K. P. Yohannan

Athanasius Yohan (K.P. Yohannan) is the founder and president of GFA World earlier known as Gospel for Asia, a large non-profit missions organization with a focus on India and Asia.

He is also the founding Metropolitan Bishop of Believers Eastern Church (Earlier Believers Church) with the religious title and name of Moran Mor Athanasius Yohan I. Yohannan has authored over 200 books on Christian living and missions.

K.P. Yohannan was born in 1950 and raised in a St. Thomas Syrian Christian (Mar Thoma Syrian Church) family in Kerala, India.

At age eight he became a follower of Jesus.

He was 16 when he joined the Operation Mobilization (OM), an evangelical missions movement, and served them for eight years in the Indian subcontinent.

He continued to have close working relationship and friendship with the late George Verwer, OM's founder.

They met in 1973.

Through an invitation from Dr. W.A. Criswell, Yohannan moved to the United States in 1974 for theological studies at Criswell College (at the time Criswell Bible Institute) in Dallas, Texas.

He graduated with a B.A. in Biblical Studies, becoming the school’s first international student to graduate.

Eventually he also was conferred an honorary degree of divinity by Hindustan Bible Institute and College in Chennai, India.

Though his degree is honorary, he often uses the title of "doctor" when in the United States.

Six months into his undergraduate degree, Yohannan became an ordained clergyman and served in the clergy of a Native American Southern Baptist church for four years near Dallas, Texas.

In 1974, they were married in Germany, Gisela’s birth country.

They have two children, Daniel and Sarah.

In 1979, Yohannan and his wife Gisela started an organization known today as Gospel for Asia, based in Carrollton, Texas until 2014, when it moved to Wills Point, Texas.

In the first year, they helped provide financial support and training to 24 missionaries.

In 1979, Yohannan resigned from his church to devote attention to full-time mission work.

In 1981, he started a chapter of Gospel for Asia (GFA) in Kerala, India, and in 1983 created an Indian headquarters in Tiruvalla.

GFA supports over 50 Bible colleges in various countries.

Yohannan is married to Gisela, who served with him in Operation Mobilization.

In 2015, the church reported it re-organized into 33 dioceses, decreasing from the 36 dioceses reported by Smith in 2009.

According to Believers Eastern Church, its membership includes over 3.5 million people in 10 countries speaking a hundred languages.

The Church currently has 30 Bishops, and the current Metropolitan Bishop is Athanasius Yohan I.

Yohannan is the author of 39 books published in the U.S. and over 200 books published in India.

His books include Revolution In World Missions.

Yohannan's radio broadcast "Road to Reality" is heard on over 900 radio stations in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia.

He has also been heard on the Athmeeya Yathra (Spiritual Journey) daily broadcast for the past 25 years.

This is broadcast in 14 nations in 113 Asian languages.

Athmeeya Yathra now includes a television station and print media.

Gospel for Asia is among the world's largest missionary organizations, adhering to Yohannan's belief in the efficiency and efficacy of “national missionaries”, or missionaries that are native to the nation or culture they serve.

The organization’s primary mission fields include those that live in the “10/40 Window”, referring to the longitudinal coordinates of areas in west Africa, India and east Asia.

Yohannan credits his early work in his native India as inspiration for his focus on the poor and underserved in this region.

He states: “In my head I knew all the answers, and Bible became the tool of the trade for me that I would use to teach and preach and I was doing very well.

People liked my sermons, but finally I said to myself, ‘I’m not the same person I was when the Lord called me to serve Him.

In August 2018, Believers Eastern Church announced that bishops and leaders in the church would take up "ecclesiastical" names in church duties, and Yohannan henceforth would be known as Moran Mor Athanasius Yohan Metropolitan with respect to church duties.

Across the United States and the Western world, he continues to go by K. P. Yohannan as an author, speaker and missionary statesman.

Believers Eastern Church (previously Believers Church) is self-described as "evangelical in nature and outlook, oriental in worship, democratic in function, and orthodox in governance and character" and has congregations and parishes worldwide.

The church has an episcopal governance.

Believers Eastern Church adheres to the biblical faith taught in the historic tenets of the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the unbroken line of the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” The church holds Christ as the head of the Church (Col 1:18); accordingly it is governed by a committee of Bishops, the Synod, with one central Bishop holding the honorary title of "first among equals".

Believers Eastern Church is administratively based in the state of Kerala in southwestern India.