God Loves Yadav

All people groups, everywhere!

People group thinking and reaching the nations for Christ!

There are people who never heard about, don't understand or question people group thinking.

Let’s grow in understanding and faith by going through the following short study and the testimonies of people who were led by the Lord to focus on the Yadav people group. We pray that your faith will increase for the power of people group thinking.

When we talk about nations: We often mean the state-the political organization, or the government. We think in terms of boundaries and passports and flags. But the Bible gives us a different understanding of nations.

When God talks about nations He talks about people groups.

In Genesis 12:3 Abraham received the glorious promise that ‘all families’ of the earth will be blessed: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families (people groups) of the earth be blessed. (King James Version)

We see in Genesis how families became tribes which then become nations which became separated by language differences and spread out all over the earth. Looking at this way, nations are simply families or tribes of people. They share a common heritage, language, beliefs and ways of doing things which we call ‘culture’. The word ‘nation’ in the New Testament is the Greek word ‘ethne’, which is closer to our term, ethnic group. I believe this is still the primary way God looks at nations. He sees ethnic groups, people groups!

What is a people group?

• A people group is defined as a significantly large group of individuals who have a common bond to one another. Such a bond may include language, culture, customs, and geographical location.
• "For evangelization purposes, a people group is the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance".

What is an unreached people group?

• An unreached people group is a people group among which there is no native community of believers with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize their people without outside assistance.
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• God’s end vision? To see the promise given to Abraham being fulfilled!

• Revelation 7:9: “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude (of believers in Jesus Christ) that no one could count, from every nation, every tribe, every people and every language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.” (underlined words has been added by me because I’m convinced that this is God’s dream!)

The Yadav, one people group, still to be reached with the Good News of Jesus Christ!

In the beginning... the testimony of a European Yadav Strategy Coordinator:

In the last three months of the year 2000 I did my SOFM (School of Frontier Mission) in the Netherlands (Europe). The leadership knew God called me to minister in India. They challenged me from the first day to seek God and to hear from Him for one specific people group in India. India has about 2500 people groups. What a challenge!

Focusing on one people group will create the opportunity to have a more effective ministry. So I started to pray. I asked God: “What is the people group you want me to work among?”

I asked someone, by e-mail, to send me some information about the people groups living on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands because God spoke some months before to me about these Islands. He wrote me back and gave me the names and numbers of the 10 largest people groups living there. I thought: “This are just names and numbers, what can I do with that?” I wanted to have more information about their needs. When I copied the names and numbers down on a small sheet of paper and looked at it, it was like one name jumped out, the Yadav. The Yadav had 10,400 people living on the Andamans.

Was this God speaking to me?

I didn’t share this experience with anyone else. One month later, two hours before the end of the school, I met someone who had served in India for several years. At once I told him: ”I know the people group I will work among.” And He asked me: “Which one?”

When he heard that it was the Yadav he was very excited and asked me to come to his office. He had been praying for the Yadav and prepared a brochure about them in Bihar. He was trying to raise prayer support and wanted to challenge people to go and work among them. He said: ”I have prayed for about 5 years but still nobody is working among them.” I said: “I will go and do.”

This was so divine, God spoke, yes this was really God! Meeting someone in Europe who knows about a specific people group in India is rare. Yet, meeting someone in Europe who prayed for several years for the same people group that God had just spoke to me about is divine.

I started doing research and found out that the Yadav don’t only live on the Andaman Islands. They also live throughout India and the surrounding nations. With not only 10,400 people but more than 60 million people. This makes them one of the largest people groups of the world!

Today, many years later, I’m still praying and speaking to people about the needs and opportunities among the Yadav people. The Yadav are very strategic, God knew and that’s why He spoke!

If God speaks there is a divine reason for it and that’s why we focus on the Yadav people group. 

We have the choice to obey or to disobey Gods voice, to go or to send.

AN AMERICAN CALLED TO REACH THE YADAV.

Up to 1999 although God had called me to some kind of involvement in missions, I had no desire to visit Asia, especially India. In 1999 my professional work sent me on a 30 day business trip where I visited China, South Korea and Malaysia where I fell in love with the people and cultures of Asia. In that same year, my job forced me to move more than 2000 miles from North Carolina to Texas, where I looked for a church that needed someone with the passion for missions that I have. I learned later that the pastor at the young church I joined in Texas, had been praying for God to send someone with a passion for missions for a long time – at the same time I was praying for a church looking for someone with that passion.

Over the next year as my pastor and I worked to start missions ministry at our small young church, we both felt lead that God wanted us to adopt an unreached people group. I knew nothing about reaching unreached people groups and little about missions, so in 2001 I went on my first mission trip to north India. Then, later that year, God led me to the Yadav people in Bihar (I had never heard of them, and only during my recent trip had I learned of Bihar). At about the same time, my pastor attended a conference where he felt separately led to the Yadav people. We discovered when we discussed it afterward that God had separately led both of us to the same people group – The Yadav!

One of my life’s scripture passages is the parable of the lost sheep. As I studied, I learned that Bihar is the most unreached state in the heart of the most unreached part of the world; and the Yadav were the largest, most unreached people group in that state (along with being one of the largest in India, and among the largest, most unreached people groups in the world). I was in awe that God wanted me (an engineer with no pastoral or church planting skills or gifts), and my very small church to be a part of such a large and important mission goal. I was quickly aware of my inadequacy – which helped me further realize that if the Yadav were going to be reached it would not be by my church, or me – it would have to be because of God’s hand moving among them, and us just being a small obedient part of it.

Our church held its first missions conference, with the most obvious detail being that the only challenge is that we don’t know what we are doing – but we moved forward anyway, because he called us to do it.

As we began taking teams to and seeking God’s help and direction, God miraculously raised up a dear brother in our church who felt strongly called that he was to resign his profession, sell his home and move his family of four to north India to begin doing our part to reach the Yadav. They labored in Bihar state among the Yadav, and a good start to an indigenous church planting movement is in progress with around 100 house churches (perhaps more) multiplying across Bihar – the most unreached state in India. Later they moved to another area to start the work again in another segment of the very large Yadav people.

So what have I done to reach the Yadav? Not very much. But God has seen fit to allow me to be one of the little pieces even with no skills, just His call to be obedient. I continue to sit in awe and watch what He is doing and prayerfully seek what my next small part might be.