This research aimed to analyze a history of Evangelical Church of India(ECI) and its mission strategy and to propose a future mission strategy and policy of ECI.
Evangelical Church of India rapidly grew by practicing the principle of receptivity. The Church has focused on lower caste and backward caste. It is also distributed mainly in some states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh of South India and focused on a few tribes. Also, the Church tends to financially depend on foreign fund.
The Church needs a more modern and applicable mission strategy. ECI needs to widen from lower caste to higher caste and from part to the whole. The mission strategy has to be designed by indigenous people who is accustomed to the need and emotion of Indians, not by foreign mission societies or missionaries.
This research takes the method of the review of the historical literature. In particular, the General Assembly Report, statistics date and Monthly Report are the primary sources to be able to evaluate the practice process of mission strategy of ECI so far. However, there are cases to be a direct quotation because of unpublished sources and rare mission sources to India. The reason is that the sources are not sorted yet and so there is limitation in expressing them.
Because there is almost no study on the mission strategy of Evangelical Church of India so far, instead, I have tried to evaluate a few studies on the mission strategy of the mission strategy for India. However, it has limitations in analyzing the mission strategy of ECI with it.
In chapter one, this paper deals with the problem statement, the purpose, the method and the scope of research, the previous studies and terms definition. In chapter two, this paper periodically divides a history of Evangelical Church of India and its mission strategy and studies on the importance of India mission and its mission strategy and limitations. In chapter three, this paper deals with a history of Korean Church’s India mission and its mission strategy and proposes a mission strategy through it. In chapter four, this paper deals with Korea Evangelical Holiness Church’s role for India mission and analyzes Evangelical Church of India’s mission strategy and its results. In chapter five, this paper ends with the summary and the proposal for the mission strategy of ECI.
Evangelical Church of India proposed the mission strategy as follows; The first is an image strategy. ECI has to continue to plant church and made symbolic Christian constructions. The second is a homogenous class focused strategy. It is a strategy to use castes. Converted people go and proclaim the gospel to their homogenous people. The third is a family unit mission strategy. It can be effective to Indians who have a strong family kindred consciousness. The fourth is a local connected mission strategy. It is to connect with local church and mission society and to share possible information through development cooperation with local government. The fifth is a power encounter mission strategy. It is to use the proof of God’ being among many religions including Hinduism. The sixth is to use immigrated urban people mission strategy. It is to plant a church for people who migrated to cities and for them go to suburban areas and close village and plant a church. The seventh is an inculturation mission strategy. Indian church has to proclaim the gospel through Indian culture and language which can communicate with Indians. The eight is whole generation mission strategy. All church congregation, pastors and lay people, all generation have to participate in mission.
Therefore, the mission strategy of ECI can gain the effective results by practicing an image strategy, a homogenous class focused strategy, a family unit mission strategy, a local connected mission strategy, a power encounter mission strategy, immigrated people mission strategy, an inculturation mission strategy, whole generation mission strategy.