Written by Bishop Augustine Joseph Monday, 26 October 2009 23:52
Disciple Union International Ministries Pakistan
Disciple Union has a strong network in twenty main cities and a big alliance of 655 registered
Pastors, Evangelists and home based churches working under Disciple Union.
1. Du Holds Crusades throughout the country
(Please note: You can find many amazing photos of the crusades that have been held by DU right here
2, DU Started Prayer Groups and Bible Study Groups
For the youth, women, men and children in the villages where no pastor reaches and Christians are living in tiny minority. These prayer groups lay the Christian foundation of the people who are not educated and they are taught how to speak to God, how to respond to the people of other faiths and the search of truth. At present over twenty prayer groups have been formed and they meet every Monday. (Fellowship day)
3. DU Has Formed Bible Groups for Bible Studying
Living in the Muslim society, they get few chances to understand Bible. As we work in the illiterate people, we have to dramatize the parables of New Testament and Old Testament and tell them what is written in the Bible. These Bible Study Groups meets every second day in the evening. God has shown miracles in the Bible Study Circles. Many of them changed and accepted God in their lives. And thousands of free Bible distributing to Christians and non-Christians to know about Jesus Christ.
4. DU Responds to the Emergency Needs of the Christian People
Believers living in the villages and the urban slums. So far DU reached and helped the Christian in distress and disaster. We helped the affecters of attacks on the churches and Christian institutions after the September 11, 2001 incidents. In many villages the Christian women and sexually harassed and mistreated.
5. DU Approached and Helped the Christian Women, and Followed their Case Up in Court
The most significant cases where DU helped the Christians were the home relocation of 10 families, construction of small churches for their prayer and rehabilitation of the fifty-three families who suffered because the canal water proved disastrous for them.
6. DU Health Care Services
Being a poor country, Pakistan is not able to provide health facilities to all the people in the country but the Christians are most vulnerable because the religious prejudice is practiced even at this level. The women especially face the hard time at the time of pregnancy; they have to travel by tractor/trolley or donkey cart to reach the maternity home. DU has started a health unit for the poor people where the medicines are provided free of charge and specialist Volunteer doctors and Nurses provide there services regularly. DU also organizes the mobile medical camps to provide the services to the people in the remote areas.
7. DU Sunday School Education
Sunday School education is perhaps the most important component, which needs DU attention. We have started three Hundred Sunday schools for the working Christian children. In these schools we teach them Christian values and ways of life as they do not have chance to explore God in them in their daily lives. In the government and other schools they have to read Islamic education but in our schools we teach them Christian education also. At present total 1500 children are studying in Sunday schools.
8. DU Supports Pastors/Evangelests
Every day, hundreds of native pastors and evangelists boldly proclaim the Gospel in the different parts of the country. They are often in great personal danger and serve knowing they may be beaten tortured, or even killed for their work DISCIPLE UNION works with these persecuted Pastors by providing monthly financial support, Pastoral training, Bibles, and bicycles for them, .in this country; there is no social standing in being a pastor. They serve God with great dedication, often in the face of great danger with amazing results
Disciple Union's Supported Pastors
70 percent of the Pakistan's unreached peoples live in the villages and backward areas, most of them live with little or no chance of ever hearing the Gospel.
Less than 5 percent of missions' resources from the West and USA are being sent to help share the Gospel in this country. That is one reason why DU is strongly committed to supporting pastors/evangelists in persecuted areas.
Effectiveness
Today, over 85 percent of Asian countries do not allow western missionaries to come and freely preach the Gospel and plant churches. In the eyes of the people, Western missionaries represent a foreign country or a strange religion. Native Pastors already know the language and can easily learn a local dialect. They can run circles around Western missionaries. They know how to avoid arrest and they know how to speak to their people.
Did you know that in Pakistan, a group of just 10 of our pastors saw over 1,000 people come to Christ in just a year? We're not talking about people who said yes to Jesus and then were never seen again. We are talking about 1,000 new believers who became baptized and who attend Church regularly.
Bishop Augustine Joseph
Please consider praying for, and supporting this work of the Lord in Pakistan.
Bishop Joseph can be contacted through this web site.
Sincerely,
