Out of 27,000 Postal (Pin / Zip) code areas, 18,000 areas do not have a single pastor or Christian worker residing in them. As the country of India is vast in its geography, officially the country has divided into small sections of Postal Index Numbers [PIN] code areas. Each PIN Code area has around 30,000 people. If only we can prepare and place, at least 3 to 10 Christian workers in every PIN code area, the Gospel can become accessible to all the Indians. Out of 27,000 PIN code areas, nearly 18,000 PIN code areas do not have even a single pastor, evangelist, missionary or a Christian worker residing among them.
Identifying people by the PIN Code areas is a recent innovation with a flexibility to reach people by either people groups, language groups or geographical groups. The PIN Code helps the missions to identify at least the physical proximity of churches and thus identifies reached and unreached areas. This trend has picked up momentum with IMA members in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and Maharashtra setting goals based on the pin code survey done by IMA in 1995-98. This also helps us to evaluate the status of evangelistic efforts by using the unique PIN code database.
GEMS started PEACE project as its 3-D vision (3rd decade vision) which was introduced in 1992 when it entered into the 3rd decade of our ministry. The vision was to place one Evangelist in each PIN Code Area (PCA) in Bihar. In order to quicken the work and to achieve the target, we trained many people under "Intensive Training Program" for one month and then placed them in the un-reached PCAs. So far by God's grace GEMS has established work in around 760 PIN code out of 1355 in Bihar alone.
Note: Normally this pattern of ministry project is done for 2 years. But in the past these PEACE workers did extremely well and today most of them are absorbed into GEMS as full time missionaries. We foresee that it is time for us to motivate and encourage many more PEACE workers into every villages of North India that we will be able to make a greater impact for the Lord.
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