Rev. J.N. Manokaran is a Diploma holder in Civil Engineering and hails from Tamil Nadu, India. He was working in the Tamil Nadu Government when God called him to serve as missionary in Haryana, North India. He served as a cross-cultural missionary for eleven years. He did his B.D. by extension while he was a missionary and earned his M..Th. (Missions) in the Hindustan Bible Institute. He is presently pursuing a Ph.D. in Urban Missions from the South Asia Institute for Christian Studies, Bangalore. He is presently working with Global Resources Development Associates which is a consultancy for missions in planning, training and leadership. Rev Manokaran has written nearly 200 articles in several magazines on social issues, biblical teaching, missions, leadership and has compiled one book on prayer and co-authored another book on Urban Missions.



Back

Discipling the Urban Middle Class
- JN Manokaran

The new global economy in the modern uni-polar world has facilitated formation of cities around the world. United Nations estimate that in the next forty years 1000 new million population cities will emerge and most of them will be in world's poorest regions. A good number of them will be in Asia.

Traditional approach of missions to cities is to reach the urban poor which is vital and important as they are receptive. Cities cannot be simply categorized as rich and poor. A new class, called middle class has emerged. They are educated, articulate, opinion formers and they think globally. To reach them is strategic. For example, The Middle Class in India is estimated to be 250 million.

In this new context, it is essential for the church to devise innovative, creative and relevant strategies to reach and disciple the middle class.