Story number 1 for 3 Aug 2001

India — We begin today in India where the persecution of Christians has changed the strategy in reaching the lost for Christ. G-V Mathia is president of India Evangelical Mission. He says open-air evangelistic meetings aren’t as common in India any more. “We have a lot of restrictions in many places. But, still we are doing it. We are doing house to house meetings. We contact certain homes and we have a Bible study there and invite all the local people there. Many people are drawn to the Lord from the Hindu background.” Mathai believes the anti-Christian sentiment has also had an impact on their Bible correspondence program. “The people are warned that they should not take this Christian literature. We used to do about 20,000 people a year. The evangelists are afraid to go out into the public and distribute the literature. It is decreased quite a bit. 7,000 to 8,000 now.”