I have been a little bit discouraged recently that after two years in Thailand, we have yet to see anyone become a Christian as a result of our labour. Thailand is considered a “hard” field and over a 150 years of missionary effort has seen less than 1% of the population become Christian. Yet, you can’t help but have a bit of self doubt and start questioning whether you are doing things right.I have been a little discouraged about my Thai too. After two years, I still find it a struggle conversing with people. Yes, the basic conversation we can handle but we want to have deeper conversations and that is not yet possible.
I thought, if a Buddhist monk came to Sydney and in his broken English tried to convert me to Buddhism, what is the likelihood of him converting me to Buddhism. I’d say next to nothing. Then what makes me think that I’d have any chance of converting any Buddhists here in Thailand?
It is then I remind myself that “Salvation comes from the LORD” (Jonah 2:9). This is the Bible verse we printed on the back of our prayer cards before we left for Thailand. Yes, humanly speaking it is near impossible through my efforts that a Buddhist will become a Christian. But ultimately people are saved through God’s power. It is God’s responsibility to save people not mine. That is not to be fatalistic though. I am still going to use every means and effort to help people become Christians. But as long as I am faithfully praying and labouring for the Gospel, then the results I can leave to God and I don’t need to beat myself up that no one has become a Christian.
That said, “The gospel ... is the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16) so if I am rightly presenting the gospel, then I should expect the power of God to be at work in saving people. If by the end of my 3rd term, with better language, cultural understanding and ministry experience, no one has become a Christian, I think I would need to reassess whether I am presenting the gospel in the right way or what we are doing wrong.
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3 comments:
Don't give up, brother. I often have many similar feelings. Many days I think, "My Thai is horrible. I keep saying things wrong and messing up the tones on words that I shouldn't be." And so many times I come up just short of really getting what's going on or lack the range of expression to tell what I am really thinking/feeling. I trust that it will come eventually but my hope is not in myself but in Christ, like you mentioned. I often take comfort in the fact that Christ said, "I will build my church" and not "I want you to build my church and I will stand over here cheering and hoping you don't mess it up". It is also encouraging when I remember that there have been missionaries in the past whose language was never "great" but who were, by the grace of God, effective nevertheless because they tried really hard, and loved people, and there efforts were blessed of God beyond their own ability. I think that Adoniram Judson's language eventually got quite good but he was in country (Burma) for seven years before he saw the first convert. In retrospect he probably would have been encouraged to know when the first convert would happen but I wonder if he felt discouraged at the 6.5 year mark, wondering how much longer, O Lord?
Mark Dever had some interesting things to say in this regard. In his sermon (http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ConferenceMessages/ByConference/43/) to pastors on evangelism he says that we shouldn't be judging evangelism by the results (ie no. of converts) because this is God's responsibility, but by whether you have presented the gospel or not. If you have presented the gospel correctly then you are doing evangelism and that's what matters (even if no one is converted). So at his church he doesn't keep statistics on the no. of baptisms. He think we are too influenced by the salesmen approach to evangelism - "closing the deal" - pushing people to convert.
Just thinking tonight whether we can compare our situation to that of Adoniram Judson. Judson went into a country with no history of Christian missionary work. But for us, we come after 150 years of mission work. We have so many less barriers to overcome than Judson.
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