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Our prayer is that a fresh team will arrive in this city in early 2012, and we are now receiving applications from people interested in being part of this pioneering team as members or leaders.  The new team will have the benefit of on-the-ground support as they get established, from the one Servants family initially continuing there, but will also be free to imagine ministry in the slums of the city in a new way, as God leads.

History in the City

Servants workers have lived in this major north India city since the mid 90's.  Though Christians are a small minority of the population, there are many Christian NGO's and churches active in the city, so the team has worked alongside existing ministries serving the urban poor through healthcare, land-rights, education and employment.   Alongside these roles, team members have lived in bastis (poor neighbourhoods), with mainly informal involvements, as ambassadors of Jesus and His kingdom.

Up to 2005, the team fluctuated in numbers but grew in experience and depth of involvement.  Since 2006 the “team” has been the founding couple (along with two growing sons), who continue to live and work in a dense basti notorious for crime and violence. Without a team as such, they have sought deeper community with Indian Christians and with friends in their neighbourhood, and have invited Indian Christians who are exploring God's call on their lives to come and stay in the basti for a period.  Most interns have been significantly impacted by staying a few weeks or months, and one young Indian couple has moved in to the area for two years.

For several years now, the focus has been on empowering local people to access the many government services and schemes meant to assist the poor, but from which they are often excluded.   Barriers such as lack of proper identification papers or address proof, corruption, illiteracy and the caste system all make it very difficult for the poor to access their legal entitlements.  Directly assisting friends and neighbours, and training others in this style of work, has proved both difficult and productive.

Case Study

Kaneez lived in a tiny makeshift hut with her husband and four young children.  In June 2007 her baby died,  followed two months later by her husband; both died of preventable diseases of poverty.  She was left as a young, disabled, uneducated widow with three kids under 10, and about the poorest person in the area.  Through the support of her poor neighbours she scraped by for over a year, while Servants workers and community volunteers pushed through the steps towards the widows pension: a voter's identity card,  bank account, proof of residence, and death certificate of her husband.  The pension is not enough to live on, and she still needs a ration card (to get subsidised rations) and a disability certificate, but at least now she has a small regular income, her sons are doing well in school, and neighbours have helped make their hut a little more sturdy.

The next chapter

While many in this globalised city are racing towards a prosperous future with all that money can buy, the vast majority, like Kaneez, are left out of the system, struggling to break even in the informal economy of daily labour and the non-economy of unemployment.  Those with power have no room for the unsightly poor in their vision of a world-class city.

As the story of the poor in this city unfolds, we pray it will include transformation brought through the lives of those who will follow Jesus into the desperate dusty chaos of a North Indian basti.

Are you thirsting to give yourself to championing peace, justice, compassion and truth in a place of conflict, corruption, and harsh competition for scarce resources? If you think this might be you, contact us for an information pack.