Now!

Gospel Friends oversees 320 native evangelists and Bible women. (In some circles of Christian work in India, “Bible women” is a term used to refer to women who teach, preach and disciple in the Body of Christ.) These servants of the Gospel travel through the villages of India by bicycle or motor scooter, if they have been so blessed, or if they have not, on foot and public buses.

Planting Churches

It is the policy of Gospel Friends to work only in villages where there is no Church, that is, no body of worshiping believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. So as the Gospel Friends evangelists travel throughout India, they enter “unchurched” villages talking to people, handing out tracts, praying and seeking out those who are open to hear the Gospel presented.

 The work has been fruitful. In the 16 years of Gospel Friends’ existence, new congregations have been established in over 700 villages spread across 6 Indian states. Gospel Friends has built buildings in which 70 of those congregations can worship. The other congregations meet under trees or wherever they can find a place. Small church buildings are needed to allow people to worship and gather indoors. If you would like to provide a small building for a needy congregation, you can make a donation online.

New Believers

Gospel Friends is moving the Good News of Jesus Christ forward in India. In the 16 years of its existence, Ghuna and the evangelists and pastors he oversees have baptized over 20,000 new believers. And every year hundreds more are baptized as the Gospel Friends evangelists continue to press forward into places where people have never before heard the Name of Jesus.

An Unreached People

Even though Gospel Friends has seen much fruit from their work since 1992, the size of the unreached harvest field in India remains astounding. In fact Operation World says that in India there are more and larger people groups with no Christians, churches or workers than in any other part of the world. Officially, only about 2.5% of the population is classified as Christian; however, it is generally thought that there are additional believers who do not register themselves as Christian due to fear of persecution.

Some statistics will give you an appreciation of the vastness of the task of taking the Gospel to India’s villages. According to the 2001 India Census, India has 593,731 villages, that is, settlements of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. Overall about 72% of India’s 1.2 billion people live in villages or other rural settings. With so few Christians overall, one has to assume that a huge proportion of these villages have no worshiping community at all. Add to this the complexity of functioning in a land where there is no common language and the continuing possibility of persecution from Hindu extremists, and you can appreciate that the Gospel Friends evangelists face a myriad of obstacles as they do their work for the Gospel. Yet they persevere, holding “unswervingly to the faith they profess, for He who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23)

Partner with Us

If you would like to share in the work of spreading the Gospel to those who have never heard the Name of Jesus, you can sponsor a Gospel Friends evangelist for $50 per month. Or if you prefer a one-time gift, you can provide transportation for one of these evangelists by purchasing a bicycle for $80 or a moped for $800. What an amazing privilege to be a direct and crucial part of taking the Gospel to unreached people!

UPDATES FROM THE FIELD