Ardi Wiriadinata and his family reside in the central Javan city of Semarang which has a population of two and a half million people with very diverse cultures.
He is the Pastor of the Peace Plaza Community Church, which was a church plant eighteen months ago. This congregation reaches out to the college student community in the city. Indonesia is teeming with young people and the Christian community sees this as a land of opportunity for the Gospel.
Ardi Wiriadinata is also a lecturer at the Indonesian Baptist Theological Seminary located in his city. There are 400 active students enrolled in the three different programs: Undergraduate, Masters and Doctorate.
The wider Baptist work in Indonesia is likewise flourishing.
"The Indonesian Baptist Convention was initiated in the early fifties," Ardi Wiriadinata explained, "and today twenty-five of the thirty-three provinces of Indonesia have Baptist churches."
There are 13,000 Islands which constitute the nation of Indonesia and there is a lot more church planting work yet to be achieved.
Ardi Wiriadinata went on to say that in the new-style evangelism work, reaching out is critical. In their ministry, with a traditional Baptist focus on the Bible, they concentrate on teaching God's word, equipping the members of the churches to spread this Good News (The Gospel) of Jesus Christ.
As the interview went on, it was clear that Ardi Wiriadinata felt comfortable speaking about these sacred things in a country that sometimes gets negative media coverage.
This interview of Ardi Wiriadinata on the Australian Missionary News IPTV can be viewed at either
http://tv.bushorchestra.com/BWC/videopages/ardi_wiriadinata.html
or www.safeworlds.net
