Idaho Falls - India Connections
According to Joshua Project statistics[1],
of the world’s 7,280 unreached people groups, 2,279 reside in India. The population of these 2,279 unreached groups
in India is currently 1.35 billion, 95% of the total population of India, 40%
of the population of all the world’s unreached groups, 17% of the world’s total
population.[1] An even higher
percentage, 50%, of all “Frontier People Groups,” those with virtually no
believers (<0.1% Christian adherents) and no known movements to Jesus, live
in India.[2]
So to believers who takes Jesus’ command
to make disciples of all nations seriously, India is an important mission field.
Idaho Falls has had numerous connections to missions in
India. In 1902, the Idaho Falls Presbyterian
Church supported a missionary in the Ludhiana Mission of India.[3]
In 1914, the Baptist Young People’s
Union (B.Y.P.U.) put on a program open to the public in which eight youth in
teams of two presented the needs of four areas of the world, one being India,
the others China, the Philippines and Africa.[4]
Judges at the event decided which group
presented the greatest needs and that area was then adopted by
the local B.Y.P.U. for involvement, “financial and otherwise.”
In 1938, Dr. M. D. Eubank, field representative of the
Northern Baptist convention, spoke at a three-day mission conference at the Idaho
Falls Baptist church, one night on missions in India, saying “In my opinion,
India is the greatest missionary field in the world today.”[5]
He reported that 18,000 persons per month were becoming Christians in India.
In 1953, Rev. Tracey Gipson, an Idaho native, spoke at First
Baptist Church in Idaho Falls about his missionary work in India, working among
the Karen people. He reported that he had seen over ten thousand conversions
and 350 churches planted.[6]
He also shared that, “The door for
Christian missions in India is open today – but who knows when it will be
closed.”
In 1955, the Idaho Falls Ministerial Association sponsored
missionary, evangelist, theologian, author and Christian statesman E. Stanley
Jones to come to Idaho Falls for a lecture series.[7]
At that time Dr. Jones had served as a missionary for 48 years, many of those
years in India.
About three decades earlier, Miss Hazel Wood of Kimberly,
Idaho spent five summers in the Ashrams in India of E. Stanley Jones and then
12 years in India as a missionary teacher, mostly in Calcutta.[8] She returned to Idaho in 1941 and was hired
by the Idaho Falls Ministerial Association to teach high school students
Biblical literature and Bible history for credit, the classes held at First
Lutheran Church. She also served as
music director at Trinity Methodist Church.
Rev. Ellis L. Scism, a missionary from Twin Falls to India,
spoke to a “full house” of the Idaho Falls United Pentecostal Church on a
Tuesday night in February, 1956 about his work.
“He told of the great yearning of the Indians to have for more information
about God. Many walk as much as 90 miles and at least one walked 200 miles one
way to attend a meeting, he said.”[9]
Phil White served with the Foreign Mission Board of the
Southern Baptist Convention as chief administrator for the Bangalore Baptist
Hospital for two years. Originally from
Alabama, he moved to Idaho Falls in 1982 after his time in India, taking a
position as administrator of the Idaho Falls Consolidated Hospitals.[10]
The focus of Alliance Covenant Church’s 1987 Family Camp was
missions to India.[11]
Rev. Thompson Smith, a native of Bangalore and founder of Evangelistic
Companions of India, first visited Idaho Falls in 1992 at the invitation of Mrs.
Georgia Dixon, who met him at a Billy Graham evangelism training conference in
Portland. The following year he spoke at the mission conference of Christ
Community Church. His most recent visit
to Idaho Falls was in November, 2023. In
those intervening 31 years, his efforts resulted in a network of 248
churches, each having from 60 to several hundred converts, a children’s home, a
tailoring institute that provides skills to widows, a home for the elderly, an
English high school and a television ministry.
Probably the most direct involvement in the evangelization
of India by a church in Idaho Falls was in the 1980’s when teams from the Idaho
Falls Christian Center made several trips there, in conjunction with the
ministry of Rev. V. A. Thampy.[12]
Rev. Thampy, president of Christ for
India, first visited Idaho Falls in late 1974 at the invitation of Cliff and
Helen Beard, an Australian couple who were the original pastors of The
Christian Center. His next visit was
three years later.[13]
In early 1980, Rev. Tim Marsh and a team of six others[14]
from The Christian Center spent three weeks in India, preaching the gospel in
large meetings. [15] Local papers reported that crowds of 40,000 to
50,000 came nightly to hear the gospel in open stadiums.[14] The Idaho Falls team that year joined with a team from
Australia led by Cliff and Helen Beard.[16]
Rev. Thampy spent several weeks in Idaho Falls in late 1980 speaking
at meetings of The Christian Center and other churches in southeastern Idaho,
sharing about his work and telling about the tremendous need in India.[17] By then Christ for India included 30 churches
with a total membership of over 2,000 and a Bible school training program.
Pastor Tim Marsh and others[18]
returned to India in January 1981, to conduct evangelistic crusades in Trivandrum,
Cochin, Changanacherry and New Delhi, India and youth crusades in Colombo and
Kandy, Sri Lanka.[19] Again they saw thousands come out to hear the
gospel, and also reported that, “We experienced a hunger and a deep desire on
the part of Christians for a national spiritual revival in that country.”
For several years trips to India became an annual event for Pastor
Tim Marsh and teams from the Christian Center.
A report announcing their 1984 trip included the following:[20]
Pastor
Tim Marsh of the Idaho Falls Christian Center and ten others are leaving for
India this Sunday for three weeks to spread the word of God. The congregation this year bought a boat to
enable the Christian workers in India to take the gospel to people in the
backwaters of South India. During the
visit Marsh and the team will dedicate the boat to the service of God. Marsh has visited India several times and
notes that this year “we expect to again see thousands of people respond to the
gospel.” The crusades are held in open
fields and thousands gather to receive a miracle from God Marsh said.
Besides the teams from Idaho Falls that went to India and
the purchase of a boat mentioned in the above article, the Idaho Falls Christian
Center helped Rev. Thampy purchase a building for his headquarters, a printing
press and a 1941 Chevrolet bus, with 23 seats but which usually headed out to the
mission fields loaded with “80 to 100” workers.[21]
Rev. V. A. Thampy went to his heavenly reward in 2022, but
the work of Christ for India continues. Their webpage reports that they
currently have 4,550 churches across 24 states in India, 17 children’s homes,
15 Bible schools, 1 Bible college, 5 High Schools, 1 Engineering College and
120 Sewing Institutes for destitute women.[22]
[I’m sure there are and
have been other Idaho Falls – India connections. Please add any you know of and think appropriate
in the comments.]
[2] See
R. W. Lewis “Needed: A Strategy for the 300 Largest Frontier People Groups,” Mission Frontiers 46:2, (March/April
2024), https://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/needed-a-strategy-for-the-300-largest-frontier-people-groups,
and other articles in the same issue -
Understanding Christward Movements in India; The Final Frontier: India’s Other
Backward Castes; and Devout Hindus: Anti-Church but Not Necessarily
Anti-Christ.
[3]
The Idaho Falls Times, December 4, 1902.
[4] The Idaho Register, December 11. 1914,
p. 4.
[5] The Post Register, November 16, 1938, p.
3.
[6] The Post Register, May 15, 1953, p. 7.
[7] The Post Register, August 10, 1955, p. 3
[8]
See The Post Register, March 26,
1941, April 2, 1941, October 24, 1941, April 9, 1942, and February 4, 1943.
[9] “Pastor
Says India Eager for Truth,” The Post
Register, February 29, 1956, p. 2.
[10] The Post Register, January 5, 1981, p.
A-2 and February 28, 1982, p. A-2.
[11] The Post Register, July 24, 1987, p.
A-8.
[12] Rev.
V. A. Thampy was born into a family of Syrian Orthodox faith but as a young man
became, in his words, an alcoholic, unruly, bad and miserable. Rejected by his family he was forced to live
on the streets with the poor and hungry. Then he met a Christian minister who
told him that Jesus could change his life and he accepted Christ into his
life. Three months later, “God spoke to
my heart and called me to preach the gospel to my people and to the world.” At the Christian Center in June, 1980, he
shared that he had been severely persecuted by Hindus and communists for his
Christian beliefs, “but the gospel burns in my heart and I cannot help but tell
my people the true way of life. In fact
their persecutions have strengthened my faith in God and Christ and to spread
the message of faith worldwide.” [From References 17 and 21]
[13] The Post Register, December 2, 1977, p.
B-4.
[14] Reference
15 says that Rev. Marsh went with a team of four from Idaho Falls while
Reference 17 say that there were six besides Rev. Marsh on this trip in January
1980.
[15] The Post Register, January 4, 1980, p.
A-12.
[16] An
article in The Post Register, October
10, 1980, p. A-14 about Cliff and Helen Beard preaching at the Idaho Falls
Christian Center mentions that in January of 1980 they had conducted a “missionary
crusade in India where over 50,000 people were in attendance nightly.” As Reference 15 notes that the team from the
Christian Center that went to India in January 1980 joined with a team from Australia,
I’m assuming the Beards and the Marsh team worked together, but it’s possible
that they were involved with totally separate crusades.
[17] The Post Register, June 13, 1980, p.
A-12.
[18]
Post Register articles about this trip do not mention a team from The Christian
Center, but do mention that an evangelist from Missouri, David Gourly, also participated
in these crusades. David Gourly was a frequent guest speaker at the Idaho Falls
Christian Center. Another article in the Post Register (June 7, 1985, p. A-10)
implies that teams from The Christian Center went on all of Pastor Marsh’s
trips to India.
[19] The Post Register, “Local Pastor Returns
from Preaching in India,” February 20, 1981, p. A-12 and “Returns from India,” January
31, 1981, p. A-12.
[20] “Crusades
in India,” The Post Register, January
27, 1984, p. B-6.
[21] “Christian
Leader Brings Tales of India to Idaho,” The
Post Register, September 14, 1984, p. B-6.
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