The inception of Chennai Net can be traced back to late 1960's. The early patriotic Christian Leaders like Rev. Dr. Henry Joseph, Pastor John Vasu and Bro. Kutrallam Pillai, were instrumental in gathering pastors for fellowship, amidst a varied mind-set.

In the early 1970's the city had 128 Protestant congregations from 15 denominations. The fellowship started by these early leaders began to grow despite several hurdles.

By 1989 the Church Growth Association of India recorded the presence of 700 Churches including the Catholic Church. By 1994 the city had 1,400 Churches.

On 1st August 1994, Rev. Joshua Pillai - DAWN, (formerly known as Rev. Subramaniam Pillai) who had a passion for reaching cities, called for a City - Reach meeting at HBI. Around 150 pastors, across denominations attended that meeting. A paper was presented showing the status of the church movement and growth trends. Rev. Wolfgang Simpson of DAWN, Europe spoke on church growth around the world. He listed strategies for planting and growing churches. Postal pin codes with nil or poor concentration of churches were highlighted. This was an eye-opener to several pastors and very quickly churches were planted in these pin codes.

Mr. Tim Svoboda, Rev. Vasanthraj Albert, Rev. Jochen Tewes, and others met in 1995 with a burden to bring all churches together to transform Chennai. The group met several times with several leaders and the slow process of envisioning began. Rev. Joshua Pillai - DAWN and Rev. J.N. Manokaran were also added to the group in 1996 and the group began to toil and experiment with various ways of bringing leaders together. Mr. Wilfred Selvaraj of YWAM literally knocked on the doors of several city pastors, inviting them to play a pro-active role in this movement.

The late Mr. Sudhakar, who subsequently led YWAM Chennai, birthed Chenani Care Network in 1998. This was a meeting of all the NGO's and those involved in social service in the city.

In 2000, Rev. J.N. Manokaran under the banner of India Missions Association called for a Chennai city consultation, in which Dr. Jack Dennison also was present. From this he started the 'Chennai Thinkers Group" that brought in leaders like Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Jayakaran, Mr. Abraham Koshy, Mr. Ebenezer and others to think about reaching the 'middle class intellectuals'. This group met several times and talked of the Seven Mind Moulders that would be relevant to the City of Chennai. An outcome was the starting of the Chennai Arts Network under the leadership of Rev. Jeyakaran.

In 2005 Campus Crusade, facilitated by Bro. Thomaskutty, called a meeting of all these leaders. This led to several follow up meetings and in time all the different streams merged as one and Chennai Transformation Network (CTN) was born.

CTN is now a registered Trust with office bearers and patrons covering several churches, NGO’s and service minded Christians.

Information supplied by: Rev. Dr. J.N. Manokaran,