In 2009 the civil war in the island nation of Sri Lanka came to an end with the total defeat of the Tamil Tigers, a separatist insurgency. The bloody fight for Tamil independence had lasted for 26 years, and about 100,000 people died from that protracted violence.

Throughout that war, body of Christ Ministries has been rescuing many tens of thousands of Tamils who fled the violence. Week after week, rickety fishing boats secretly unloaded the refugees into the shallow sea, to wade ashore onto the nearby Indian island of Rameswaram, where the Paulose family had been led by God to establish an enduring Gospel work. In a quiet agreement with the local authorities, Body of Christ disciples met and took in whatever refugees arrived on their shore, and cared for them until they could be transported to permanent refugee camps on the mainland. In exchange, BCM was at liberty to introduce the refugees to Jesus. Also, for over twenty years the government has allowed the ministry founded by Moses Paulose to freely plant churches throughout the South Indian network of Sri Lankan refugee camps. The Gospel was more eagerly received among so many who’s lives had been turned upside down, and thousands of them have believed in and followed Jesus over the years.

Last year, the Indian government decreed that all the Sri Lankans once displaced by the war were to return to their own nation. Many of them had been waiting in India for a whole generation, with established families and settled lives.

This October, Moses Paulose and his wife, Sarojam, spent several weeks in Sri Lanka, ministering among the thousands of disciples there, who were saved during these two decades of BCM Tamil refugee work. Pastor Paulose spoke with thrilled amazement at how the Gospel work, now replanted back into Sri Lanka, has rapidly grown into an expanding network of recently planted churches, throughout the North and East of the island nation. The overlapping devastations from the twenty six years of fighting, and the 2004 tsunami which destroyed all of the coastal villages, have laid bare a spiritual void in the hearts of the Tamil people, which has translated into an unprecedented growth among the churches being planted in previously unreached areas of Sri Lanka.

Moses Paulose has recently met with and established a new training and discipleship plan for one thousand of these young men and women, who are specially devoted to following Jesus into reaching those yet lost among the 20 million people of their nation. This training will take place in fifteen regional centers in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka, with about six dozen trainees in each location, within convenient reach of their home fellowships. The training will take three months to complete, structured on the BCM recordings currently used for equipping church planters. This is the same discipleship teaching which Pastor Paulose has been employing for over thirty years throughout India, in his ministry of equipping many thousands of Gospel workers.

I asked Pastor Paulose how much the training of these Gospel workers would cost. He said that it would require about $100 per person, for three months of ministry , (a little over one dollar a day per person). Anyone with between one and $100,000 extra dollars is cordially invited to join in this Gospel tsunami now poised to pass through this huge window God has opened, to reach Sri Lanka with the wonderful news of Salvation in Jesus.