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.

With the increasing popularity of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, there are lots of advantages for missionaries to use these media for both local ministry, and ministry with supporters in the home country.  I have been using Facebook for about two years now, and Twitter for one year.  There is lots to like but it is a continual challenge to make them work for me as a ministry tool and not turn into an entertaining distraction.  I speak as one who uses both Facebook and Twitter and is continuing to think through how best to use them.  Facebook and Twitter are not used in exactly the same way, and depending upon what you want to accomplish, you might choose one over the other.  In general, Facebook is good for connecting people that you actually know, whereas Twitter is good for connecting with people who share common interests.  Soren Gordhamer’s article, “When Do You Use Facebook vs. Twitter?” gives a more detailed breakdown of why you’d choose to use one over the other.  However, for the purposes of this post, I am going to lump Facebook and Twitter together because there are a lot of commonalities between them.

A couple days ago, a missionary friend called me up and asked, “What do you think about all this stuff with the red shirts in Bangkok?”  He was referring to the conflict between red-shirted protestors and the Thai government that has turned downtown Bangkok into a virtual battlefield.  Since he is a good friend and fellow missionary, I gave him my full unedited opinion of the situation.  However, that was a private conversation, not a public announcement.  I tend to be cautious and try to maintain a position of neutrality when I talk with Thai neighbors and speak with people at church.  Although I have some strong opinions, there are reasons why it is usually better not to voice them or to get involved in the political scene here.  In general, missionaries are well advised to stay out of local politics in the countries where they are serving.  Here’s three reasons why:

No matter where you are, relationships are key for sharing the Gospel with people.  In Asia, this is especially true.  The following video captures well how essential it is to be with people, sharing your life with them as sharing the Gospel.  Opportunities to be with people abound if we can take advantage of them.  Where we are located, we haven't seen many people coming to know Christ as some in the video have, but it is encouraging to hear that God is indeed working around Asia.

 

If I wasn't already a missionary in Asia, this video might well tempt me to pack up the bags and sign up.

 

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 If you have trouble viewing the the video above, click here to view it directly on Vimeo

 

After mentioning our up-coming home assignment (or "furlough") in our last prayer letter, we received a curious email. “I didn't know missionary work also has furlough.  In our education sector in the States, furloughs are mandatory for schools due to budget cuts.  Is your furlough due to a budget cut or do you just need a break?”  This email reminded us that outside of missionary circles, there is some confusion about why missionaries go on home assignment.  Is home assignment just a code word for a funding raising trip?  Is home assignment just a big long missionary vacation?  Is home assignment like a sabbatical?  Do missionaries go on home assignment when they get fed up with their host culture and just need a break?  There is a bit of truth in all of the above.  But there is also a lot of misunderstanding.  In this post, I’d like to look at some reasons that missionaries go on home assignment in hopes of creating greater understanding between missionaries and their supporters back home.

Several summers ago I met a young man named Tok.  Tok was a student at a local technical college and he and his friend Art were jogging by the local river where I too had gone out to run.  We got to talking and the following day the three of us, together with my friend Doug, went out for a bite to eat.  Doug and I prayed before our meal, which they had never seen before, and I mentioned spiritual things once or twice during dinner but Tok and Art didn’t seem interested.  As dinner got over, and the bill was paid, I wasn’t sure if I would see them again or not so I asked Doug to dig a couple of Gospel tracts out of his bag and I gave them to Tok – one for him and one for Art who had already left.  I told him it was about Jesus and the tract would give him some food for thought.  He should take it home and read it and let me know if he had any questions. 

The Thai church is growing faster than it ever has in the past and there is much reason to rejoice at how God is working in Thailand.  Yet, as a new year begins, there is still much need for prayer.  Still less than 1% of Thai people are Christians and the challenges to the spread of the Gospel and growth of the church are many. 

 

For those who want to pray for Thailand in the new year, I have put together a brief list of prayer needs. This list is not exhaustive but I believe that it hits upon some of the major needs of the nation and the church.  Read it below or download the PDF, print it out and stick it in your Bible to pray for Thailand this coming year. 

A number of years ago I sat in a missions class watching an animated video of jumbo jets plunging into the ground one after another while a voiceover told me, “Every year, such-and-such number of people die without ever hearing about Christ, which is the equivalent of so many jumbo jets full of passengers crashing each day, killing everyone aboard.”  I forget what the exact numbers were that the narrator told us, but it was quite large.  The point of the video was to drive home the gravity of the need to urgently send out missionaries to those who had never heard of Christ.  The planes crashing were to help us get our mind around a very large number and to be a motivator to go be missionaries. 

It has been asked whether missionaries should support themselves with secular employments (rather than accept full-time paid support) for the sake of being a good example to believers?  A missionary working full-time in the secular world without monetary support from home would be a benefit to the church in two ways:  1) gives an example of living out the Christian life in the secular world, with integrity and hard work and Gospel witness, and 2) gives an example of how one can do ministry and work in the secular world at the same time.Many Thai churches are very small (less than 50 people) and can not afford to support a full time pastor or church planter.  If the missionary church planter sets the precedent (whether intentionally or unintentionally) that “real” ministry can only be done by a full time paid professional, then the expansion of the church could be hindered as those with a heart for evangelism and serving the Lord think that they need to quit their job and go to Bible school before then can “really” be a minister of the Gospel.  For many Thai Christians with a heart to serve, and a call to ministry, bi-vocational pastoring and church planting is probably the most viable option that will not be a burden to them and their families, and beneficial to the planting and development of new churches.

Despite 180 years of Protestant missions in Thailand, there are still relatively few churches and few Christians (less than 1% of the population).   Missionaries are still needed but we are just temporary catalysts in helping the Thai church attain to sufficient numbers and maturity so that missionaries won’t be needed.  And in many places, the LORD is raising up quality mature Thai believers preaching the Gospel of Christ.  I wanted to share a video of one such believer, my friend Off who is on staff with Thai Christian Students (TCS).  TCS is part of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).

 

The following video was taken this past August during an open air evangelism event at the market next to the Tesco Lotus mall in Lopburi, Central Thailand.  There were songs, skits, games, and more direct Gospel presentations.  Lots of tracts and nearly 500 Gospels of John were handed out.  The goal of this kind of evangelism is not to get people to decide for Christ on the spot, and as such there were no altar calls or decision cards.  The goal is to sow seeds and to get people thinking about spiritual realities that they may not have considered before, starting from what people already believe and moving them towards considering the claims of the Bible.

 

The whole presentation is about 15 minutes but I had to break it up into two segments in order to put it onto YouTube.  So, watch Part 1 and then move on to Part 2, which is the continuation of Off’s message.  If you’re interested to learn more about what Off and the other folks from Thai Christian Students in Central Thailand are up to, please visit their blog at http://tcscentralthailand.wordpress.com

 

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If you have trouble viewing the above embedded videos, click here to watch directly on YouTube

 

Much of modern missions literature is occupied with anthropology, sociology, strategy, culture and so forth, rather than the Bible.  And there are not a few who say that having a passion for Jesus is much more important than knowing theology.  Not long ago I listened to a message by Paul Washer that really hit the nail on the head when it came to pointing out this imbalance in modern missions.  Although Washer is perhaps a bit too harsh on contextualization, he makes the great point that missionaries need to be messengers of God’s truth - people who know God and his Word and go to tell people God’s truth.You can download Paul Washer’s message, “A Biblical Vision and Strategy for Missions” from the website of Heart Cry Missionary Society.

A fellow missionary recently sent me the lyrics of the song “So Send I You” which for many years had been hailed as the greatest missionary hymn of the twentieth century.  I read through the lyrics and knew that something wasn’t right.  The song goes like this:

SO SEND I YOU

So send I you to labor unrewarded, To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown, To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing, So send I you to toil for me alone.

In less than two months now, my wife Sun is due to have our second child.   One of our supporting churches recently told us that they wanted to have a baby shower for her in absentia.  We thought that it would be good to send something along to be read at the baby shower since she would not be able to be there.  As Sun and I got talking, we came up with the following list of challenges and blessings of being a young mom on the mission field.  Every woman, and every family, is different and various parts of the world are very different as well, but here are some thoughts on Sun’s experience here in Thailand.

There are not a few church groups in Thailand who are desperate to get a building regardless of how small their group is.  Scripturally, there is nothing wrong with having a building in and of itself but when a small group of believers gets the idea in their head that they need to have a building to be considered a “real” church, then much of their time can become focused on finding money in order to get a building.  But does a church need a building in order to be a “real” church?  According to the Bible, the church is the body of Christ, and all believers are members of that body (Eph. 5:29-30).  The church is people.  Nowhere in Scripture do we see the term “church” equated with a building.  Certainly, if a group of Christians wants to get together on either an occasional or regular basis (such as a weekly worship service), they need someplace to meet.  In Acts, we see people meeting both in the temple and in homes (Acts 5:42) but there is no Scriptural mandate or prohibition about the type of buildings that believers should meet in.   As for those groups of believers in Thailand who end up focusing on getting money for a building in order to be a “real” church, their time and money would best be spent elsewhere - specifically, focusing on growing in Christ and sharing the Gospel with others.  Scripturally, evangelism and discipleship are much higher priorities than getting a “proper” church building (which, I might add, does not even make the list of necessary elements of having a church in the New Testament).

As a young missionary, I like talking to veteran missionaries to get their perspective on things.  At our recent OMF Thailand annual conference, our guest speaker Larry Dinkins spoke on cross cultural evangelism and overcoming barriers in communicating the Gospel to Buddhists.   Larry & his wife Paula came to Thailand as new missionaries in 1981 where they did church planting and theological education until 2002 when they needed to go back to the U.S. for Paula to receive treatment for cancer in her bone marrow. The treatment for Paula’s cancer has been successful and she is in remission.  As a result Larry and Paula have been acting as mobilizers and recruiters for OMF in Southern California as well as the Midwest.  They are involved in Thai churches in the U.S. and have made numerous trips back to Thailand as well.  After listening to Larry speak at the conference, and later in a recorded lecture, I became curious and sent him an email, asking, “If you could go back to your first term on the mission field, knowing then what you know now, what would you do differently?  How would you go about planting a church in Central Thailand if you had to do it all over again?”   Larry was kind enough to email me back and here’s a bit of what he had to say:

I love reading articles about missions that both point me back to Scripture and demonstrate intimate acquaintance with the realities of life and ministry on the mission field.  "Putting Contextualization in its Place" in the recent 9Marks eJournal is one of those article.  The author presents an excellent explanation of how contextualization is found in the pages of Scripture, and is not an idea hoisted onto it.  He then goes on to explain how and his team put this principles into practice in their setting in a Central Asian country. The article covers a lot of ground and is worth reading in its entirety but I wanted to share with you one particular section that I found to be a good reminder of what my attitude and approach should be in living with and trying to serve the Thai people. 

 

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PAUL'S PRINCIPLES FOR CROSS-CULTURAL MINISTRY

 

Perhaps the most widely-quoted passage of Scripture that teaches about contextualization is 1 Corinthians 9:1-23:

 

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord?  2 If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. 

 

It is important to be practical and realistic in ministry, especially when it comes sharing the Gospel and establishing new churches.  But is it possible to be too practical?  It certainly is when the desire for results and finding methods that “work” outweigh a desire to search the Scriptures and find out what are God’s priorities and God’s methods for building his church.I have just started reading the 9Marks July/August 2009 eJournal on pragmatism in missions.  One of the first articles, “Pragmatism, Pragmatism Everywhere!” by Andy Johnson frames the discussion well and is a must read.  Johnson puts into print what I have been thinking about for some time:  Is there some sort of disconnect in the minds of missionaries and other Christians who claim to uphold the authority of Scripture yet deny it in practice?

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about church growth in the evangelical world.  Everyone wants to know how to make their church grow and there is no shortage of suggestions for how to do it.  What is the key to making your church grow?  Is it using a cell church model?  house church model?  more user-friendly sermons?  better music?  more skits?  candles?  bigger parking lot?  more exciting youth programs?  powerpoint?  more lay leadership? something else?Protestant missionaries have been in Thailand for over 180 years yet the number of Christians in the country is still less than 1%.  So, the question has been asked, when so much time, money, and effort has been put into evangelization, how come the church has grown so slowly?  Again, many suggestions have been put forth.  Perhaps we haven’t contextualized the Gospel well enough.  Or our evangelism has been too Western.  Or we have used a poor model of church.  Or there is a lack of indigenous worship music.  Or we haven’t been letting the Spirit lead.  Or church buildings don’t look Thai enough.  Or we haven’t emphasized house churches.  Or we haven’t found the right redemptive analogy.  Or whatever.

In planting a new church, how should the missionary provide for the continuing care of the congregation after he is gone?  Or, to put it another way, how do you know when you are “done” planting a church?  In not a small number of cases, missionaries in Thailand have established churches with a modus operandi something like this:  evangelize and disciple until there is a sufficient number of Christian believers such that there are people to lead various elements of Sunday worship service and there are more or less sufficient finances to rent a building and call a full-time Bible school educated Thai pastor to lead the church.  If these elements are mostly in place, then the church is considered planted and the missionary feels free to move on to a new location.  Often there are some kind of appointed or elected church leaders which may or may not resemble Biblical elders.  In many cases, I have seen a church committee which makes decisions about finances and church activities substituted for the Biblical model of elders, namely mature Christian men who govern and shepherd the congregation, bearing spiritual responsibility for the souls of the people.  If a missionary gets the number of believers up to level where the church won’t dissolve, and then calls a native pastor (whom a small church often times can barely pay), is this really the best model for establishing healthy Biblical churches?