Because the need for people to hear the Gospel on the mission field is so urgent, it is sometimes claimed that doing a lot of Biblical studies or earning a degree in Bible is not necessary to be a long-term missionary.  “People just need the basic Gospel, and you don’t need a degree for that”, it has been said.  There is a lot of truth to that statement.  However, once someone becomes a Christian, you need to disciple them.  And you’ll need to help new believers form themselves into a church community.  And to do that, a missionary is going to need to know a LOT more than just a basic Gospel outline.

For the past two weeks, we had a short-term team with us from America and I have had both the pleasure of working with them, and also the responsibility of translating for them most of the time.  Though my Thai ability is not superb, it is usually sufficient to get the job done.  However, I know that pronunciation is not my strong suit and part way through this past Sunday’s sermon, I was hoping against hope that I was getting a certain word right.  I wasn’t.

As my friend Luke preached in English, I did the best that I could to translate what he said into Thai.  All was well until he took us to Zechariah 10:3, “My anger burns against the shepherds, and I will punish the leaders; for the LORD Almighty will care for his flock, the house of Judah, and make them proud like a horse in battle.”  From that point on in the sermon, Luke used the word “warhorse” quite frequently.

St. Francis of Assisi is often quoted as saying, “Preach the Gospel at all times.  When necessary use, words.”  Regardless of whether he actually said this or not, I understand the sentiment of some who quote him.  Namely, the Christian faith needs to be lived out, not only talked about.  However, taken as it stands, this quote also seems to provide a convenient loophole clause for those who don’t want to talk about Christ, lest they cause offense or invite criticism.  The implication of the quote seems to be that it is possible to preach the Gospel WITHOUT using words.  This is simply not the case - neither in the “Christian” West nor in Buddhist Thailand where I live.

Thai Buddhists often view other religions and religious people as they view themselves and often assume things about Christians and Christianity that are not true.  Here are two brief examples:

The barriers to communicating the Gospel in Thailand are tremendous even though Thai people are some of the nicest you’ll ever meet.  The guy who owns the photocopy shop where I regularly go is a great example of this.  When I was starting up an evangelistic kids club, I took some cartoon pictures of the sun, moon, stars, animals, numbers, and so forth down to the copy shop to be laminated.  As the photocopy guy was putting them in the plastic sleeves to stick in the laminating machine, he asked, “What are these for?”  So I explained that I was teaching children about God creating the world.  That got us off on discussion about spiritual matters and comparative religion.  I regularly had pictures to laminate for the kids club so the photocopy guy and I had several conversations along these lines on many occasions.  I’ve never detected any hostility from him but it has become clear that what I am trying to explain is simply not “clicking” in his mind.