Contextualization and its Abuse

In the United States, there is currently a debate about whether preachers should contextualize the Gospel. Those who oppose contextualization view those who favor it as people who compromise and undermine the true Biblical Gospel in the name of winning a hearing. Some of those who advocate for contextualization claim that those who don't contextualize (as they define it) are are going to fail to reach the current generation.

I've done a number of posts that deal with the issue of contextualization, realizing that some readers may misunderstand where I am coming from, and exactly what I am advocating. For those who are confused about contextualization or who suspect that I may be compromising the Gospel by advocating for contextualization, I want to recommend Dr. David Sills recent blog post on Reclaiming Contextualization. Sills discusses what is proper contextualization, why it is necessary, and how the term has been abused and redefined in recent debates.

Music Education and Missions

A young man from one of our supporting churches recently emailed with the following question, "I was wondering if you have ever heard of anyone using music education as a platform for missions. If someone wanted to do something like that, how might they get started?" I imagine that there are lots of Christians out there who are interested in missions but not quite sure if their interests and skills are usable on the mission field and if so, how. So I thought I would post our answer to his question in hopes that others who are wondering about getting involved in missions, particularly in the area of music, would be benefited.

"There are lots of ways to use music education in missions. Formally, you can get a job teaching music education in a school, either in the local language or more likely in English. In a number of countries, there are schools that want to offer an international track where local students have all their classes in English, including various subject matter like science, math, music and so forth. Of course, there are also international schools, both secular and Christian where one can also be a music teacher. The requirements to teach in the Christian (MK) schools are probably lower than the secular ones. Getting a job as a music teacher in a school is something that can be done in an open or a closed country.

Informally, if you are in an open country, doing church planting, student work, or some other kind of ministry, you can teach music classes as a way to build relationships and get to know local people as a way to share the Gospel. This would most likely need to be done in the local language. And when you are in church based (or parachurch) ministry, there is always going to be worship music and worship leading of some sort. Neither my wife nor I are musical so if we were going to form a new church planting team, we would want to have a co-worker (missionary or local) who is musical. Worship is a really important part of the local church and we need music people to complement the other gifts on the team/in the church. Here in Thailand, it is common to teach guitar as form of outreach and I heard about a woman in Cambodia who teaches French horn.

Where to get started? If you are going to do something formal, like teach music education in a school, I'd get a degree in music and teaching/education and spend a few years teaching music in a school in the U.S., all the while serving in your local church. Then after you have some formal experience on your resume, contact the missions agencies working in the country where you want to go and ask about the possibilities for music education and missions. Or you could make some inquiries up front before finishing a music degree or starting to teach. It can never hurt to have some solid information on options before you begin down a certain track. If you want to use music informally for outreach, I'd check into the missions agencies in the country where you want to work and tell them that music is one of the things that you want to do. The more information that the missions agency or denominational missions board has about who you are and what you want to do, the better they will be able to point you in the right direction and match you up with a church planting team or ministry who is in need of someone with your interests and skills.

There is also the area of ethno-musicology which deals with study of indigenous forms of music in order to develop contextualized forms of worship. I don't know much about that but I think that Wycliffe has some people working in that area so you might ask them if interested."

Worldview Evangelism

How do you communicate the Gospel to someone who has absolutely zero foundation in the Bible? In this fascinating and helpful lecture on “Worldview Evangelism”, Don Carson makes the case that sharing the Gospel with postmodern Westerners is not really that different than sharing the Gospel with animistic tribes, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims or anyone else without a Judeo-Christian framework in their cultural background. You start at the beginning. The cross of Christ makes no sense without the Old Testament foundations which provide the framework for understanding the nature and character of God, man’s nature and origin, the truth about the spiritual realm (in contrast to an animistic/occult perspective), and a bit of the history of how God relates to people. Some may wonder whether it is really necessary to go through the work of laying down the Old Testament foundations before getting to Jesus. Take a listen to Don Carson’s opening story about his missionary friend’s experience in India and you’ll get a picture of how a failure to set a framework and teach a Biblical worldview first can lead to syncretism and nominalism.

Although the word “contextualization” is sometimes abused in order to justify a watered-down repackaging of Gospel, it’s proper meaning is to teach and live out the Gospel in a way that is clear and understandable in a given cultural context - whether that be young Western postmodern relativists or Thai Buddhists/animists or anybody else. What is the Biblical truth and how do you teach and express it (live it out) in a given context? Good contextualization should make clear the difference between the Gospel and other worldviews, and in all things not sinful take on the cultural/local garb of where the Gospel is being presented.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, either for the West or for Thailand, but in order to do contextualization well one needs to understand the Bible thoroughly and understand the culture as thoroughly as possible. I am still working on both of those and will be for years to come. By knowing the culture, I don’t mean being conversant with every pop musician or fad TV show that comes down the pike, but rather understanding the beliefs and values that shapes people’s outlook on the world. When that happens, it becomes easier to anticipate common objections and misunderstandings in response to the Gospel (or a particular presentation of it). Understanding the culture also helps one to know what people are interested in, what fires them up, what excites them, what concerns them, what makes them afraid. All these things can provide a conversation starter that can be an opening for talking about spiritual truths. It can also give insight into what areas of discipleship will probably need special attention.

With that said, take a listen to Carson’s talk on "Worldview Evangelism". There are actually five lectures in the series on “Reaching an Untouched Generation”. I have finished the Worldview Evangelism one and highly recommend it. I’ve also started listening to one on “Apostolic Evangelism of Biblical Illiterates” which covers Paul’s sermon in the Aeropagus in Acts 17. This one is quite good so far and I hope to listen to the other three as time allows. (Thanks to Rich Cho for recommending these sermons)

Contextualization

John Piper has provided a very insightful reflection on the possible link between seeker-sensitive churches in the West and radical (over)contextualization on the mission field. Read Piper's blog post on "Minimizing the Bible?"

Contextualization is one of the big issues among missionaries because the way mission work has been done in the past tended to be too Western and did not take sufficient account of the need to adapt the way church, evangelism, discipleship, etc. is done in non-Western cultures. However, in some corners of the mission world today, the pendulum seems to have swung in the other direction. In the name of removing Western cultural barriers that would prevent people from coming to Christ, some missionaries (and local Christians) are allowing or even promoting practices that are actually a compromise of the Gospel. Let me give just a couple examples.

I've heard about a missionary in Northeast Thailand who is teaching converts to call themselves "New Buddhists" (new in the sense that they believe in Christ). Okay, so perhaps the offense of being perceived as converting to a Western religion is avoided by avoiding the label "Christian" but there is certainly an equal if not greater problem which is created. Isn't the term "New Buddhist" disingenuous? Doesn't it create confusion and a lack of clarity? I'm all for hanging onto all aspects of culture that are not sinful but doesn't there have to be some break with the past as a person takes on a new identity in Christ? If I were from an secular humanistic atheistic background and I believed in Christ, could I legitimately stay in my cultural context in order to win my atheist friends and family to Christ by calling myself a "New Atheist"? People whom we are trying to share Christ with are smarter than that and Christians should be more honest than that.

Another example: My wife and I were eating with some Thai friends recently, a Christian couple who work with students. The husband told us that his brother, who is an elder at a well known church in Bangkok, was told by the pastor there that he shouldn't make a fuss about participating in the Buddhist part of his wedding ceremony as he got married to a Buddhist woman. I don't know the exact reason why this Thai pastor, who did a PhD on contextualization at a seminary in the West, advised this man in such a way. Our Thai friends who told us this certainly did not think that this was either appropriate or faithful to the Gospel. But I do wonder if this pastor gave such advice in the name of not causing offense that could impede eventual acceptance of the Gospel by the bride or her family.

I desperately want to see a truly indigenous church established in Thailand but as of right now it is probably not as indigenous / contextualized as it needs to be. I would also argue that it is, in many cases, not as Biblical as it needs to be. I don't say this as if the church in America has it all right. There are many many miserable examples of materialistic, showy, entertainment-oriented churches in America that may be truly indigenous to America but they are not Biblical (just read Slice of Laodicea for some examples). As a missionary, my goal is to think long and deep about what the Bible says and means, and to think long and deep about how that is to be fleshed out in Thai culture (about which I also need to think long and deep, in consultation and dependence on the Thai themselves who know Thai culture better than I do).

Proper contextualization is good and Biblical, but over-contextualization in the name of reaching people for the Gospel is syncretism and a compromise of the very Gospel that is supposedly being preached.

How to Prepare for Missionary Service

At one point in the history of missions, it was rather difficult to get approved for missionary service unless you were an ordained pastor (or married to one). There were exceptions, of course, for those who were going to serve as school teachers, doctors, and other types of ministries that did not primarily involve Bible teaching. However, where we find ourselves today, in many cases, is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Churches and mission organizations vary in their requirements, from very stringent to very lax, but since I got involved with missions about twelve years ago on a short-term trip to Poland, I have heard many times over, from various places, something along the following lines, “If you love Jesus and are willing, then you’re ready to be a missionary.” Granted, loving Jesus and being willing are very important but is that all that is needed? I was reading the book of Ezra today and came across this verse:

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.” (Ezra 7:10)

I am not convinced that every single person who wants to be a missionary should go to seminary and get a Masters of Divinity, but at the same time, every missionary candidate should have a desire to really study the Word of God, and DO IT. I think that those who say that all you need to do in order to be a missionary is love Jesus are perhaps reacting to a perceived over emphasis on academic head knowledge in the missionary preparation process. There are lots of things that are studied in seminaries and Bible schools that don’t “seem” to be applicable to life on the mission field where people are ignorant of even the basics of the Gospel (I will return to this point in a moment). To return to the verse in Ezra, Ezra’s fundamental purpose in studying the Law of God was not to gather head knowledge that could then be spoon-fed to his fellow Israelites so that they could also have lots of head knowledge. Ezra studied God’s word because he desperately wanted to know want God wanted him to DO. God is the awesome and mighty God who had called his people out of bondage in Egypt and was now calling them back from exile in Babylon. Ezra loved God, and he wanted to obey God because he loved God. He wanted to live as God wanted him to live, not in a desperate attempt to earn God’s favor, but to thankfully honor, exalt, and glorify this God who had done much more for Ezra and his people than they could ever do for Him.

Anyone who wants to be a missionary needs to love God enough to search out in God’s Word what it is that God requires of him or her. If someone says, “I love Jesus” but does not have a hunger to know God’s word and obey what they find there, then there is something tragically wrong. This should be the fundamental attitude of the heart: “I want to know how God wants me to live. I hunger to know God and to live in humble submission and devotion to Him because he is my great King and Savior. To desire anything less would be unworthy of my God.” The missionary must love Jesus and that love must be defined as devotion to, and adoration of God that results in eager seeking to know Him in His Word, and to obey Him. An emotional experience in a worship service or a warm feeling after reading a Christian devotional book neither proves nor disproves whether a person loves Jesus. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15). Obedience to Jesus is a good indicator as to whether you love Jesus (read the book of 1 John for more on this).

A second point to be garnered from Ezra 7:10 is this: Before you are ready to teach God’s word to others, you must study it and learn to obey it first. I am convinced that there is no shortage of professing Christians who have truly been converted and love Jesus but do not really understand their Bibles and have not sufficiently worked out some of the very basic implications of God’s Word in their lives. Granted, there is not one single person alive who has FULLY worked out all the implications of God’s Word for every area of their life. However, if someone wants to be a missionary, are they actively studying God’s word and seeking to put it in to practice? Is this person’s life changing in conformity to the Bible in ways that are observable by both the person themselves and those around them? Nobody is perfect, of course, but over a protracted period of time (perhaps 6 months, a year, five years) is there discernable forward progress? If not, then that person is not ready for missionary service and (dare I say it?) may not even be a Christian to begin with.

If you are not making observable progress in putting God’s commandments into practice in your life, then how are you ever going to teach others to do it? Remember, Bible teaching is not about transferring head knowledge but rather explaining and applying Scripture to people’s lives in such away that they develop a love for God expressed in joyful obedience to God. Depending upon the type of missionary service that one is headed for, either more or less formal Bible training may be advisable. I myself only had informal training through InterVarsity and my local church when I went to the mission field in Thailand for the first time as an associate (1-3 year term) with OMF. At that time I was doing some language study and English teaching, with the aim of being a witness and helping the long term OMF church planting in our city. As time went on, I realized that I really wanted to be in more direct church ministry (including teaching and preaching) rather than English teaching, and in order to do that, I would need to get some more formal training. So, I went back to the U.S. and went to seminary. Going to seminary and going through the ordination process were a great help in forming my understanding of Scripture and firming up my convictions in a variety of areas, but all of it was built on the fundamental desire to study God’s Word because I want to know God, and express my love for Him through obeying Him. Also, I was concerned that unless I really knew God’s Word well, I would not be properly prepared to help people understand and apply Scripture like I needed to. I wanted to do all that I could to be a good shepherd to people’s souls and not just try to scrape by with the minimum of Scriptural understanding.

Earlier in this post, I mentioned things that are studied in seminaries and Bible schools that don’t “seem” to be applicable to life on the mission field. After all, who needs to know the intricacies of theology when people don’t even know the Gospel? There is a story that someone once came to famed evangelist D.L. Moody and asked him what he thought about the higher critical theory on the book of Isaiah which claimed that there were two or perhaps three authors writing in the name of Isaiah instead of just one. D.L. Moody replied something along the lines of, “Why should I be concerned about second and third Isaiah when most people don’t know there is even one Isaiah?” There is some truth to Moody’s flippant response, however here’s my case for learning ALL that stuff in seminary, especially the ancient heresies and finer points of theology: All the bad theology and in-house controversies make their way to the mission field eventually. You’ll meet fellow missionaries who imbibed the poison Kool-Aid and are now teaching it on the mission field. If you don’t meet the missionary themselves, then maybe you’ll run into some heretical Christian literature that someone thought it would be a great idea to translate. Or maybe you meet a local believer who read that book that should never have been translated. Besides that, missionaries need to be somewhat knowledgeable about what is going on in the church back home so that they can interact with both other missionaries on the field and also churches back home when they go on home assignment (furlough) eventually. In the mid-19th century, the tiny missionary community in Bangkok had a split because of disagreement over Charles Finney’s teaching that a Christian could achieve perfect obedience to God in this lifetime. Even 150 years ago when communication was much less advanced than now, the big trends in the church at home made it out to the mission field eventually. And when it lands on your doorstep, you can no longer ignore it.

Postively speaking though, one really great reason to soak yourself in the Word of God and learn as much as you can at seminary or Bible school is for the nourishment of your own soul and your ability to persevere in ministry over the long haul. My study of Scripture, both informally and formally in seminary, has helped me to think through and process the experiences (both good and bad) that I experience on the mission field. Also, my wife and I are much more alone on the mission field in Thailand than when we were part of a good healthy church back home, receiving good Bible teaching and encouraging fellowship. There are other missionaries within a half an hour of us but we don’t see them regularly, and due to a variety of issues, our ministry situation is many times not very enjoyable, encouraging, or edifying. There are joys and things to give thanks for, but the struggles and frustrations are just as many. In those times, we are glad to have that deep well of Scripture to draw from - both what we have learned in the past and what we learn afresh as we come expectantly to God’s Word to discover what God wants to speak to us today.

Are Long-Term Missionaries Obsolete?

I was recently talking with a pastor whose church does not send any long-term missionaries. It is a vibrant church with many members and a vision for missions, and they could probably send and support their own long-term missionaries if they wanted to. But it seems that they don’t want to. Why not? This pastor told me about what he believes to be more strategic, more effective, and most cost-efficient way to do missions outreach than sending long-term missionaries.

This pastor and his church conduct many short-term training events and seminars throughout the world, gathering together a large group of local leaders and teaching them in an intensive course. When the course is done, the pastor and his team go back to the USA and the local leaders go back to their homes and churches, presumably to put into practice what they have learned. Besides live teaching from short-term missionaries, this pastor is also committed to getting a video training course called ISOM into the hands of groups of leaders in various countries, to be used in place of live teachers but administered by a local coordinator/facilitator who leads discussions about the video course material. It his belief that Western churches can have a much bigger global impact for the Gospel by doing missions through this type of short-term leadership training rather than paying for long-term foreign missionaries (I am defining “missionary” as one who intentionally crosses barriers of language and culture to share the Gospel with those who would normally not have the opportunity to hear the Gospel within their cultural and/or linguistic context).

His argument is one that needs serious consideration. The church in many parts of the world today is growing rapidly and a number of national churches are maturing (or have matured) to a point where is it unnecessary for foreign missionaries to be doing frontline evangelism among the unreached. A case could be made that in many places long-term missionaries are obsolete and unnecessary because the national church can do the job better and more efficiently than foreign missionaries who require lots of time, money, and language study before they can do the basic tasks of evangelism and discipleship that local Christians can do themselves. Indeed, in many places, the best role for the foreign missionary is that of training and equipping the leaders rather than in the trenches planting new churches - that lengthy process of building relationships with the local people, sharing the Gospel on a personal and small group basis, discipling new believers, and working in only one church or in a limited geographic area. A case could be made that the era of sending long-term missionaries is over. But that is not the case I am going to make. I want to affirm that there is a time and place for strategic leadership training across cultures, through translation, but I am convinced that it is short-sighted and incorrect to see such training as the only form of foreign missions needed today.

The Numbers Argument

Long-term missionaries are still necessary in many places in the world today because in many places there are an insufficient numbers of Christians, mature Christian leaders, and churches to carry out the task of evangelizing their own people. The church is small, and growing, but still in need of outside help on the ground level. For example, Thailand is a country with an evangelical Christian population of about 0.03% of the population. That is a small church. There are hundreds, even thousands of towns and villages without any church what-so-ever, of any denomination. Of the small and scattered churches that do exist, many don’t have a vision for evangelism and new church planting. There are some shining and wonderful exceptions to that generalization but there is still a lot of room for missionaries to evangelize, disciple, and plant churches in areas where there is currently no resident Christian witness (i.e. no church). When the national church matures, in faith and numbers, to a certain point than missionaries roles will need to change according to the changing needs of the church and country. That is already happening to some degree in Thailand, but there is still much work to be done. I speak about Thailand specifically because that is where I am familiar with, but there are many other countries and people groups in similar situations.

The Cultural Contextualization Argument

This could also be called the argument for being relevant or the argument for abandoning a paternalistic attitude. When I was in seminary, our preaching professor told us that one of the basic things to remember in sermon preparation is to know who your listeners are. Who will be listening to your sermon? Who is sitting in that congregation? An elderly church member whose Social Security checks don’t quite cover the expenses? A single mom struggling to keep it all together? A self-confident businessman who thinks he has it all together? A teen who loves God and is at church every time the doors are open but detests her parents? A nominal “Christian” who finds the answers from the psychic helpline more compelling than the truths of the Bible? The identity and life situation of the people of the congregation doesn’t change the truths of the Bible but it should change the way that those truths are presented and applied to the lives of those people. I am not arguing for sugar-coating the Gospel or offering people Christianity-Lite but merely understanding where they are coming from, what are their assumptions about life and faith, and what are their objections to, or misunderstandings about, the Gospel. Jesus spoke to the Pharisees differently than Paul spoke to the Greek philosophers in Athens but they were both preaching the same Gospel.

In cross-cultural teaching and discipleship, it is necessary to understand where people are coming from in order to most effectively help them to understand and apply the Bible accurately. Prepackaged Bible teaching from a Western perspective, addressing the issues of the Western church, and geared towards listeners from a Western background is going to be limited in its effectiveness because it fails to address many of the challenges and issues that Christians in other parts of the world are facing. I am not saying that such teaching is completely ineffective but merely that it is often limited in its effectiveness and is likely not as effective as its teachers believe it to be. Such training by short-term foreign missionaries can be helpful but it is short-sighted to see such training courses as the only necessary strategy in foreign missions today. Because of cultural differences, Bible teaching needs to be contextualized in order to have a long term impact for a healthy indigenous church and not a Western looking church whose growth will be stunted in local soil. The way to contextualize your teaching for greatest effectiveness is to live with the people you are teaching, to learn their language, to learn their culture, to learn the barriers to the Gospel in that culture, and the particular challenges to discipleship in that culture that may be different than those of another culture. How many Western pastors have ever had a person come to them and say that they want to become a Christian but they can’t because then there would nobody to make offerings to their deceased parents? This is not at all uncommon in Thailand, and other parts of Asia.

There are, of course, universal issues that all Christians and pastors face around the world but we should not underestimate the different faces that those challenges take on in different cultures. To make this point, I am listing below some of the cultural and religious differences between a Western worldview and a Thai Buddhist worldview. These are only generalizations so there are bound to be exceptions, but on the whole, I believe that the following observations hold true. As you read through this list, think about how the challenges that Christians and their pastors face in the West are different, and may need to be addressed differently, than those in Thailand.

WESTERN	THAI
Cultural background is Judeo-Christian	Cultural background is Buddhist/Animist
Separation of church and state	Buddhism is national religion
Worldview is increasingly formed by postmodernism (no belief in absolute truth)	Worldview is formed by karma and spirit worship
Everyone has equal right to share opinion	Inferior must defer to the more elder, senior person
Problems should be addressed and dealt with directly	Problems are often ignored until irreparable because preserving social harmony is more important risking open conflict
People are taught to analyze, be critical, and to question the status quo	People are taught through rote memorization and conformity is valued
People are taught to be their own person and follow their hearts even if no one else agrees	People are taught to conform to society’s expectations and find their role in social hierarchy.
The majority of people don’t believe in evil spirits and the occult	The majority of people assume the activity of evil spirits and the necessity of interacting with them in some way

Not only do believers need to know what Scripture teaches, but they need to be taught how to understand the Bible for themselves, discover Scriptural truth, and apply it to their local context. They need someone to walk alongside them and to equip them with the tools to tackle thorny issues rather than given pre-packaged answers that are geared to the issues facing Western Christians. When there is a lack of mature local Christian leaders to do such a task, there is a strong case for an ongoing need for long-term foreign missionaries who take the time to learn the language, learn the culture, and learn the local concerns and issues in order to help local Christians and Christian leaders form a Biblical worldview within their given cultural context. This will take much time, effort, money, and in many cases sacrifice, but in the long run the result will be a healthy mature church that is equipped to apply Scripture to their own lives and the lives of their people, not a small stunted clone of the Western church.

The Incarnation Argument

Besides the above practical arguments, there is the Biblical argument from the incarnation of Christ. Jesus Christ descended from heaven and became a first century A.D. Jewish man. He entered into history in a specific time, specific place, with a specific identity. Jesus took part in the life, language, and culture of first century Judaism and all his teaching was appropriately geared to the background and understanding of his listeners. Jesus’ teaching was not a generic one-size-fits-all lesson that would be presented in exactly the same way to everybody regardless of language, culture, or time period in history. Also, it is worth mentioning that Jesus did not merely send a book but he himself came and lived among people, taking on human flesh, and identifying with mankind. The fact that we do not physically experience Jesus walking among us does not change the example that Jesus left for us to follow and the story of his life among us is left in the pages of Scripture. The Bible is our authoritative Word on who God is and what He requires of us (2 Tim. 3:16, 1 John 1:3, 2 Peter 1:3) and is powerful to change lives (Heb 4:12), and as that Word is lived out in speech and in deed, people can see more fully who Christ is. The apostle Paul knew this well. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul said, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” (Col. 1:24 ESV) Paul is not saying that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was somehow lacking or insufficient to redeem the church, but rather, Paul is saying that through Paul’s sufferings for the sake of the Gospel, the church can see an expression of Christ’s love and grace towards his church. People need to see the Gospel of Christ lived out before them to truly understand who Christ is. When the body of Christ, i.e. the church, obeys God in a life of joyful obedience, functioning in unison according the command of the head of the body, that is, Christ, then not only the church but those who are outside the church see a much clearer picture of who Christ is. Teaching the Bible is essential but living out and modeling the Gospel before those who you want to train and disciple is also essential. Teaching without modeling is incomplete.

Summary

As I said earlier, I believe that there is a valid place for short-term mission trips to train leaders in other parts of the world. Many have been blessed by such teaching. However, it is short-sighted and incorrect to say that this type of missions is the only type of missionary work that is needed in the world today. Christians and churches who are tempted to stop supporting (or not start supporting) long-term missionaries because they are less strategic and less cost-effective than short term training trips should think again. This doesn’t need to be an either/or type of issue, but rather a matter of carefully thinking through what type of missionary work will be most effective and is most necessary in a given context in order to establish a healthy Biblical indigenous church in the long run.

Orientation Course (OC)

We've been in Singapore for about two weeks now and are well into our Orientation Course (OC) at OMF's International Headquarters. We are here together with other new OMF missionaries (and their children) from a variety of countries - USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Philipines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, etc. There are about 40 adults and 16 kids. Fortunately, there are some kind grandmas from UK and Australia are helping with childcare so that Sun and I can attend the lectures and not have to watch Joshua all the time.

The content of the lectures have covered medical issues (insurance, malaria, dengue fever, where to get medical advice and care on the field), finances (how OMF financial system works), the vision and mission of OMF International, times of Bible study, prayer, and worship, and meetings with the International Directors and Intl Medical Advisor. Joshua was able to get his six month shots right here at OMF HQ so we didn't have to go look for some place around town or wait.

The OMF HQ is right across the street from the beautiful Singapore Botanic Gardens, to which we have gone several times already. We went as a family a few times (of which I hope to post pictures soon) and I have also gone jogging in the gardens in the morning. There is no admission fee and they open at 5 am so 6:30 or 7am is an ideal time to go for a run before it gets really hot in the middle of the day. Of course, anytime of day is HOT in the tropics and the heat and humidity of this part of the world are dominant feature of the environment here. We are adjusting the the hot, humid weather well but I would be lying if I said that I don't enjoy the air
conditioning in the training room where we have lectures.

One of the best things about OC is the wonderful fellowship with the other new missionaries from around the world. It is encouraging and inspiring to here their testimonies of conversion and leading into missions as well as to learn about their home countries and churches. The other day after a meal, I sat with a couple of brothers from Scotland and Australia and we took
turns trying to fake each other's accents while reading an article from a Singapore newspaper. We all did a miserably poor job but had fun doing it. As one who is fascinated in theology and history, I've been fascinated to learn more about the church in Scotland and Switzerland and the various problems associated with having a State sponsor church. I praise God for how he has established his church in many lands and continues to work their and call our workers for the harvest despite our weakness, failing, and sin. How God is the God we adore!