Faith that Shaped the Future
When Canadian Baptist missionaries arrived in India more than a century ago, they planted seeds of faith that would eventually grow into a sustained ministry impacting millions.
Serving in the states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, they could not have imagined one of their spiritual descendants would one day study in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and return to India to shape a significant ministry of lasting influence.
That spiritual descendent is Rev. Dr. A. B. Joseph Kishore, and today, Acadia Divinity College is proud to name him as the 2026 recipient of the ADC Alumni Distinguished Service Award.
The Foundations of Ministry
Dr. Kishore arrived at ADC in 1976, the third generation of a family whose faith traces directly to the work of Canadian Baptist missionaries. His great-great-grandfather came to the Lord through their witness. That faith was then passed to his grandfather, then his father, Dr. A.B. Masilamani (a gifted evangelist himself), who served as a visiting professor at ADC the very year his son enrolled. The choice of seminary was, in every sense, a homecoming.
He completed his Master of Divinity in 1979, but what he received at ADC stayed with him long after graduation. Two professors, in particular, proved especially influential. Dr. Millard Cherry’s systematic theology sparked an enduring conviction: Christian ethics, rooted in the teachings of Jesus, is not an abstract discipline but the very architecture of a flourishing human life. A single paper on that subject, Dr. Kishore recalls, changed the entire direction of his thinking. Dr. Harold Mitton’s homiletics gave him something equally durable: a method of sermon construction whose “fundamentals are still going on in my ministry even now,” nearly 50 years later.
Dr. Kishore went on to earn a Master of Theology at Princeton and a Doctor of Ministry at Fuller, but he is quick to credit ADC with laying a strong foundation in “doctrine, learning, and practical theology.”
“In fact,” he says, “my Doctor of Ministry was a breeze because the strong foundations were already laid.”
Commitment to the Core
Those foundations became the blueprint for New Life Associates, the ministry Dr. Kishore has led in Hyderabad since 1990. The ministry is deliberately patterned after the example of Jesus in the four Gospels. Dr. Kishore describes these as his five core ministries:
- Preaching the gospel
- Teaching the Word of God
- Training believers in discipleship
- Healing the sick
- Helping the poor
“Do not deviate from the core,” Dr. Kishore urges, and the breadth of New Life Associates is a testament to how seriously he embraces that call.
The New Life Ministry Centre campus houses Trinity Community Church, the Emory Mission Hospital, a conference centre, a television studio, and residences. Together, ministries and facilities are physical expressions of the conviction that the gospel touches every dimension of human life.
Compassion in Action
Dr. Kishore preaches the gospel and teaches the Word through television broadcasts in five languages including English, Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, and Malayalam. Each week he reaches an estimated six million people across India and beyond. He holds gospel and revival meetings throughout the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, where thousands have responded to the call to follow Christ. In addition to pastoring three growing churches, he also hosts the bi-annual four-day New Life Pastors’ Conference, which gathers 150 pastors from denominations across the region. The conference equips the attending pastors in preaching, evangelism, and discipleship, all at New Life’s expense, including travel and accommodations.
And then there is the hospital. The Emory Mission Hospital, built in 2010, treats up to 100 outpatients daily at subsidized rates and offers state-of-the-art surgical care through Dr. Kishore’s son and daughter-in-law, both physicians. The hospital also sends mobile clinics into villages where basic health care would otherwise be out of reach. Every month, 50-plus struggling families receive free groceries: rice, lentils, and cooking oil. This is the practical expression of Christ’s compassion made tangible.
At 72, Dr. Kishore reflects on a lifetime of ministry not with weariness but with gratitude. “My life has been absolute fulfilment,” he says, pointing to John 12:26 as the verse that has carried and sustained him throughout his journey:
If anyone serves me, him my Father will honour.
Dr. Kishore is the first Indian alumnus to receive this award—a recognition long deserved and a reminder of how far the seeds planted in Wolfville can travel.
