1949 Old Elm Road, Lindenhurst, IL 60046 | www.rimi.org
Our History
In the fall of 1988 Saji Lukos came to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois where he obtained his Master of Divinity in missions. He originally planned to be a teacher in the U.S. but God’s plan was different. God gave him an increasing burden for India during his time at Trinity. He gathered information on every state of India and prayed daily for the country. Saji graduated in 1992 and promptly returned to India with a passion and urgency. For six months, Saji traveled from North to South, East to West in India. Though living there for most of his life, for the first time, Saji finally saw India through the eyes of Christ. He was broken and knew that God was calling him to bring the Gospel to all of India, especially North India. Saji, and his wife Moni, responded to God's call for reaching Indians in India and worldwide. He gathered 12 influential leaders in the summer of 1993 and founded Reaching Indians Ministries International (RIMI) in the USA and Mission India (MI) in India.
RIMI is an international, interdenominational evangelical Christian missions agency established in 1993. Our vision is to glorify Christ by training indigenous leaders who establish vibrant Christ-centered communities in South Asia and beyond in order to transform lives spiritually, socially and economically. This is implemented by the partnership of God's people everywhere.
Our Mission
RIMI's India based ministry is called MISSION INDIA which is located in Nagpur, Central India. Today we have over 1,300 church planters with over 8,950 house churches, a leading theological seminary in Nagpur with 27 regional training centers.
Our mission is to expand Christ’s Kingdom through evangelism and church planting, which is further advanced by leadership development and compassion services to all people especially the poor and marginalized people of the society including Dalits, rural women and slum children. Our social and economic development programs include: health care, educational centers, orphanages, micro-finance, vocational training, literary training, and much more.
We have many compassion projects including our 18 Mercy Homes and our Helping Hands program, which together serve over 440 children. We are involved improving health awareness through various medical training seminars and by building a 100 bed hospital in Nagpur. We are also establishing village English medium schools, providing employment opportunities through micro-finance, and providing vocational training for poor and marginalized people.
This year about 500 students will be trained to become tomorrow's influential leaders for transforming South Asia and Beyond.
Why RIMI?
RIMI is indigenous missions organisation - Indians reaching India with the partnership of God’s people from everywhere.
Our goal is to reach Indians all over the world not just in India. Within 5 years we hope to enter Saudi Arabia where the Indian population is estimated at 50%. We are praying for someone to spearhead a US ministry to reach Indians here as well.
For the church planters that we support, we only raise 50% of their financial need and require them to raise the other 50% themselves. We wean them off of full support within 3-6 years in order to build independent, self supporting churches.Even after they have been weaned off of support they stay under our umbrella of authority for continued leadership development and accountability purposes.
Our Mercy Homes extend help to any child that has a need - not just to orphans. Many of these children would be sold into slavery or prostitution if they did not the option of coming to our Mercy Homes. When our children finish high school we do not put them out into the streets. We encourage them to go to college and we help pay for that education as well.