On August 23, 1828, the first two Protestant missionaries arrived in Thailand, Karl Gutzlaff and Jacob Tomlin.  Gutzlaff was German and Tomlin was English.  They had a desire to reach people with the Gospel, especially Chinese.  And during the reign of King Rama 3 in the early 19^th century, there were tens of thousands of Chinese in Siam.  Various missionaries had wanted to go to Siam but did not succeed.

In early August, 1828, they set sailed from Singapore on a Chinese junk for Bangkok. Two week later, the boat was still traveling. As their new field of labor got closer, excitement and anxiety grew, but their hearts were at peace because they were confident in the Lord’s goodness and mercy had accompanied them every step of their journey. At sunset on the evening of August 18, 1828, the crew caught sight of land in the distance to their left. This was an unexpected but happy surprise for the junk had made much further progress on its northward journey than they had realized. The crew expressed their joy and gratitude by giving to their idols double the normal offering. But Gutzlaff and Tomlin turned their hearts and minds to Lord of heaven as they gathered for evening worship. Tomlin recalls,

One aspect of cross-cultural living in Thailand that I did not expect is playing silly games and doing song-and-dance hand motion type icebreakers at church camps and events. I don't really enjoy them but everyone else seems to think they are great.  It may seem like a small thing, and in the grand scheme of things, it is not a huge deal. All the same, it certainly something to get used to.

In the Western context, it is not odd to do silly games and songs when working with kids or teens.  But when you work with adults, you just don’t do those things.  Maybe there are exceptions, but in my experience in the United States, you don’t require adults at a church retreat to stand up and do an ice breaker game with hand motions and a silly / cutesy song. Walk around, find a buddy, clap your hands together like this, etc.  You just don’t do it.  Western adults are happy to enjoy a laid back, friendly atmosphere at a camp or retreat, do activities in small groups, get to know each other, play sports, etc. But don’t ask them to do songs and games that are better suited for children. Yet in Thailand, this sort of thing is normal.

guest post by Larry Dinkins 

In 2018 the world was captivated by the young Thai soccer team and their coach who were lost in a flooded cave in northern Thailand and then found and rescued. I wrote three blogs concerning those harrowing 18 days: Thai Soccer Team Lost, Found! ... and Rescued?“, “Lessons from the Rescue of the Thai Soccer Team”  and here: “Cave Rescue: Adun Samon.” In those three blogs I tried to draw out spiritual lessons from that rescue and eventually those articles received the most hits of any blogs I’ve ever written.  I find myself writing again about a similar incident in Laos where a group of seven men entered a cave to search for gold.  The men understood the danger and yet pressed ahead in their quest for gold, yet were met with torential rains that flooded the cave and stranded the men. Once again, a rescue team was formed, including divers from the 2018 rescue and they were able to navigate over 900 feet of narrow, muddy tunnels as well as strong currents to locate the five survivors (two more are still missing). The next step was the dangerous task of extracting the five over the same hazzardous route. In comparing the two rescues I was struck by the contrast of a young soccer team simply wanting to celebrate a winning season with a cave adventure and seven grown men risking life and limb to find elusive treasure. In both cases the bravery and courage of the rescuers is most impressive as they risked their lives to not only find the lost spelunkers but to strategize on how to safely extract them from the jaws of a watery death.  Both of these incidents reminds us of the courage and strategies that are needed for the spiritual rescue mission of saving lost souls caught in the dark cave of sin and extracting them through the power of the gospel as expressed in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” 

Language learning is an essential part of minstry for many missionaries, but it is also a task that is fraught with challenges, anxiety, ups and downs, and not a few humbling moments along the way.

My missionary colleague Larry Dinkins and I sat down recently to record a couple of videos about langauge learning, especially Thai learning.  The first video is a hour long conversation, relaxed but serious.  The second video is a collection of Thai language bloopers, presented as a light-hearted parody of a new missionary taking his first year Thai language test.

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?