HOW IT BEGAN

Get to know our Founder. Experience his heart-felt journey of following God's leading.

John Gilman grew up with a dream of ministry in India, but God guided him in a different direction: media ministry in the United States. He felt privileged to be part of the early days of The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).

It was in Pat Robertson's office in 1968 that he experienced a vision that was to set the direction for the rest of his life:

As he sat at a desk, praying, he began to see projected there on the blank white wall a sort of motion picture, the life story of Christ. It was amazing for its realism.

John felt overwhelmed by this image on the wall...

"I saw in it the future of ministry that God had been preparing me for, my whole life! I was sure that He was calling me to make a movie about the life of Christ, in India, with Indian actors, that could be shown across the nation!" John says.

This wouldn't be an American film that the people of India could never in a million years relate to. This would be an Indian film, with an Indian Jesus, surrounded by Indian settings, speaking a language Indian people would understand."

John knew the people of India were already pre-disposed to religion and seeking spiritual answers - when they saw the one true God in the film, they would be overjoyed to finally find the real, eternal answer to their suffering.

"I was so excited about the idea of a motion picture of the life of Christ... but was I the man to do it? I wasn't sure how to begin, despite the media knowledge I was gaining every day. It almost seemed I was in a holding pattern as far as the movie went, although it was always on my mind."

John's career in Christian broadcasting had reached the top. He was in charge of programming and was a frequent host on "The 700 Club." When an Indian man stopped by to share his burden for evangelizing his country using mass media, and enlisted CBN's help, his coming seemed providential to John.

"I couldn't stop asking him questions about India! His visit crystallized this question in my mind: if God could use the media to reach the United States with Christian TV, why couldn't he use the media to reach India with the gospel?"

In 1979, John felt led to leave his influential Christian broadcasting position and go to India to investigate how this movie could be made. Imagine his surprise when he arrived to see a huge billboard ad for a movie called Dayasagar with an image of an Indian Jesus carrying His cross up Mount Calvary.

"What had happened?" John wondered.

"Had some other missions organization beat me to my dream? And if God had called me to make a Jesus film for India, why had He let this film be released now? My movie would be old by the time it came out! My heart was breaking, but by faith I knew: a film about Jesus was the key to my ministry calling in India."

He went back to the home of the missionaries with whom he was staying and asked them to take him to the movies.

"I remember that night so vividly. Although I could not understand the words of the dialog, every single scene looked as if it were totally biblically accurate. I was stunned by the visual drama of the film."

It was striking how the Indian audience responded. They talked to each other, and talked back to the movie, throughout the showing. It was as if they were completely caught up in the experience — to the point that during the crucifixion, they began to weep and cry aloud: "They're killing an innocent man!"

"But their reaction to the scene of Easter morning again caught me off guard. The movie house exploded in cheers and shouts of triumph. I had never seen any media event impact an audience the way this movie touched everyone in the cinema that night."

John was forced to the realization: the movie he'd had in mind had already been made. So what was God's calling?

"God must have intended me to make sure that every one in India had a chance to see it, and an opportunity to respond by choosing Jesus," John says.

Over the next few years, God opened doors for John to connect with the film's director and lead actor, Vijay Chandar, a renowned Indian filmmaker and star who had begun the production as a Hindu, but had committed his life to Christ by the time the film was finished. He was amazed that John had come with such a vision to take his film into every village of India — but confirmation came from a strange source:

Vijay's Hindu father told him, "Vijay, whatever John says, you do it! Your Christ has sent John."

Thus the idea for Dayspring International was born: a ministry of mobile film teams that would crisscross the vast nation of India, showing the movie and explaining the way to new life in Christ, again and again, night after night, in village after village, until everyone in India has heard the life-transforming message of the gospel!

Then, as churches would be planted, this ministry would become the catalyst for engaging every villager with the Scriptures, establishing a church as a community center for providing spiritual, emotional and physical aid, thus elevating every village in India to a new way of living!

What was once a vision on a wall for John is now his life's work. From one man to now thousands serving together... Dayspring International is truly transforming every village of India.

For more on Dayspring International's strategy to transform every village, check out the What We Do section of the site.

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