At first, Rakesh Tandon* simply had no interest in hearing about God. He’d just come to play basketball.
Although his family follows Hinduism, Tandon does not believe in any god.
For six weeks during the summer, students from South Carolina’s colleges partnered with Christian college students in India to share the Gospel in one Indian city.But every day for six weeks, Sheldon Catling, * a summer volunteer from Francis Marion University in Florence played basketball with Tandon and other Indian university students, sharing his faith each time. And right before Catling returned to the U.S., God began to soften Tandon’s heart.
Catling shared with Tandon about how sin separates man from God and there’s no way for man to ever bridge the gap. God’s remedy, he told Tandon, came when He sent Jesus to take away our sin.
Catling came to India as part of a volunteer team from East Cooper Baptist Church in Mount Pleasant. The team of eight college students, representing Coastal Carolina University in Conway; Charleston Southern University, College of Charleston; and Francis Marion University, came on a six-week mission trip to an Indian city.
During their trip, the team discipled seven Indian college students. They taught these newer Christians how to study the Bible, share their faith and walk as believers.
“The need for older believers to come along beside them and teach them how to study God’s Word, share their faith, and how to walk as a new believer in this ever-changing culture is great,” Clint Braddy, * the volunteer team leader, said. Braddy is a campus director at Charleston Southern University, and full-time college pastor at East Cooper Baptist Church.
“The Great Commission has never been clearer to me,” Braddy said. “Jesus said go make disciples, not churches or converts. He knew that these things would be the result of discipleship.”
Braddy’s team adopted the vision Viktor Raimund, * a Southern Baptist representative, has to spread the gospel in the city and embolden Indian believers to share their faith. Raimund’s fiancee is a member of East Cooper Baptist Church.
The volunteer team had their work cut out for them. Many Indian college students, Raimund said, “are envisioning American college students sleeping around, boozing, [doing] everything they see in Hollywood movies.”
The Western culture – the blue jeans and designer sunglasses – that’s taking the city of 5 million by storm also shapes Indian young adults’ worldview and their views on Hinduism and the caste system. The caste system gives a hierarchical social status for every person.
“This new upcoming generation wants to be free philosophically, economically, sexually, and spiritually from the old traditional India,” Braddy said.
Over a cup of coffee, an Indian college student told Braddy that in his opinion, only the older, uneducated generation believes in the caste system. It’s silly to believe in all those gods, the student continued.
When Braddy and the volunteers shared about the living God, the Indian students with whom they shared the Gospel answered in the same manner most college students in Europe and America would: I have my beliefs; you have yours, and they are equal. I believe in all religions.
Idolatry has always been pervasive in India, Raimund said, but there’s a new idolatry, the idolatry of the West: prosperity and success, to which they don’t physically bow down, but they bow down in their hearts.
Indian students no longer believe in idols – they only bow down to them to please their parents, Raimund said. He said this is truly a generational shift that he’s seen during the last two years he’s been serving in the city.
Raimund’s prayer is that the testimony and witness the American college students left behind will live on.
The testimony is already living on in Tandon. Although he hasn’t made a decision to follow Christ, Catling planted the seed. He also connected Tandon with Christians in the city who are continuing to share the Good News with him.
“One thing I feel that God taught me was His true desire and heart and love for the lost and how He truly desires to draw lost people to Himself and that He loves using us to do that,” Catling said.
*Names changed for security reasons.