STN’s Strivings in the State
India is a challenging country to reach with the gospel due to its diversity of languages. It’s 1.3 billion people have 16 major languages and 1600 dialects. Bible translators such as William Carey served the Lord with many sacrifices and translated the Bible into several of those languages, but not all. Even the areas that have a Bible do not yet have very many other resources translated into their language.
The state of Odisha in India.
While Odisha had the Bible in Oriya, the BTCP curriculum that STN uses was not available in that language. Jose Simon, our regional director for STN in North India and Nepal, started going to Odisha over 5 years ago and offering classes anyway. The task was extremely difficult. During this time, the President of STN, Paul Brown, wrote on September 4, 2018, “Ryder, I am so grateful to God for you and Jose as you make the long and difficult treks to train these precious saints for ministry. It is only appropriate that our sacrifice would be equal to or greater than the sacrifice these dear brothers are making to be trained. May God use both of you in a mighty way to give these men a greater love for God, tools for ministry, a heart for their people, and a passion to see churches multiply all over Odisha.”
Even with the difficulty of teaching this way, several students graduated in 2019. But it will be much easier now thanks to one of our ministry partners, Crossing Culture International. They have been working diligently on translating the curriculum into Oriya and it is now available!
2019 Odisha graduates pictured above
Presently, we have 200 pastors in Odisha who are waiting to be trained using this new BTCP translation.
Please pray for the Lord to provide the needed finances to pay for the travel expenses of our teachers and for the study materials for the students. The current cost is approximately $100 per student for the BTCP curriculum, a study Bible, and some reference tools.
Years ago, Pastor I.’s father sought to plant a church energized with a passion for evangelism and the building-up of believers. Moving away from the more traditional way of growing a congregation, he preached the Word in several areas—a ministry that Pastor I. K. became a part of in 2008 and now leads as pastor.
Ryder Kumar is serving as our International Director. As one of the founding members of Shepherding the Nations, it was Ryder's vision to see pastors trained and equipped for ministry that became the foundation of Shepherding the Nations.
Shepherding the Nations has identified qualified and called men who are already working in unreached areas of India and Nepal. We are providing the training to better equip them and the financial resources to support them in their ministries.
Our directors have been equipped to teach our ten-volume training curriculum. These key men are training indigenous pastors and church planters while also providing accountability, resources materials, and support. 
During our training program, we provide our ten volume set of curriculum from the Biblical Training Centre for Pastors (BTCP) in their local language. We also provide essentials resources such as Bible Concordance and Study Bible. We have been able to provide these books to all of our pastors through the generous donations of our donors. These books can be purchased for about $10 each or an entire set for $100.