The Karenga and you!

I posted some info on the Karen people the other day and made the egregious error of saying they lacked Christian witness. There are some subsets of the Karen that indeed have almost no Christians, such as the Pa-O Karen of Thailand, but in general the Karen do have Christian witnesses among them, including indigenous believers.

But let me now introduce you all to the Karenga of India! (Not related to the Karen at all, but you can see how they might be confused.)

The Karenga are ethnically related to Bengalis and speak Bengali, they are all Hindus. Their population is about 43,000 in India (and about 1400 in Bangladesh).

All the information I could find on the Karenga was at Joshua Project.

The first step that we as Christians must undertake is to learn about the Karenga, and to do the research needed to get a basic understanding of their culture. I am sure that there are Christians who know plenty about the Karenga, especially Indian Christians who live with them and among them, as well as probably some missionaries who know some. There may also be historical records and books that have ample info on the Karenga scattered across the library stacks of Europe and America. But the issue is that this information is not available.

One way to start accumulating this information without actually going to India or Bangladesh and living there is to start a website, much like the ones for the Karen people or for the country of Morocco which I have linked to in the past. If you put an e-mail address on there people who know about the Karenga could forward you information. You could also, in your spare time, visit some libraries and see if you can turn up old info on the group.

Then a short term trip of one or two weeks could be undertaken. This would be something like a fact-finding mission. It would involve prayer and going to the cities and villages where the Karenga live and taking pictures, listening to people's stories and memories, and observing their religious practices. The short term mission (one or two weeks) would not need to take place right away.

So here is an outline for how globalization can assist in the mission of the church to the unreached. Many people want to support missions but they say, all I know how to do is computer stuff and administrative stuff. Setting up a website these days is easy, even a simple blog can work at the beginning. If you have a college degree (in any discipline), then you also have the skills needed to act as a collector of knowledge and data.

This act of collecting knowledge, and then mobilizing prayer based on this knowledge, is a foundational first step in reaching the unreached with the Gospel of our Lord and the hope of salvation. If you are interested or have any questions send me an e-mail: winterlightning a+ safe-mail d0+ net.

Abu Daoud