Church of the Lutheran Confession of India

చర్చ్ ఆఫ్ ద లూధరన్ కన్ఫెషన్ ఆఫ్ ఇండియా

Chairman’s Message:- The Church of the Lutheran Confession of India (CLCI) traces its beginnings from the efforts of its Chairman Rev. V.S.Benjamin who has been in the Lord’s service since 1965.

As the work spread,  Nidubrolu became the center for ministry work, orphanage and for theological education. The CLCI was registered in 1981 and affiliated with the CLC in America. Through the consolidated effort, so far 13,689 souls were added to Christ. Also 288 worshiping congregations and nearly 200 preaching stations have been established. The CLCI is now spreading in 12 districts of the Andhra Pradesh very rapidly. Pastor Ruben is the CLCI representative in Chatthisghad State and also successfully doing the work over there with 11 congregations. The wonderful mission work from missionaries of the CLC – US made a tremendous impression on the poor people in Andhra Pradesh and gave a great encouragement to their spiritual lives and also attracted many other Christians and non-Christians. Even though the CLCI operates mainly in the rural, coastal and tribal areas, now our CLCI pastors are able to teach Luther’s catechism to their respective congregational members. With amazing grace of our Lord with the kind help and untiring hard work of our beloved Missionary Rev. David Koenig and Rev. Matthiew Ude, since many years, we have been distributing copies of catechism books (Telugu and Hinidi) in our CLCI congregations. The CLC – US Mission Board did hard work in sending missionaries and volunteers frequently to do this tremendous job, because they have been playing a key role in this aspect.

Public Gospel Meetings:-

India lives in the villages. Every year we conduct CLCI public gospel meetings. This year we have conducted 18 Public Gospel meetings in different districts of Andhra Pradesh. This year CLCI public gospel meetings attracted 7,120 villagers. The participants received great blessings through these public gospel meetings. We organize CLCI Public gospel meetings several times a year in various villages. Usually these public Gospel meetings last 3 days and services are held in the morning and in the evening. Anywhere from 500 – 1000 people attend these meetings. The focus of the meetings is gospel music and sermons intended to attract people and to introduce them to Jesus Christ. Meetings are held in open air under temporary tents and sermons are given in loud speakers. Many people have moved by the word and received Jesus through these meetings, got baptized and have started to attend the church. The CLCI word of God ignites the many minds on the purpose of their existence on this earth. The inspiring messages from our CLCI leaders and pastors refresh many new comers, and promised the way to salvation and eternal life. As you know India lives in the villages. So mainly we concentrated in villages.

Pastoral Seminars: – We have been conducting annual pastoral seminars twice during annual convention meetings.  These seminars once again enable pastors, district leaders and students to gather for intensive study in a wide variety of subjects. In these seminars, we discussed some of the essays given by Rev. David Koenig and also once again studied Lutheran doctrines such as creeds, sacraments, ten commandments etc. We are happy to inform you that our CLCI pastors have received much benefit from these seminars. God is uniting and extending His body for this purpose, and it is the goal of these seminars to refresh and revive our Pastors to do more work. different districts of Andhra Pradesh. This year CLCI public gospel meetings attracted 7,120 villagers.  The participants received great blessings through these public gospel meetings. Many people have moved by the word and received Jesus through these meetings, got baptized and have started to attend the church. The inspiring messages from our CLCI leaders and pastors refreshed many new comers, and promised the way to salvation and eternal life. As we know India lives in the villages. So mainly we concentrated in villages.

Statistics:-

The CLCI’s work is mainly in the state of Andhra Pradesh, a Telugu-speaking region. The CLCI is very active in rural areas of Andhra Pradesh coastal belt. Great number of the CLCI members is from poor families and knows the heavy burden of poverty and unemployment. In the same manner, the CLCI also has been expanding more and more in rural, sub-urban and urban areas of RangaReddy (Dt), Nalgonda (Dt), East Godavari (Dt), West Godavari (Dt), Visakapatnam (Dt), Guntur (Dt), Prakasam (Dt), Krishna (Dt), Kammam (Dt) and also has been reaching several tribal areas in Medak Dt. God is helping the CLCI mission church to grow rapidly. We find many hundreds of believers coming into the church every year.  Through the consolidated effort, 288 CLCI pastors so far 13,689 souls were added to Christ with 288 worshipping congregations and nearly 230 preaching stations. This following are the statistics of the CLCI.

Outreach and Evangelism and Pastors Seminars: –

The Lord has been good to us in this year 2012-13. We are conducting outreach programs in every weekend. I gratefully acknowledge our CLCI pastors, evangelists, youth seminary students for their good work in doing this great work of CLCI evangelism. Many young men who were drenched in the CLCI youth camps at Nidubrolu became evangelists for this outreach programs. Gospel processions were held. Souls were saved.It was a dawn of realization of what God could do through “Just ordinary people” (1 Sam 17:33).

Baptisms: –

In total during this year 2012-13, we have performed 146 baptisms including child baptisms. There’s nothing like seeing the excitement on the faces of people who are “going public” with their faith in Christ through baptism. God bless these new brothers and sisters in the CLCI. “…unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5.)Jesus Christ was the ultimate winner in the hearts of many people including Hindu and Muslims. It’s a win-win – our church gets to baptize more people and we get to partner together to provide water to those who need it desperately.“Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your Name be the glory….”

Constructing Churches and Prayer sheds:

This year the Lord has opened amazingly many doors to start new CLCI congregations.

God has helped to construct six prayer sheds this year where He himself is being glorified.

In the coming year, we are praying for the construction of 12 urgent prayer sheds of each cost Rs. 50,000. We request you all to join with us in your prayer support in this progress. Our vision is to have solid prayer sheds in our   CLCI so that our members do not walk away from not being able to find one to worship the Lord.

Working with Tribal People:-

We kept special focus on evangelizing the Tribal people in various districts of Andhra Pradesh.

As we know most of these tribal people live in below poverty line and neglected by all classes of people including government. They are downtrodden people. Their main occupation is raising pigs, catching rats, collecting empty plastic bottle & paper in garbage, and sometimes begging.

At present, the CLCI works in close contact with the

Yerukala, Yanadi and Lambadi tribal people, who live in Guntur, Krishna and Medak Districts.

The CLCI Tribal Mission work does not stop at announcing the word of God; it also includes education. With this in mind, we distribute slates, slate pencils and primary educational books to the tribal children and teaching to write and read.

In many CLCI tribal congregations now the children are able to read and write. We distribute New Testaments the tribal children who can read. We try every way to bear witness to the message of God t these downtrodden people. Many tribal groups are struggling for their existence in Andhra Pradesh States. We have leading these tribal communities towards Christ, sharing their problems and suffering. However, after the Gospel was announced to them and their problems began to be shared, they found the “meaning of the word love”. Here in tribal areas, people don’t have any transport facility. In some tribal areas, the vehicles won’t go into their colonies. By walk only we are reaching these villages with word of god with our team. We need to walk many kilometers to reach their colonies.

CLCI Film Ministry: –

Since film is an effective and popular method to reach the masses, this CLCI film ministry was started. An outstanding movie on the life of Jesus as well as other Christian films, are shown with great results.

As you know Film ministry is more effective especially among the illiterate Indian tribal and village people. In nighttime we conduct street meeting in that village after that we will show one Jesus film there. It has been giving our church an opportunity to further God’s kingdom with our many other brothers and sisters in the rural communities. work in many rural areas of Andhra Pradesh State. The people of India are widely attracted to the big screen and thus it is being used as a powerful tool to give the message of Jesus to the semi illiterate and illiterate village mass. We show the “Jesus Film” in streets, slums, villages and local towns, and remote areas.

This film ministry draws people’s attention towards CLCI and it becomes the rough beginning of churches. Starting churches is just what we had in mind. It’s not just show and go. We are building new churches with the help of this CLCI film ministry. In this CLCI film ministry, along with regular Telugu Christian movies, we are also showing dubbing movies. In our CLCI film ministry we have Telugu dubbing movie collections like Jesus (according to Luke), Genesis, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, 10 commandments, David, Solomon, Ruth, Esther, Samson and Delilah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Pilgrims progress, Passion of Christ (with Telugu subtitles). With this film ministry we have been adding more people to the CLCI. We firmly know that “Seeing is Believing.”

Objectives of the CLCI

1. Continue to provide help to the poor pastors, meaningful worship, Christian Education and service opportunities to the attending and supporting constituency of the church.
2. Continue to assure that the services of the pastor and congregation are equitably available to as many new people as possible.
3. Establish and implement a plan to expand our church program to accommodate the needs of an ever-increasing number of people from the tribal communities of Lambadi, Erukala yanadi and the surrounding areas of Perecharla, Koraguntapalem in some other rural areas of Andhra Pradesh.
4. Continue to recognize, affirm and support the village, district congregations of the CLCI Church.
Work Plan of the CLCI 2012-13.
In order to meet our objectives this year we are planning to give attention to the following issues:
1. Continue to increase awareness of our CLCI presence in the rural villages and surrounding areas by offering special outreach programs like Jesus Film, public meetings, distribution of tracts etc, to generate a flow of visitors to the church.
2. Expand and refine our CLCI ministry to children by developing Children’s programs and recruiting special teachers to help develop a comprehensive strategy to respond to children’s spiritual needs.
3. Prepare a job description for a volunteer Minister of Prayer and recruit someone to develop a system to organize and help the pastor to educate the church in matters of prayer.
4. Continue to ada
pt our church building construction projects in various rural and urban areas.5. Helping the HIV/Aids patients.

Vision of the CLCI:

“Commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established.” (Proverbs 16:3)

The CLCI seeks to experience and reflect Christ by:

1. Reaching upward in worship, by continuing our current meaningful Sunday worship services.

2. Reaching inward in spiritual growth.

By evaluate our Sunday School programs for Church children and Orphan children,
Conducting adult educational programs to increase literacy rate of the congregation.
Considering new models for Sunday School Children so that our children learn the Bible stories in the most effective manner.
To determine how to involve more to best maximize our youth ministry, to increase in the effectiveness of the spiritual growth of our CLCI youth.
Maximize the spiritual care and support we offer to people in our church with personal needs such as house visiting, more counseling in family and marriage issues, providing medical assistance for the elderly people.

3. Reaching outward in service to others on our faith, Increase the number of Public Gospel meeting, Study ways to expanded youth outreach, Finding our new preaching stations, Construction more prayer sheds, Finding out the housing needs of the poor members, Conducting more social service programs like medical camps in the rural areas, Employing more evangelist in the Hindu and Muslim areas, Examine financial assistance options from the congregation to the individuals who participate so they go as evangelists for our CLCI church.

CLCI has wonderful plans in store in this year that will bring many souls to a closer and meaningful relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The CLCI seeks to experience and reflect Christ further by:

• Cell phone ministry – collecting the new cell numbers and attracts them by praying for them.
• Conducting more Sunday School programs,
• Increasing of the number of Public Gospel meetings,
• Finding out new preaching stations, Construction of more prayer sheds,
• Conducting more social service programs like medical camps in the rural areas.

Highlights in the year for us has been the increased prayer life of the church, seeing God draw men and women and boys and girls to Himself, involvement with missions, and working with the elders in developing a vision in light of our church values. The goal of the CLCI is to revere and give homage to God, serving Him through profound adoration, intense love and desire, intimately turning towards Him, exposing our essential innermost selves in complete honesty and surrender.

The church operates a Bible Institute for training the pastors, an orphanage for boys and girls.

God kept His wonderful presence with the CLCI. It is wonderful to see everything that God is doing in midst of the CLCI. We give all the glory for His work in our lives as we seek to make His name known in our Indian community.

Thank you

Pastor Jyothi Benjamin