{"id":5432,"date":"2015-03-04T09:35:39","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T17:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/?p=5432"},"modified":"2015-03-04T09:35:39","modified_gmt":"2015-03-04T17:35:39","slug":"india-veteran-pastors-gentle-answers-turn-away-wrath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/?p=5432","title":{"rendered":"INDIA: Veteran Pastor\u2019s Gentle Answers Turn Away Wrath"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianaid.org\" data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/www.christianaid.org\">Christian Aid Mission<\/a>, February 19, 2015<\/p>\n<p>Adept at gently answering the hostilities of radical Hindus, threatening Muslims, and suspicious government authorities, a pastor in northern India found himself facing an inflammatory media question last December.<\/p>\n<p>Amid a roiling controversy about religious conversion in India, an interviewer from a Delhi television station asked the pastor and leader of an evangelistic ministry in Uttar Pradesh, whether conversions should be allowed. High-level Hindu nationalists were proposing that conversions be prohibited.<\/p>\n<p>Working in an area where harassment from radical Hindus preempts public evangelistic events and nearly half of the residents are Muslims whose prohibition of leaving Islam sometimes leads to violence, the pastor appeared to be driven into a corner wherein anything he said would pour fuel onto the fires of controversy.<\/p>\n<p>He surprised the journalist by answering that he was not only against forced conversion, but \u201ctotally against any religious conversion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJesus never taught about religious conversion,\u201d Sankar said. \u201cHe taught about conversion of the heart, and that we preach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The interviewer pressed him, asking him if he converted people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI cannot convert people. I teach them from the Bible what we believe, and the law in our country is that everyone is free to preach his or her religion, and everyone is free to change his religion,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if you want to talk about that, I share what I believe, and it\u2019s Jesus who converts them. It is Jesus who changes their heart, and if they start coming to my church, it is not my problem. It is his problem. Go and ask him!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>People in India, he said, don\u2019t want to hear about Christ. They already know about him, with many counting him among their hundreds of gods. Rather, they want to see him.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bb <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianaid.org\/News\/2015\/mir20150219.aspx?SC=MIR\" data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/www.christianaid.org\/News\/2015\/mir20150219.aspx?SC=MIR\">Read full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Christian Aid Mission, February 19, 2015 Adept at gently answering the hostilities of radical Hindus, threatening Muslims, and suspicious government authorities, a pastor in northern India found himself facing an inflammatory media question last December. Amid a roiling controversy about religious conversion in India, an interviewer from a Delhi television station asked the pastor &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/?p=5432\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">INDIA: Veteran Pastor\u2019s Gentle Answers Turn Away Wrath<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5433,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5432\/revisions\/5433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}