(CP) K.P. Yohannan, the founder and director of Gospel for Asia and the metropolitan of the Believers Eastern Church, has died of a cardiac arrest on the age of 74.
Gospel for Asia announced Yohannan’s death in an announcement, noting that the influential Indian Christian leader died on Wednesday morning at a hospital in Dallas, Texas.
Yohannan was struck by a automotive while taking a walk the day before. While on the hospital recovering from the accident, he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest.
“We praise God for allowing His servant the strength to run his race faithfully and with much endurance to the very end,” GFA stated within the announcement.
“Millions of lives are endlessly transformed due to his tireless passion and repair unto his Savior. May God receive him into the embrace of the saints. Christ is risen! May his memory be everlasting!”
Yohannan is survived by his wife, Gisela; his son Daniel, daughter Sarah and 7 grandchildren: David, Esther, Jonah, Hannah, Lydia, Naomi and Noah.
Yohannan was born in Southern India in 1950 because the youngest of six sons, reportedly in a village where St. Thomas the Apostle had planted a church in the primary century, in line with his online obituary.
Inspired by the instance and friendship of missionary George Verwer, Yohannan entered the ministry and received a theological education at Criswell College within the Nineteen Seventies.
Yohannan founded Gospel for Asia in 1979. He became metropolitan of the Believers Eastern Church in February 2003. BEC identifies as Evangelical, nevertheless it adopts more high church worship practices and attire.
A prolific author, in line with GFA World, Yohannan has had around 250 books published in Asia and 12 books within the United States.
From 2008 to 2022, Yohannan contributed a couple of opinion columns to The Christian Post, the last of which was published in May 2022 and titled “How can we reclaim this ‘vanishing generation’?“
“I feel we have left an entire generation floundering because — despite all our teaching materials, church programs, and activities — they’ve never had a real encounter with the living Christ. Instead, we have been led to consider the smartphone generation needs constant media bombardment,” he wrote on the time.
“Our misplaced emphasis on fast-moving media and rock-concert volume has replaced the much-needed timeless discipline of searching for God in quiet meditation and reverent silence. As a consequence, our worship services have focused on performance moderately than coming before God.”
In recent years, Yohannan and Gospel for Asia have faced legal battles amid allegations of economic misconduct regarding their handling of donations.
In one lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that hundreds of thousands in donations earmarked for charitable purposes were as an alternative used to run for-profit businesses and construct personal residences and a headquarters in Texas.
In 2019, the ministry reached a $37 million settlement over the allegations, with Yohannan and GFA’s Chief Operating Officer David Carroll denying any wrongdoing.
Among those that have come to Yohannan’s defense after the settlement was announced is popular Crazy Love preacher Francis Chan, who served as a GFA board member. Chan said he hired a financial expert and went to GFA’s Texas headquarters to research the claims of misappropriation.
“After careful research, our conclusion was that there was no money misappropriated and that every one funds were channeled to the intended areas,” Chan said in 2019.
However, GFA was expelled from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability in 2015 and from the National Religious Broadcasters in 2016 over the controversy.
In November 2020, the Indian government, which over the past several years has cracked down on foreign-funded Christian mission organizations amid an increase of Hindu nationalism inside the country, accused BEC and Yohannan of “siphoning out” tax-exempted funds for “personal and other illegal expenses.”
BEC spokesperson Fr. Sijo Pandapallil told CP on the time that the matter was being misrepresented and “wildly mischaracterized on social media.”
In 2021, Greg Zentner of Nova Scotia filed a $170 million class-action lawsuit against GFA, accusing the ministry of defrauding hundreds of Canadians and churches by utilizing funds for “improper purposes.”
In 2022, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed a motion to certify the criticism, concluding that the plaintiff “failed to point out some basis actually for his allegation that the defendants intentionally misappropriated donor funds in a fashion that had no connection to any purported charitable purpose.”
