“Bring 5 families to Jesus … and then pastor them”

"Grace opens doors," says a productive, longtime church planter in Sri Lanka

Adrian de Visser, who has been doing church planting through his Kithu Sevana Ministries organization in Sri Lanka since 1993.

Adrian de Visser’s approach to church planting in unreached areas of Sri Lanka is simple but radical.

“I believe each person who comes to know the Lord has to be a missionary,” he said. “So we ask each one to pray for five families and then, if you lead them to Jesus, become the pastor of those families.”

Over 32 years, de Visser has seen this effort multiply into hundreds of small “grace communities” throughout the country. In 2007, the Sri Lankan government honored him for his social development work among the poor—a rare recognition for a member of Sri Lanka’s small Christian minority and a testimony to his gracious, holistic style of ministry.

In the following Q&A, de Visser discusses how he has combined grace and truth to make a lasting impact for Christ in Sri Lanka.

How do you communicate grace in your Asian context?

I celebrate God’s grace in calling me and giving me the identity of a child of God. Asia is dominated by graceless religions, and as a result, our people are also graceless. I see people working their whole life to collect merit, trying to become acceptable to God. You have to be devout and holy, but there is no certainty of forgiveness. There is that nagging thought, “Have I done enough to rescue myself for the next life?” But I know that Jesus accepted me while I was yet a sinner.

Where do you go to plant churches?

We go only to unreached areas. The main cities have been reached, but I would call 20 of Sri Lanka’s 25 districts largely unreached. In the far south, the Christian population is fewer than 1,000 out of a million people. About 95 percent of our new believers are converts, generally from Buddhism or Hinduism.

Summarize your strategy and approach.

I am very committed to indigenous theology. I am glad to have received training in the US [de Visser earned a master’s degree in missions at Columbia International University in 2002], but when you use Western approaches in Asia, you create a mess.

My missiology is based on John 1:14. Jesus was “full of grace and truth.” Grace opens the door for truth. I do not deny truth, but I follow the biblical order.

When we feel God is calling us to an area, we send a couple there. Our first two steps are prayer—because we believe we must bind the strong man and the kingdom of darkness before we can build the Kingdom of God—and incarnational ministry, becoming part of the community and caring for them. Jesus did not come with a program; he came and became man. Prayer, incarnation, and care open the door into the community.

We intentionally keep our churches small. As the gospel spreads, we end up with clusters of churches with people who care for each other and for those outside the Kingdom. If the group does not maintain its focus on reaching the unreached, it loses its vitality.

Talk about your approach to discipleship in the Sri Lankan context.

I have been disappointed with many of the contextualizing efforts I have seen. You have to take into consideration the worldviews of nonbelievers. If you don’t replace a non-Christian worldview with a biblical worldview, you will still be pagan in your behavior.

For example, in animistic religions, people bribe the deities to get what they want. When people learn to bribe in the vertical dimension, they also bribe in the horizontal dimension. If we think that God exists just to do our will, no ethical conversion will happen. Too many churches are presenting Christ in this way, with no call for transformation.

Discipleship is not primarily individual but communal. It involves doing life together. Jesus discipled the apostles in the context of a community. When you do that, then you can show people what is or is not biblical.

Share a favorite illustration from your ministry experience.

A middle-aged couple came up to me after I preached in one of our churches. She was battling with a demon that was traumatizing her. (You don’t have to be a Pentecostal to deal with the demonic, you just have to be a true follower of Christ.) I prayed with her and she was finally liberated. This had nothing to do with me or anyone else; it was the Savior bringing her from darkness to light.

They shared their experience with neighbors, the woman’s husband started praying for people, and others were healed. They built a small chapel out of hay as a place of worship. But leaders from other religious groups were angry and set fire to their chapel.

They called me. I said I would come and we could meet under a mango tree. But we also took the case to court. We won the case, and the people who had set the fire had to pay compensation. It was an historic victory and we established our freedom of worship.

That church has planted five daughter churches. The healings open the door to conversion, but transformation is the ultimate goal. A small group of people become the witness to the next community.

De Visser’s ministry will host younger leaders from Asia and Africa for a missions and church planting conference on August 4–12, 2025. For more information, please reach out to Pastor de Visser at adriandevisser144@gmail.com.