What Happened When God Lit a Fire in Sanjay

Increasingly, ministry teams around the world are using media outreach to find and connect with people seeking God. Now, God is using media to identify believers with the potential to reach many more.

That’s wonderful news, because it means we’re not just seeing people discover the good news about Jesus. We’re also seeing them join small groups to read Scripture and pray together. They’re living out the gospel and sharing it with others. As they mature, these groups are becoming churches that plant new churches.

That’s the heart of Pioneers, and the particular focus of Media to Movements, a ministry of Pioneers that works across agency lines and in many contexts equipping God’s people to harness the power of media for church-planting movements.

Deep in South Asia

A team in South Asia wanted to use media to reach Hindus in their region. They recognized a great spiritual hunger among the people, but many months of ministry saw little lasting fruit. Then, God's love compelled them to go the extra mile, quite literally. Team members traveled up to six hours to personally disciple and train new believers, offered remote training options and arranged intensive, daily discipleship by phone.

It took a few years. But now God’s name is spreading among the millions of Hindus in a region where less than 1% of the people follow Christ. And when the breakthrough came, it was pretty amazing. They saw nearly 100 new discipleship groups start in just 12 months.

What happened when God lit a fire in Sanjay

One of those touched was Sanjay, a discouraged believer who reached out to the team after seeing an online ad. God then began a deep work in his life. He was discipled through daily phone conversations, sometimes lasting an hour or more. God ignited a fire in Sanjay, a passion to share the good news with others.

Sanjay invited the media ministry team to his village and gathered a group to meet with them. God brought several people to faith through that trip and raised up two local leaders. Before long, the discipleship group that Sanjay started had matured into a church.

The fire God lit in Sanjay led to the launch of discipleship groups in his community and beyond, spreading to other cities and states.

The gospel spreads through relationships

Multiplication also continued through Sanjay’s family. When his wife’s parents learned about Jesus' sacrificial love, they, too, started a group and shared with a friend in a neighboring state, who then gathered a group and shared the gospel with someone he knew in another city, where yet another group began.

All this is happening in places where followers of Jesus are few and usually persecuted. The fire God lit in Sanjay has led to groups that have multiplied to several generations.

Sharing Jesus from house to house

As the ministry expanded, God touched the heart of a local woman who was invited to hear the gospel in Sanjay's village and gave her life to Jesus. The woman was a government social worker. Her job? Going door-to-door to share information about government services. Now she also shares Christ.

She walks into homes carrying more than pamphlets or aid—she carries hope. She’s using her professional platform to bring the gospel to people who might have never otherwise received it.

“No one ever said that to me.”

Another woman came to faith in Jesus but lacked the confidence to share Jesus with others. She felt small and unsure whether her voice mattered. A simple online discipleship course changed that. It met her in a language she understood deep down and offered her ways to grow. She went through the course three times. Then, she shared something that stopped us in our tracks.

“I look forward to the lesson every day. It says, ‘Good job!’ No one has ever said that to me. No one’s ever told me I was good or that I could make an impact for Christ.”

Can you imagine never hearing those words?

Now, she hears them from a simple course that shows her God sees her. And now, she’s speaking up, starting Bible study groups and bringing the light of Christ with her wherever she goes.

May God be glorified!

Praise God for what He continues to do through Sanjay, his family and friends and many others who have believed in Jesus and shared that good news with people everywhere.

People are coming to faith. People are being healed and set free from oppression—spiritual, emotional, physical—and it’s all happening because of men and women who believed the gospel was too good to keep to themselves.

And it makes us ask: What am I holding back that He might want to pour out?