Why Are So Many Missionaries in Bangkok and Chiang Mai?
At a recent meeting of the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand (EFT), a presenter shared a slide with data showing a stark imbalance in the number of missionaries located in major city centers versus other regions of Thailand. Of those missionaries holding a visa through the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand, the data showed that 72% of them were clustered in only two provinces, namely Bangkok and Chiang Mai. The remaining 28% were spread out through another 40 provinces, and another 35 provinces had no missionaries at all.
At first glance, these statistics are rather shocking. Thailand is a country that is over 94% Buddhist and about 4% Muslim. Protestants make up only about 0.7% of the whole population. If you include Roman Catholics, the number of all Christian traditions is still only a little over 1%. There are many towns and villages throughout Thailand with absolutely no churches whatsoever. There are many places that need to hear the gospel for the first time. If that’s the case, why don’t the missionaries spread out a bit? Why are they all hanging out in Bangkok in Chiang Mai?
46 Years of Ministry with Thai People: An Interview with Larry Dinkins
I recently interviewed fellow missionary and seminary colleague Larry Dinkins who first came to Thailand with OMF in 1980 and has been working with Thai ever since. He has lots of experience and observations that other missionaries might find interesting and useful, so I wanted to record this before he retires at some point in the not-too-distant future.
The whole interview (75 minutes) is available on YouTube (link). In the YouTube description, there are timestamps for the various chapters of the interview, together with topics discussed, so you can skip to the parts you are most interested in if you do not have time to watch the whole interview. At the end of the YouTube description, you will also find links to Larry Dinkins' books mentioned in the interview, and his personal/ministry website.
If you don't see a video embedded above, click here to watch on YouTube "46 Years of Ministry with Thai People: An Interview with Larry Dinkins"
Should We Use AI to Translate Christian Resources?
With the revolution of AI tools, people have started to ask me about the potential for using AI to translate Christian books. For a number of years I have been involved with writing, translating, and publishing Christian resources in Thai. I currently teach church history and mission studies at Chiang Mai Theological Seminary, and previously I taught at Bangkok Bible Seminary while also working part time at Kanok Bannasan (OMF Publishers) Thailand. I have a desire to see good resources get into the hands of Thai Christians to help them spread the Gospel and to grow in their walk with the Lord. Compared to languages like English, Chinese, Spanish, or Korean, there are relatively few Thai-language Christian resources. With the advent of widely accessible AI tools, especially Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT or Grok, the potential for fast tracking translation is really exciting. More books faster sounds really good.
That said, my experience of using AI translation for Christian content has been mixed. I have primarily used ChatGPT for translating back and forth between Thai and English. If you use a different AI model and different input languages, I imagine the results might be different, especially for translation into more widely used language like Chinese or Spanish, for which AI has more data to draw from. That said, here are the advantages and limitations of AI translation as I find them at the beginning of 2026.
Joshua and Karl Run Chiang Mai Marathon 2024
In January 2024, Joshua and I (Karl) set a goal to run the Chiang Mai Marathon in December. We started training more seriously starting in August and on Dec 22, 2024, we ran our first marathon. The Chiang Mai Marathon starts at 3am because it is cooler than running during the day. The first half was fun, the second half was tougher, and the last 6 miles (10K) or so was somewhat painful. But a good experience overall. Would recommend. Would do again. And I am glad that my son and I could train and do it together (although we didn't finish the actual race at the same time).
To watch a short video (less than 1 min), scroll to the end of this post or click here to watch on YouTube. If you prefer photos, enjoy the following pics from our marathon experience.
