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.

No summary of the Gospel is going to be perfect and every summary is going to miss something.  The bridge illustration, which shows how Jesus bridges the gap between sinful man and a holy God, captures well the aspect of Jesus being Savior.  However, it doesn’t do a very good job of showing how someone needs to trust Christ as Lord and Ruler of their life as well.  You can’t believe in Christ as Savior to forgive your sins but not have him also as Lord of your life who must be obeying in faithful devotion.  The Bible has no category for someone who “accepts” Jesus as Savior but shows no interest in submitting their life to him.

A really great Gospel summary that corrects this imbalance is the Two Ways to Live summary.  It should be coming out as a published little booklet in Thai in the very near future but I have a translation of it that I have been using and find it to be really helpful in helping people understand not only our separation from God because of sin, but also the need to be reconciled to Him as Lord and Ruler of our life.  I include below two PDFs of the Thai version of Two Ways to Live that I have been using, which may be copied for personal and small group use.  The original English version and other languages are available from Matthias Media.

Download PDF - Two Ways to Live (Thai) - Green

Download PDF - Two Ways to Live (Thai) - Black & White

The video below is an example of how Two Ways to Live can be presented as part of open air evangelism in Thailand.   It has been put together by the Central Thailand Student Ministry team (part of Thai Christian Students/IFES) as part of their training program.

Among evangelical Christians, John 3:16 is widely regarded as a straight forward summary of the Gospel. However, to assume that someone can hear and sufficiently understand the Gospel from John 3:16 in order to be saved is to assume a lot about their background knowledge of Christianity and basic worldview assumptions.  In the West, there is still quite a bit of residual knowledge about Christianity even if people don't believe it (i.e. there is only one God, love is a good thing, history is linear, etc.).  This is a great help in presenting the Gospel to those from a culturally Christian background. But how does John 3:16 sound to someone who knows nothing about Christianity and comes from a totally different religious background and upbringing?

A few days ago,  I got a call from a teacher at Anuban Nong Doan Primary School.  “Can you come and teach English to our students?  How about one day per week?”  The teacher was disappointed to hear that I only had one half day per week available but nevertheless wanted to meet with me to discuss the details and said that they would be able to compensate me for my time.

I arrived at the school the following afternoon, expecting to meet with this one particular teacher but instead found myself sitting at the head of a table with all the school’s teachers gathered around, about 15 teachers in all.  We initially talked about day and time, but when the chair of the meeting turned to me and asked how much money I needed, the discussion got more interesting.  “I don’t really need any money, actually.  I am happy to teach for free but the only thing that I ask is for permission to use stories from the Bible as part of curriculum.”  I assured them that I did not intend to pressure the children to change religions or try to get them to convert.  I merely wanted to use some stories from the Bible as part of my teaching.  The teachers discussed this idea back and forth for a bit.  One of the concerns was “What will the parents think?”  They feared that some parents could misunderstand my intention and think that there was some foreign teacher trying to convert their kids.  Into their conversation, I threw out another option, “Or, instead of using Bible stories as part of the English teaching, for every hour of teaching, I could do 45 minutes of English, and then 15 minutes of a Bible story in Thai.”  They liked that I idea more but were still not enthusiastic.  The chair of the meeting, whom I was seated next to, turned to me and with a big smile on his face and asked, “Can’t you just teach English?”  I gave a big smile back and didn’t say much of anything.  This is a Thai way of saying, “No”.  He understood and realized that I wasn’t going for it.

I am convinced that I no matter how long I live in Thailand, I will continue to run into strange new creatures that I have never seen before.  The other day when I was bringing groceries into the kitchen, I saw on the floor what looked like a scorpion.  However, on closer inspection, it didn't have the telling scorpion-tale but rather a long needle tail.  I got down on the floor to take some pictures, hoping it was not too dangerous.  Eventually I scooped it up in a dustpan and threw it out the front door, not wanting to upset nature lovers who were saddened by my blog about killing the snake that got into our house.  Today, I learned from a fellow missionary that my scorpion wanna-be is actually a vinegar bug.  It has a better sounding name in Spanish, but my friend could not recall what the name was.  Apparently, the long needle on the rear of the bug shoots out a smelly vinegar type spray when the bug is upset or scared.  Fortunately, getting scooped into the dustbin was not disturbing enough to get shot with vinegar.

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?