My journey as a disciple of the Lord Jesus began when I was 15. I had been a rather devout churchgoer, following my mother’s Methodist tradition, and I and my siblings were taken regularly to Sunday School from the time we were toddlers. Also, I had been educated at Wesley College, the only Methodist school for boys in Sri Lanka, where I enjoyed the weekly lessons on Scripture.
But by the time I reached my teens an awful realisation began to dawn on me. Despite my best efforts and genuine respect for biblical truth, I found that I was no match for the power of temptation and sin that exercised such control over me. Along with this I discovered that I was increasingly afraid – afraid of people’s opinions, afraid of my own weaknesses, afraid of the future, and greatly afraid of death.
Brotherly love
I now know that during those two years God was preparing me, first to sense my own desperate need for deliverance, but also to treasure the experience of his grace when I finally opened my heart to receive his offer of so great a salvation. It happened quite uneventfully one afternoon.
My 16-year-old brother Shelley had heard a clear presentation of the gospel a couple of weeks earlier and had dedicated himself to follow Christ. The change was instant and quite obvious to the whole family and my own longing for a genuine transformation was sparked afresh.
Although still a young Christian, Shelley had decided that it was important that he shared his new-found faith with the family. So he sat me down and carefully explained how the sacrificial death of Jesus was God’s provision of a substitute to pay for all our sins. When he finally popped the question ‘Would you want to receive Jesus into your life?’, I was more than ready. I said I would like that very much, and he led me as I prayed: ‘Lord Jesus, please forgive me, take my life and make me the person that you want me to be.’
Knowledge and enthusiasm
There has not been a day when I have not thrilled at the memory of that profound moment when by grace through faith I was transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God’s dear Son. My first year as a Christian was a wilderness experience; I didn’t know what I was to do and how I was expected to follow Christ. But, once I was included in a Bible study group, I began to grow in knowledge and enthusiasm. Soon I was witnessing and praying for the salvation of our school mates and leading the new believers in Bible study and discipleship.
From dusting to reading!
We loved reading and there were lots of books at home, but only one Christian paperback, titled The Man God Uses by Oswald J. Smith. My mother had picked it up from the Logos when the Christian book-ship visited the Colombo harbour in the early 1970s. It had stood on the shelf, unread for years, and whenever it was my turn to clean the bookshelves I would dutifully dust it and put it back. Now though, with my heart warmed to the things of God, and not having any Christian material other than the Bible, I took it up to read. When I finished I wanted nothing more than what the title said; I only wanted to be a man God uses. I had always liked the idea of becoming a doctor, so I thought perhaps I could become a medical missionary.
It was two more years before the Lord issued a more specific call to service. I was 19 and a few months away from my A-levels. Shelley, a few friends and I had been praying regularly for the salvation of the lost in Sri Lanka. We would sometimes spend whole nights in prayer, seeking the Lord. Sri Lanka at that time had the reputation of being the ‘only country in the non-Muslim world where the number of Christians had declined’ over the previous 100 years. God took our pleas to him seriously and in 1983 he called us through the Holy Spirit and by fire!
That April a number of us attended a Christian conference over five days. From the very first session we all began to feel that God had brought us there for a greater purpose. When the conference ended, we had developed a greater trust in the power of God and the accompanying presence of the Holy Spirit. We found ourselves driven to prayer and the study of the Word, and a great urgency attended our preaching. In the next two months God independently called seven young friends between the ages of 19 to 24, including Shelley and me, to commit ourselves to ‘full-time’ ministry. Most had to leave their jobs to be obedient to the call. I had to wait until I completed my A-levels in August before accepting my pastor’s invitation to serve as a youth worker. But none of us expected that the call to ministry would also come with a severe test of our convictions.
Severe testing
In July 1983, Sri Lanka experienced its most severe ethnic riot since the conflict had begun in the 1950s. Some 3,000 were killed and over half-a-million made refugees. Thousands of shops and homes were burned. A mob razed our home to the ground, leaving nothing but ashes and a few standing walls. Of the seven young men that had committed to ministry, four of us now found ourselves in refugee camps, having lost all our earthly possessions except the clothes we were wearing when we fled the mobs. During those weeks in the camp, and thereafter, we had opportunity to consider our call afresh.
It is a matter of great joy and a testimony to the grace of God that all seven continued in the purposes of God. When Shelley died years later in an accident at the age of 26, he was on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). Two others also served in CCC before moving on to Bible school and pastoral ministries. Another became an ordained minister in the Reformed Church, one serves as the head of the Evangelical Alliance, while the other is the head of the one of the largest Christian NGOs in the country. Two days after I completed my exams, I began ministry as a youth worker of the Methodist church.
Ten years later I was married to Denisa, and we had a daughter. The youth ministry had grown to a citywide network of 15 youth groups. Hundreds of young people were being ‘discipled’ and leaders were being trained for the church and society. During those years the civil war had intensified and the political unrest constantly posed new challenges. These became opportunities for the young Christians to put their faith into practice in the real world of need. Denisa and I had seen the favour of God in ministry. Now it was time to be further equipped and to enhance our learning of the Word.
Theological manna
In 1993 I entered the London School of Theology, then known as London Bible College (LBC), on the BA in Theology programme. After ten years of tiring ministry, sitting in classrooms and in chapel services felt like manna for the Israelites and like water from a rock. I was excited to see how the theories made sense (or sometimes disproved themselves) with my insights into the praxis of ministry. It was stimulating to discuss theology with students from all over the world. I had become acutely aware during the latter years of youth ministry that the key to effective evangelism and transformation of a society was the quality of the Christian leaders in a nation. LBC was putting me in touch with an international community of Christian leaders, and God was enlarging my vision and preparing me for a totally different ministry back home.
When I returned in 1996, a new seminary had opened and been running for two years. It had about 60 commuting students and a mostly visiting faculty. I was invited to join full time and, with the Lord’s confirmation, I signed up as a lecturer-cum-dean of students. In just over two years the Council was looking for a new principal and asked me. I was 34, the youngest member on the faculty and the least experienced, but 18 years after I accepted the post of principal, it is clearer that God uses whom he chooses so that all the glory may go to him. During the ensuing years I was graced to complete a ThM in Old Testament and Semitic Languages from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois and the PhD in Religious Studies (New Testament) from the University of Cape Town.
Growing church
Colombo Theological Seminary now teaches theology in three languages, in nine centres in Sri Lanka, to over 800 Christian ministry leaders from all denominations within the church. Since the 1980s the church here has been growing, slowly but surely, and I am excited that in God’s economy I have the privilege, with my colleagues, to help teach, challenge and form those at the vanguard of the kingdom’s advancement in the service of societies in South Asia. To God be all the glory!
