In 52 A.D., the Apostle Thomas came to India to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. This led to the formation of Christian churches throughout several Indian states. Immigrants founded those churches in America, leading to the creation of Mar Thoma churches and other Indian Christian churches throughout the United States.
As the children of Indian immigrants grew up, the second-generation Indian American church and multiethnic churches began to percolate. Pastor Thomas is one of those second-generation Indian American church planters. In a conversation with SOLA Network’s Steve Chang, he talks about the history of Christianity in India, the Indian American church, and the power of the Indian diaspora. He also talks about the Advance Initiative, of which he is a co-founder, whose mission is to catalyze a global movement of gospel-centered multiethnic churches planted by or among Indians.
Editor’s Note: Below is an automated transcript of their conversation. There may be typos and other discrepancies from the video. We have added timestamps for your reference convenience. You can also listen to the audio here.
Steve Chang 0:01: I’m here with Pastor Thomas, pastor at Seven Miles Road Church in Philadelphia, the home of the cheesesteaks. He is married to Shainu, and they have two wonderful children. He is also one of the founders of The Advance Initiative, whose mission is to catalyze a global movement of gospel-centered multiethnic churches planted by or among Indians. Great mission statement by the way.
Hey, Pastor Thomas. It’s good to see you again.
Pastor Thomas 0:34: You too, brother.
Steve Chang 0:37: Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get here in life and in ministry?
Pastor Thomas 0:43: Yeah, I grew up a second-generation Indian. So my parents came here, and I was born and raised in New York. I grew up in a first-generation Indian church and Eastern (tradition) church. So we had liturgy, candles, priests with vestments, and censors. And so it was Protestant theology, but very Eastern worship.
I had a really good experience in the church; it gave me a grammar for the gospel. I had a desire to serve the Lord but had no real sense of what that would mean. I thought about becoming a priest; I wasn’t sure if that’s what God wanted me to do. I went to seminary, to be honest, not even really knowing what seminary was, I thought it was a three-year Bible study where you start in Genesis and you finish in Revelation, and they give you a degree. And I thought, “That must be a great Bible study.”
So I went to seminary, but during that, I felt a real call and burden for other second-generation Indians. And so I was exploring that and ended up at a church plant myself. And so that experience of being at a church plant and being at seminary surfaced a calling to church planting in my own heart.
So I gathered with a group of folks to just ask, “What does God want us to do about other second-generation Indians?” And so we had sort of a conversation that lasted five years, with sort of three outcomes. We said maybe we should all just scatter and go to local American churches and find a way to help the churches, or we should all sort of work for the reformation of the first generation Indian churches, or we should church plant. And again, I didn’t really know what that was; I didn’t know how you got permission to start a church.
But over the course of five years, God surfaced that desire. So we moved to Philadelphia, in 2008, the church in Boston sent us and then we’ve been at that work now for 12 to 13 years.
I’ll tell you very quickly, when we first got here, we connected to a German Evangelical Reformed Church. It was a 134-year-old congregation, and we told them, “We’re trying to plant this church to reach Indians without planting an Indian church; it’s a multiethnic church.” They told us, “If you ever need space, come talk to us.”
Long story short, we connected with his older church. They were dwindling in size at the time, their pastor retired, and we sent in a proposal saying, “What if in the closing of this church, you let us plant this new church here?” They had received bids for this property for $5.1-5.2 million, and they turned all of that away. They ended up basically giving us the whole thing for free.
So we, an infant church, in year one, inherited that whole thing, and have been worshipping in this space for the last 13 years. And, God’s sort of grown it to be a much more multiethnic church. So I say all that to just say, God’s kindness to me throughout this whole journey and the call was really evident.
Steve Chang 3:28: I think all the church planters out there who are listening are getting emotional right now. What was the name of the church that did this work of grace?
Pastor Thomas 3:43: Yeah, St. Mark’s German Evangelical Reformed Church. And it really was, I mean, they were a German church. So we didn’t have anything in common ethnicity-wise or any of it. And yet they just in Gospel, generosity gave us the whole thing.
Steve Chang 3:57: That is amazing. Yeah, I wish we hope that more churches would see the gospel in a broader, bigger sense than their own little legacy or something like that. But praise God for that. You said that you came from a more traditional Indian church. Well, what denomination and tell us a little bit about that?
Pastor Thomas 4:23: Yeah, it’s called the Mar Thoma Church. Indian Christianity—and this is a really important thing about the Indian churches—Indian Christianity, at least historically, goes back to 52 A.D.
It’s commonly held among Indian Christians that the Apostle Thomas came in 52 A.D. And so Mar Thoma is just literally a word that means St. Thomas Church. And so the St. Thomas Church had sort of a reformation from Eastern Orthodoxy. And so it had Anglican missionaries that came in and some Protestant, therefore, theology.
So I grew up in that. It was, again, liturgy and an altar and all those things that you might find in Eastern Orthodox Church, but with doctrines like grace alone and faith alone. And so I grew up in that Eastern Orthodox-ish kind of Protestant kind of church.
Steve Chang 5:17: Would you say that denomination, although it’s high church in some ways with a lot of traditions and such, but in essence, is an Evangelical Church then?
Pastor Thomas 5:30: I don’t think they would describe themselves that way. Because for them, they don’t trace their roots back to the Reformation or to the West. They see themselves so fully Eastern that I don’t think they would see themselves as evangelicals, but they are a Bible-believing church.
So while they may not use that term, and there’s lots of expressions of it, and that was just one denomination of lots of churches within southwest India, and the state of Kerala, where there is a little bit more Christianity.
Steve Chang 6:00: I know we’re going off on a little bit of a tangent, but most Christians in America only see Christianity in the line of the Reformation. And you know, they forget that the church had many different paths. But the Mar Thoma church, you would say that although they may not in label or brand say that they’re evangelical, but in essence that their gospel preaching Bible-believing church?
Pastor Thomas 6:31: That’s right. I mean, and if you talk to people in my generation, I think you’d have a varied experience with the church. I had a good experience, I really did. And I think there’ll be lots of second-generation folks who would feel different things, but I think the liturgy and the creed of the church is orthodox and Bible-believing,
Steve Chang 6:50: Right, and same here. I grew up in the first-gen Korean church, and my experience was just fantastic. I loved and respected the leaders there. But the difference? Like you, I felt like going forward: I’m not first generation, I’m not Korean speaking. And so what do we do? Do I stay in the church and try to reform it to English speaking? Do I go to a majority culture church? Or do I church plant as a third culture church? And that’s what you did.
Pastor Thomas 7:26: That’s right. And I would say also, and that’s really important to me as well, I wasn’t reacting to and leaving in some kind of frustration, and saying, you know, we’re going to do this better. And so here’s my attempt at that. It really was a sense of calling to something broader than what I had grown up in, because I was Indian American, and had this calling towards multiethnic ministry. So it was being called to something rather than running away from something.
Steve Chang 7:50: Yeah, it wasn’t a rejection. The Advance Initiative, catalyzing a global movement for the gospel-centered, multiethnic churches planted by or among Indians. Is your church right now at Seven Mile Road Church an expression of The Advance Initiative?
Pastor Thomas 8:10: Yeah, that’s exactly right. We helped start The Advance Initiative. In some sense, even while the seed of a vision for something like Seven Mile Road Church was happening, the seed of something like Advanced was happening. And what I mean by that is, we just felt this burden for how do we reach Indians without planting an Indian church.
When we saw that reality, we felt like that’s needed not just in Philly. That same reality is in New York and Chicago and LA, in sort of every metropolitan city where you find diaspora Indians. We felt like there’s a place for a church like Seven Mile Road. And so when we started Seven Mile Road, it was even with a thought that hopefully, we’re not just planting a church, but wanting to catalyze a movement of that kind of thing, churches just like this throughout the country, and now even broader throughout the diaspora Indian community around the world.
So we—that’s me as well as some other brothers—launched Advanced to say, how can we catalyze Indians towards planting and planting multiethnic gospel-centered churches and that said, Seven Mile Road is one kind of it. I have a good friend Goethe in Jackson Heights who planted and a brother in Harlem, Dallas, these are all different expressions, but this idea of Indian Americans and diaspora folks planting churches.
Steve Chang 9:24: I just read statistics. Indian Americans are the second most populous Asian American community, right? I don’t know if it’s anyone’s keeping record, but how many Indian American churches are there?
Pastor Thomas 9:46: To be honest, I don’t have a number. What I would say is when we started planting, I could almost count on one hand the number of churches that you would say are gospel-centered and trying to be missional churches that are planted by or led by an Indian American, a very small in number. We’re pretty connected as Asian communities are and so we sensed, you know, what’s going on around the country around the continent and, and just a handful, really a handful.
So we’re at the cusp of something and to be honest, you know, our immigration story is 40-50 years old. So we’re just at the cusp of this generation. So we’re at the precipice of something new here and really was small in number. There is a large number of first-generation churches, immigrants that have come over and established churches here. But in terms of second-generation folks planting, Indian Americans are planting a far smaller number.
Steve Chang 10:42: So there are a large number of first-generation like Hindi speaking Indian American churches.
Pastor Thomas 10:49: Hindi would be North India and other parts of India. But at least my particular family came from Kerala, which speaks Malayalam and Kerala had a lot of the Christian population. So there’s a lot of that, but yes, in the Gujarati, Malayali, all of these kinds of churches, first-generation, there’s a bunch.
Steve Chang 11:08: Because most of the Indian immigration was post-1965, the English speaking or the second-gen demographic like yourself, you’re just starting to emerge as an adult population. Now you’re trying to figure out how to express your faith. And so church planting is occurring right now.
Pastor Thomas 11:30: That’s right. That’s perfectly said. That’s right.
Steve Chang 11:33: Now, some people would ask this question, and some people probably who are not immigrants, we didn’t grow up in an immigrant, or people who are not of color, they asked this question more: Why did Indians need to have an Indian American church if they’re English speaking? And even the first-generation Indians, immigrants are English speaking? Why do you need to have a church that is more expressly Indian American? Why can’t you just go to the majority culture? And try to make it more multiethnic, or more inclusive of Indians? etc?
Pastor Thomas 12:18: I totally understand the question, it’s a great question. And I would say, it’s almost assuming that they’re sort of a neutral thing as culture. You know, majority culture is like a neutral thing. And then everything else is like an exotic version that you add to it, as opposed to majority culture is a culture.
And so an Anglo expressive church is itself a cultural church. And so every church is a cultural church. And so for us, to be honest, even for us, and I even think there’s a place for Indian churches.
But for us, we were trying to plant a multiethnic church, but at the same time, with the freedom to be authentically who God made us to be. And I think there is something more robust and beautiful when every culture is allowed to express who they are, that will carry on into, into glory into the world to come.
And so I think, we don’t have to flatten those things to some homogenous mix that’s bland of all of us. It is all of us authentically getting to be what we are. The other thing I would say is, this is a silly example we’ve used before, but almost to just to try and express. It’s almost like when there’s a white sheet of paper and you add some color to it, you look at that and go, “Oh, it’s so colorful.” But if you added the same colors to a brown sheet of paper, the brown is almost so stark that you see it and you can’t help it. So in the same way, we were a 50/50 church. We’re 50% Indian and 50% not. In any other context, that’s an incredibly multiethnic church. But often it’s seen as an Indian church with some other people as a part of it. And it just sort of what our assumption of what sort of a neutral background is or isn’t. So anyway, I do think we’re a multiethnic church. But at the same time, there were some things unique about who we were, that allowed us to plant different than maybe some other ethnic church.
Steve Chang 14:12: That’s a great idea. And of course, you’re speaking to the choir, you know, and I understand exactly what you’re saying. There is no such thing as just neutral culture and when people say well, why do we have to?
When you talk about how you can be more authentically true to who you are, and an expression of your authentic self, can you give me an example of something that is different or unique about Seven Mile Road Church in which you can express your authentic self that maybe in a majority culture church you’d have to kind of put that aside.
Pastor Thomas 15:03: Yeah. It’s almost like when you’re a fish in a fishbowl, you don’t even realize you’re wet. So to be honest, I sometimes struggled to know what are the Indian elements in our multiethnic church that we’ve brought to the table. And to be honest to some degree, and I don’t know if this is good or not, we’re sort of figuring this out ourselves.
And maybe this is something that you have experienced that maybe other second-generation ethnic minorities have experienced. You know, to be honest, I am so bicultural. I’ve often said, it’s almost like I live my life on the hyphen between Indian and American. I exist on that small hyphen because both of these things are truly who I am. So if you let me be totally myself, it’s not like I’d wear Indian garb. This is how I would dress this is how I would speak as I am.
That said, as those who were in leadership, it was the first time, we’re now in leadership. Our church is all minority-led, to be honest, even though it’s beautifully multiethnic. We felt like we were going to use our power not to assert our sort of culture, but almost give that up for the sake of letting everyone be welcome. We used to joke, it took nine years before we finally served Indian food at the church, because we just didn’t want to exclude anyone.
So what do we do with the fact that we were in power, we sort of gave that up? And it was almost non-Indians telling us: Would you serve Chai here? Would you serve Indian food? We love Indian food. But I think us being willing to give some of that up for the sake of including folks allowed for them not to feel like they had to become us in order to fit in here.
And, and I think we just lead differently. Also, I grew up, I was in a church planting environment where you know, every leader was an alpha-type, a born leader, I just was so different. In a room, I wasn’t going to be the assertive one, and so on. And so it took a different kind of empowering for me to surface as a leader, as an Indian leader that’s different than perhaps a majority culture leader. So anyway, maybe there’s more if I think of it later,
Steve Chang 17:13: Adrian Pei, in his book, Minority Experience, talks about how in as an Asian culture person, we sometimes wait for permission to speak. And we oftentimes give deference and in the White majority culture that’s seen as weakness, or lacking leadership, but in a lot of our culture, know that that’s your you’re giving deference to those who are in charge or older. And we humbly wait. And that is the proper thing to do.
And so the contemplative, the quiet, thoughtful leader, oftentimes, in the majority culture, they’re not seen as having leadership qualities. And so they’re cast aside. When we are leading our own, you know, our own spaces, we allow that to express itself as leadership. And so yeah, and I think that you got it right there.
Pastor Thomas 18:14: You articulated that so well. I had a Caucasian friend who told me he had an Asian friend in his class, and he knew when his Asian friend was called on, he was the brightest kid in the class, but he wasn’t gonna assert himself into that conversation without being called on. And so something of that dynamic and what you articulated, it’s like, that’s exactly right.
Steve Chang 18:35: Yeah, I remember speaking to a leader of an organization, and he had an Asian American on his board. And I had to tell this White leader that Asian Americans won’t speak unless you ask them. Ask him and he’ll probably have things to say, but he just isn’t saying it.
Let me ask now. Indians in America, and I know this is a stereotype, but I think a true stereotype. They are outclassing everyone else in terms of education and income in different areas of politics, Vice President, technology, Google medicine, etc. Can you explain, and I don’t know how deep you can get into it, but why that’s so first of all, and how why is it that our impression of Indians in India, though is of poverty, caste system, violence against women, etc. So why the disparity and why the success here in America?
Pastor Thomas 19:50: Yeah. It’s a great question. And I do think there is something to the Indian experience in India where there is something to the caste system there. So anyone that you talk to would tell you there is something to how wide that was and how for generations, a certain group of people were just kept that down by that system. And so there are some structures and systems in India that have led to and contributed and, and that kind of gap between rich and very poor is probably prevalent in a lot of third world nations second and third world nations. And it’s true there, but you add things like the caste system and some other structures, it became very much.
I had a friend who was telling me, you know, until the early 2000s, only about 5% of the Indian population was the middle class. So if you think about a billion people or so 5% of the nation, middle class, which meant single-digit number of rich, an overwhelming number of people who are in the poverty line or less, that’s changing, there are some reforms that have come so that now that fingers closer to 45%, and they projected things continue by 2040 or so it’ll be about 95%. So that middle class really is growing. And so things are changing. Hopefully, as things continued for the better.
And then here, I don’t know that I would, I would know, maybe it would take a panel of Indian style speaking to that together. But I do think some of it is probably a shared experience for both of us, which is just that immigrant story and that immigrant arc of you know, your parents come here with nothing and, and press on you. I mean, I’d imagine this is similar for both of us.
But that narrative of you got one of three options, you can be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. That was sort of the mindset we grew up in. And there was a heavy emphasis on success and, and maybe that immigrant arc of now you finally made it and I think that was an important thing, education and honor. You know, we come from an honor and shame culture. So you know, how you did in school reflected not just on you, but on your whole family, and, and all of it. And so, I think that pressure did probably push us in a good way towards being upwardly
Steve Chang 22:01: Yeah. And we can talk about that further. Because among Asian Americans, we all, most of us, come with that same Asian, honor, shame, culture, background, immigrant story. But there’s something about the Indian Americans that caused you to excel even more. So maybe that’s another conversation, maybe in a panel or something like that, what are taken as some religious and cultural uniqueness of the Indian American that makes them maybe different from the other Asian records, and also cause them to be a little bit more open to the Gospel or even close to the Gospel? And that’s such a big question.
Pastor Thomas 22:46: Maybe one thing is just even to say that within India, and maybe this is known, but it’s such a varied conglomerate of from state to state literally, it’d be like New York and New Jersey speaking two different languages.
The state right next to the one my parents grew up in speaks a totally different language, as does the state above them. And so you really are talking about people from very different walks of life. And so my experience as a Kerala immigrant, or the son of a Kerala immigrant, is very different than some folks who were from other parts of India.
So I grew up in a Christianized background. And so, you know, our challenges, barriers or opportunities with the gospel are probably somewhat similar to what you would find in the Bible Belt. We grew up with nominalism. And how does the gospel become something real as opposed to just something that’s a part of our culture? And so those kinds of challenges, the church that I was a part of planting.
My generation, my peers, were almost like Nicodemus: We were moral and good, and on the outside, perfect, but we weren’t born again. That’s one kind of challenge. But at the same time, if you talk about India more broadly, you know, you’re talking about people from Hindu and Muslim backgrounds and Buddhist backgrounds.
I think one challenge that’s unique is, it’s so much a part of your identity. It’s who you are. So for example, if a Westerner wants to become a Christian, it’s almost just an individual choice of do I want to follow Jesus? Does that make sense or not? It’s a question about my life.
When a South Asian person decides I want to change to become a Christian, there’s a whole thing that comes with that about my family and my place in my family and whether I’m accepted and my identity, questions about is this a Western religion that you’re so it’s not even just I’m adopting Christianity, it’s, I’m forsaking being an Indian. For many people. I’m forsaking my family. And so the cost of becoming a Christian is, is in some ways, far greater. And that’s a unique thing.
One of the opportunities, however, is, you know, spirituality is such a part of the Indian experience, whether you’re talking about whatever religion and so there is an openness to spiritual conversations that you might not find In the secular West that we live in right now, so, so it cuts in both directions, maybe.
Steve Chang 25:05: So if I can summarize, India as a whole is such a heterogeneous and broad of a nation, and in fact, India has, like 1.3 billion people, right? That’s more than Europe and North America combined. So it would be as if we would say all of Europe is homogenous, but that’s absolutely not true—the languages and you know.
So it’d be silly for us to make a linear statement about all Indians. And so some parts of India, it’s very Christian culturally, like, like you’re where you came from, and others are not. But one thing that you are saying is that, oftentimes, and unlike the United States, where religion is an individual choice, not so tied to the family or identity, but in India, it is, and so very much, right. So someone from your area, if they left the faith, I will be like, betraying their family, but from another part of India, adopting Christianity would be like betraying their identity.
Pastor Thomas 26:15: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And, and even within the Christian section, I’d say even for a second generation, and this move to church planting, one of the barriers to church planting, is to do the same kind of journey, even from the first generation church out, is seen in a narrative of rejection, as opposed to a call into something. And so that’s even something that we’re working through, because it’s so tied to, it’s not just my individual choice with my individual life. It is the family and people that we come from, as a part of that whole arc as well.
Steve Chang 26:47: Yeah, so it’s kind of like the Filipinos that the Catholic Church, the Catholic faith is soul tied to their identity and people. But another thing that you pointed out is that the Indian people have tended to be very spiritual or they haven’t fully adopted the post-modernism type of thought. So they’re more open to spiritual conversations and such.
Pastor Thomas 27:12: That’s right. I have again, I referenced him before, but friend Boto, who’s in Jackson Heights, he always says, the New York Times describes Jackson Heights as probably the most culturally diverse neighborhood in New York, maybe the planet. They say, like 300 acres of land, but 167 different languages. I mean, the local Wendy’s menu is in four different South Asian languages. It’s just such a diverse, place and he always says, even, just nominally, there’s going to be religious ceremonies that are a part of your life, there’s going to be spiritual, religious things that are part of every one of those people’s lives, which just give doorways into conversations that he has seen be really fruitful.
Steve Chang 27:59: I know we’ve gone a long time. So what’s the last word? What are a few things that we the audience or the church needs to know about Indian American churches, and Indian Americans in general?
Pastor Thomas 28:15: Yeah, I would say for the Indians, there’s a historic Christianity that goes back to Thomas. So it’s not a Western import; there’s an authentic Indian Christianity. And India is the second-largest in population. They say within a decade or so it may eclipse China.
So you’re talking about the largest people in the world, you’re talking about the largest unreached people groups in the world, you’re talking about the largest diaspora of any people in the world. And so God has scattered the least reached people to the most places in the world where they can both be reached, and where they can be mobilized to themselves become a missional force. And so if you’re concerned about the advance of the gospel in any way, Indians by just their sheer size, and their global position are strategic and hugely important to that conversation. And so I think it’s in the interest of anyone who loves Jesus and His gospel to see Indians mobilized for gospel work, including church planting. So I would love for that to be on the radar of more and more people.
Steve Chang 29:16: Amen. And I think we need to be more aware of it. And that’s why we need to be better friends that day.
Pastor Thomas 29:24: I so appreciate your brother and I so appreciate what you’re doing with SOLA. I mean that.
Steve Chang 29:29: Alright, thank you so much. I look forward to further conversations. Okay.
Pastor Thomas 29:33: Yes, thank you again.