Of the many ministries and partnerships North Carolina Baptist Men coordinate, none in my experience is more effective or exciting than the Transformation India Movement (TIM) led by Biju Thomas in Bihar. Thomas is a young Indian brought to the attention of NC Baptist Men Director Richard Brunson, who since has been to India several times and brought Thomas to speak at the Baptist State Convention and at the Baptist Men’s annual missions conference.

Thomas grew up in a part of India where the population is highly educated and is in large part Christian. Yet he lives and works a two-day train ride away in India’s poorest and least educated state of Bihar. He burns with passion to see a Christian church in each of the 45,000 villages of Bihar where 85 million people live.

To gain access to those villages, Thomas digs deep bore wells which provide a steady source of clean water. Government wells are shallow and go dry in the summer. Often they are just open holes that fill with bugs during rainy season.

Providing consistent access to clean water opens the villages to church planters Thomas has trained.  Thomas also sponsors an orphanage and training schools that teach women to sew and provides them a new machine upon graduation. Acquiring a business skill and the equipment to operate a business pulls these women from poverty.

A frequent testimony from graduating seamstresses is that they gained a skill and a tool, but their greatest gain is the gift of faith in Jesus about whom they learned from their teachers.

TIM has sponsored more than 500 wells, which has led to establishment of nearly 100 churches with more than 7,000 persons coming to Christ. This is the beginning of what is sure to become a viral church planting movement.

North Carolina Baptists responded immediately when the TIM story first was told, but the need continues long after the first blush of response has lost its color. NC Baptist Men handles gifts for TIM to keep costs of international transactions down. Designate gifts to TIM and send to NC Baptist Men at 205 Convention Drive, Cary, NC 27501. 

All of TIM’s ministries operate currently out of separate rented facilities. Because the Indian government has designated the city Patna for upgrades to education, jobs and transportation, prices are rising quickly. TIM has purchased land and is raising money to build a centralized training facility that will also house the orphanage.

Needs remain for more wells and to support TIM’s growing network of church planters. You might consider, as my family has done, providing a well at Christmas or paying for several months of a church planter salary. It would be a life changing gift.