Kedo Peseyie
“My grandparents are coming over this weekend and I am excited and nervous. I have been praying for an opportunity to share the Gospel with my family members and I feel this would be the best opportunity. Please pray for my grandparents as I share the Gospel to them this weekend. I would love to tell my parents too about Jesus, but since they ostracised me from the family after I became a Christian, I have no contact with them”
This was the prayer request given by Vijay in a cell meeting on a Saturday evening in the fast developing city of Gurgaon, Haryana. When he first attended this cell meeting a year back he was not a Christian. But he came at the request of a friend and colleague from Nagaland. Then he came again to the next meeting and eventually he surrendered his life to Christ.
All the members gathered for the cell meeting are call-centre workers. Their leader is a young Naga working at the Call-centre. He strums the guitar and leads the songs, the prayers and discussions. They talk about the Bible, how they have been trying to apply its principles to their work the past week, the struggles they’ve had, the joy they’ve experienced, and also the frustration and the loneliness sometimes. They have all been working eight to nine hours a day and each has a special story to share as they come together on Saturday. That day they are specially praying for Vijay’s grandparents and also their bosses in their work places.
Vijay is not the only one who has experienced this transformation. There are others like him who have come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. “All we do is invite them to our cell meetings and God has been faithful” says the young Naga employed in the Call-centre. There is also that young girl from South India who is now a Christian and leading a prayer cell of her own. She has been a Christian for less than a year. Then there is that young Assamese girl working in the Airlines who also became a Christian after attending the fellowship.
As they conclude the cell meeting, the leader invites them to stay back for a simple dinner. One member’s mother is not well but wants to attend the church on Sunday. The other offers to give her ride to church on his bike. They are like a family ever eager to help each other in whatever way possible. Such an attitude is irresistible. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of such a caring and loving family!
I came back from the cell meeting wondering why it is so different back home in a “Christian” state. Some differences are obvious. There they work for eight to nine hours a day and don’t mind spending more time praying and discussing their faith once a week. Most of us here work less than 4 hours a day and is satiated with too much of community life. Here at home we think everyone is a Christian (including ourselves), and there they consider their work as a mission field. Each day is an opportunity to invite a fellow colleague to a cell meeting. They are the missionaries of the new era.
I realised that these young Naga professionals working in these setting are in a position to do much more than people in the “fulltime” mission field or ministry. It is an untapped powerful force we are yet to discover. With more and more Naga youth aspiring to be work in the airlines and call centres around the country we can definitely unleash a powerful missionary force. They will be our missionaries for this new paradigm of doing missions in this age of modernity and post-modernity, where a seminary graduate like me armed with Greek, Hebrew and the “simple” Gospel can become highly irrelevant and comical.
But many factors will lie with our churches. Can we give proper motivation, recognition and training? Can we see beyond our annual local church budget and our church year calendar? Can we see beyond our traditions, our tribes and our Nationalism?
Back in Gurgaon, the cell meeting ended with a simple dinner. They young Naga leading the cell said, “I would love to come back home. But I have decided to continue here for some time. Back in Nagaland no one would listen to me. But here people are coming to the Lord. I consider myself a missionary in my own small way. That is the reason I will continue here for some more time.”
