Victor John and David Coles. Bhojpuri Breakthrough. WIGTake Resources, 2019.

Bhojpuri Breakthrough describes one of the most remarkable and enduring works of God in the last thirty years. This book mainly provides testimony of what the Lord has been doing in northeastern India, first among the Bhojpuri-speaking people. This people group lives mostly in two Indian states and numbers close to ninety million. In 1990 there were virtually no Christians among the Bhojpuri, now there are estimated to be about 25 million.

Mostly through testimony and Bible teaching, the authors tell how this happened. To sum it up simply, the Christians there began following the directions Jesus gave his disciples in Luke 10:1-17. There is no mission agency and little oversight. The person or persons enter a village and find a man or woman of peace (see Luke 10:6) to work with to determine the needs of the community.

The people begin serving specific needs of the place—often education, sometimes agriculture, crafts, small business, or something else. Normally, they may not even talk about God for six months or more. Usually within a year or two, with prayer and signs following (see Mark 16:20 KJV), the Lord has established a church and a community learning center.

The leaders raised up are all local. They might get together with fifty or more leaders from other places annually for teaching and encouragement. The new church is usually what in America we call a house church, rarely is there a building other than the learning center.

After a year or two, people from the new church go out to a new location, usually a village, where they have some connection and begin the process again. In some instances there have been over twenty “generations” of churches started. Many individual leaders have overseen the start of twenty new fellowships. Some have overseen two hundred.

The Lord has made remarkable changes in the cultural outlook here. Because the caste system is so ingrained into the Indian culture, Christian workers often focus on a single caste. No so here. While higher caste people were more likely to be literate, the learning centers have taught many more people to read—especially to read the Bible. Others listen to audio recordings.

There have been breakthroughs in other ways, too. The churches began to minister to railway children, what in the United States we would call runaways or street kids. There are medical clinics and ministries to orphans, to widows, and to trafficked children. They do not have legal permission to help trafficked people to escape, but they often work with those who have escaped as they require much healing.

Also with few alterations, they have begun similar works in urban areas and among other people groups like Muslims. (The Bhojpuris’ main city is Varanasi, a traditionally Hindu city where Buddhism got its start.) In the cities nowadays, for example, they consider English speakers a separate people group.

There are numerous testimonies in Bhojpuri Breakthrough and much wisdom. The leadership and organization is organic. There are no titles except for a few that are required for legal purposes. They prefer the term “executive director” if someone is buying land or representing a church in some capacity to the government.

While the current Hindu nationalist party governs, the churches have learned to deal with persecution. Readers in the West may find their response wise.

They also are very culturally sensitive. They sing songs using local language, instruments, and music styles. They dress according to local fashions and mores. No one would mistake them for Westerners. Even wedding celebrations are done in the traditional manner except for the prayers and blessings. To paraphrase Bruce Olson’s Bruchko, Jesus has become a Bhojpuri.

Those of us in the West may learn something from this, things like back to basics in Luke 10: what to do when you enter a place, finding the son of peace. “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons,” and primarily, “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8 NKJV)

The nameless, faceless workers in India have been giving freely for over twenty-five years. This has meant many others freely giving as well.