Neidert encounters India

By Randy Dillinger

As a biblical scholar and historian, David Neidert BA ’77, MA ’87 enjoys learning about the customs and traditions of different cultures. A trip to the Holy Land added to the knowledge and experience from which he draws when teaching in the classroom or preaching in the pulpit. Yet that trip to the Holy Land and all the cultures he had studied as a historian were not adequate to prepare him for the life-changing experience he would have in India earlier this year.

Neidert’s decision to go to India came after years of coaxing by Jim Lyon, Neidert’s pastor at North Anderson Church of God. Lyon had visited India eight times as a representative of the Christian Brotherhood Hour’s ViewPoint program (www.cbhviewpoint.org), a radio ministry of the Church of God. Lyon had invited Neidert to join him on several of those trips, but Neidert never felt the time was right to go. When plans were being made for another trip to India in January 2004, Lyon again approached Neidert. This time, the offer was accepted. “I really felt like this was the right time,” Neidert says.

On January 5, Neidert, Lyon, and four other team members boarded a plane with blank tapes, empty notebooks, and recording equipment in tow, and thus began their journey to India.

Over the next three weeks, the team maintained a fast-paced itinerary, covering thousands of miles by plane, train, and auto. At every stop, the team sought to capture on tape the work of Church of God partnerships in India through on-site recordings and personal interviews, resulting in five half-hour radio programs that were broadcast on ViewPoint in February and March of this year.

Officially, Neidert’s function on the team was that of an observer and commentator, but on several occasions, he was asked to preach or teach. In one instance, he helped officiate at a graduation ceremony for student nurses at the India Gospel League, Sharon Cancer Center, and General Hospital in Salem.

Neidert had no prior context for what he experienced in India. His senses were inundated with the sights, smells and the sounds of India.

“The first three days,” says Neidert, “I kept asking myself, ‘What is happening to me? Why in the world am I here?’ I was really struggling with that. So I started praying every morning, ‘God, show me what I need to see; tell me what I need to know.’”

On his third day in India, Neidert experienced a breakthrough. “We were in a Land Rover, going through the mountains,” he recalls. “There were no guardrails, no signs, the road was in total disrepair, and we were still driving about 35-40 miles per hour — dodging and weaving around animals, people, bicycles, cars, and massive coal trucks.” Neidert surrendered his anxieties and placed his trust in God. “My whole body just relaxed and I said, ‘God, this is your thing.’”

Neidert’s experiences in India have had a profound effect on his understanding of his own culture and Christianity in America in particular. The contrasts that Neidert makes are stark and convicting.

“I’ve come to realize that I can live with much less,” he says, “and that my life is not the sum total of the things that I possess. As an American, if I find myself in times of difficulty, I may have the ability to change the outcome,” he says. “But in India I met so many Christians who cannot change or manipulate their situation. When they go to prayer, they say, ‘Father, you know this is important. We believe it is the center of your will, and we pray that you will show yourself in it.’ That has profoundly affected me.”