Dr. KP Yohannan has been crisscrossing the globe for the past 40 years, challenging the Body of Christ to discipleship. His call to a radical lifestyle—with an all-out commitment to Jesus—has left its impact on nearly every continent. To the Church caught up by the tidal waves of compromise and self-preservation, Yohannan's life message is a fresh word to this generation and yet as timeless as the scriptural mandate itself.
Yohannan is the founder and director of GFA, a Christian mission organization deeply committed to seeing communities transformed through the love of Christ demonstrated in word and deed. He is also the metropolitan bishop of Believers Church, an indigenous church in South Asia.
He is also the founder and current Metropolitan Bishop of Believers Eastern Church with the religious title and name of Moran Mor Athanasius Yohan I (Earlier Believers Church). He is the pioneer in establishing one of the largest child care projects in India called Bridge of Hope[citation needed]. K. P. 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 8 he became a follower of Jesus. He was 16 when he joined Operation Mobilization, an evangelical missions movement, and served with them for eight years on the Indian subcontinent. Through an invitation from Dr. W. A. Criswell, K. P. 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. He eventually was also conferred an honorary degree of divinity by Hindustan Bible Institute & 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, K. P. Yohannan became an ordained clergyman and served as a clergy of a Native American Southern Baptist church for four years near Dallas, Texas. In 1979, K. P. Yohannan and his wife Gisela started an organization known today as Gospel for Asia, which resided in Carrollton, Texas until 2014, in which year it was moved to Wills Point, Texas. In the first year, they helped provide financial support and training to 24 missionaries.[14][12] In 1979, he resigned from his church to devote his attention full-time to mission work. In 1981, he started a chapter of Gospel for Asia in Kerala and in 1983 created an Indian headquarter in Tiruvalla. GFA supports more than 50 Bible colleges in various countries.