Died: Chungthang Thiek, Pastor of Manipur’s Prayer Movement
The Indian evangelical leader sought a space in the hills where people “could commune with God without interruption.”
Chungthang Thiek, a revivalist and preacher who launched a prayer movement in the hills of Manipur, a northeastern state in India, died on January 4. He was 75 and had been battling vocal cord cancer for months.
Thiek obeyed the vision he received on July 11, 1986, the last day of a youth camp he was leading, instructing him to “Arise and rebuild,” words that first led him to build a discipleship and evangelistic ministry that soon evolved into something more specific.
Following a trip to South Korea, Thiek returned with a vision to provide a place for people to pray and started to pray for the same. In 1990, he established “Prayer Mountain” right outside Manipur’s second largest city of Churachandpur, which has welcomed hundreds of thousands of Christians from across the country since.
A former math teacher turned evangelist, Thiek had a heart for Manipur and learned all of the state’s languages and dialects. His life’s work became defined by that vision at youth camp. There, he later recalled, God spoke to him from the book of Nehemiah 2:17:
Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”
“The situation in Manipur and especially in Churachandpur at that time (1986) was very bad. Alcoholism had gripped most of our young people, as well as drug abuse,” said Thiek’s former ministry partner Lalmanlien Mana, who at that time was one of the campers. “Their spiritual lives were way down in the pit.”
But the vision Thiek shared with these young people in his characteristic bluntness and passion stirred ...