It has been over 10 years now since we first
arrived in Thailand as missionaries. Over
20 years attending good Bible teaching Sydney Evangelical Churches and with an
M Div, I thought I was pretty well prepared for the mission field. 10
years later I realise how little I knew and how much I have had to learn. There have been a lot of mistakes I’ve made
and things that I would not do again if I had the chance to start over. We have had a broad experience in Church
planting, Theological education, discipleship and now in leadership. I feel now that after 10 years I know what I
want to focus on in terms of ministry and what I think is effective and likely
to bear most fruit in the Thai context.
Here are my top 6 things that I’ve learnt over
the last 10 years.
1. Chronological Bible Storying
With the first person who showed interest in
the gospel, I invited him over to my house to study the Bible starting from
Mark chapter 1. We read a paragraph and then discussed with
him the passages that we had read. I
thought it had gone well, but when he didn’t turn up the next 2 Thursday
nights, I knew that he was not interested.
Soon after, I came across a talk by Don Carson on “Worldview Evangelism”
and that opened by eyes to the need to present the Christian Worldview through
Bible Storying, from the beginning in creation to Christ’s return before the
gospel can make sense for those without a Christian background. I invited the man back to listen to the story
of the God who created the universe his response to the stories was in dramatic
contrast to the “Bible studies” which we started with. He was eager to hear more and wanting to know
when we could meet again.
So now I use Chronological Bible Storying as
the main tool for evangelism. Christine
Dillon’s website, “Storying the Scripture” is a great resource to find out
more.
2. Seeking People of Peace (Lk 10)
In our initial period of Church Planting we
opened an outreach centre and provided English classes for adults, kids clubs,
a mother’s group, international student evenings and a whole of other
activities which would be a help to the community but also help us to find
anyone who might have an interested in Christianity. We had up to 8 missionaries working at the
centre at one point in time. After 5
years of work, only 2 people had become Christians.
When we moved to another minister after that, instead
of an outreach centre with a focus on programs to attract people to come to our
activities, we focused on going out into the community and by telling
Chronological Bible Stories tried to find “people of peace”. People of peace (Lk 10) are people who God
has prepared in a community, who are people of influence and can open the doors
for the gospel. So after 3 months of
visiting café after café in town, I came across an owner of a café who was a
person of peace. He listened to the 8
Chronological Bible Stories and soon after he and his whole family became Christians
and a church was started at their bakery.
So now, instead of focusing on large programs
which attract people, my focus is on going out and finding people of peace.
3. Reproducibility
Initially my focus was on what I could do as a
church planter. Now I see the great
benefit in focusing my efforts on empowering local workers. To enable effective empowering of local
workers they need modelled what they can do themselves, rather than what I can
do. For example, English teaching as a
bridge for evangelism cannot be reproduced by local Thai Christians. Complex methods of evangelism and preaching
cannot be reproduced by the majority of people in the church. Or methods which require more money and
resources than can be provided by local Christians. Promoting these methods disempower the local
Christian an Churches.
So now I ask myself the question, is what I’m
doing something that can be reproduced by a local Thai Christian. If not, then it I would think hard before
doing it. If the training I’m doing, is
not being reproduced by a local Thai Christian within an appropriate amount of
time, then either by training is too difficult or I’m not teaching them
effectively and something needs to change.
4. Multiplication
I want to focus on multiplication of disciples
and churches right from the beginning.
What I do on day 1 will affect how things are done on day 100. So in my training on disciples, I want to
make sure that the person I disciple, is going on and discipling others. In terms of Churches, I would want to see a
Church right from the beginning have a vision to church multiple other
churches. Not to think that only after
the church grows to at least 50, then and only then think about planting
another church.
Discipleship making movements or Church
Planting Movements ideas have been influential.
Effective multiplication has happened when the focus has been on obedience
to the knowledge people have rather than just growth in knowledge.
In 1902, Andrew Murrray made the
observation that one disciple, wining one person to Christ each year and
building them up to do the same in successive generations, would win the whole
world in just 32 years.
5. Disicpleship
Growing up as a Christian I was never really discipled
in what I consider to be real discipleship.
That is an older and more mature Christian who invested in me and had a
deep and meaningful relationship with me in which our lives were shared and he
helped me on a path to maturity. That
meant that even though I had been a Christian for a long time there were areas
in my life which were still not mature. 4
years ago, someone starting mentoring me who had a lot of experience in
mentoring and in ministry. He has helped
me so much in areas which I had struggled with most of my Christian life and
also in making difficult ministry decision.
I now believe that discipleship and mentoring
is something that every Christian needs to grow as healthy and mature
disciples. So now I invest much more time
in discipling and mentoring to help others become more mature and effective as
Christians or as missionaries.
6. Faithfulness AND Fruitfulness
If our ministry after an
appropriate amount of time and effort is not bearing fruit (in growing and
multiplying disciples) then we will at the first instance examine what we are
doing to ensure that we are using effective methods of evangelism and
discipleship. We will not assume that it
is as a result of it being “hard ground” (a community not responsive to the
gospel). We will be asking the question
“How can we change things to see more fruit”.
It is not a matter of “if we just
preach the gospel faithfully everything else will follow”. We need to consider how we are preaching the
gospel in that cultural context to ensure that the message is understood. We also need to consider all of the
principles listed above (points 1-4)
If after we have evaluated our
methods and attempted different ways of evangelism and discipleship yet are
still seeing little fruit, we would pray whether to move to a different
area. In the absence of any direct
guidance to stay, we would move to a different area to see if it is more
fruitful.
We will avoid the error of
thinking that being faithful to ineffective ways of evangelism and disciple is
being truly faithful to God. For
example, using Western methods of evangelism which were developed with a presupposed
Christian world view in a Thai Buddhist context, no matter how hard you labour
and toil would not be considered true faithfulness.
7.
Latent Racism
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Missionaries need to be careful
of latent racism. That is racism inside
of us which we don’t preserve. The
thought that we know better than the locals about how to do ministry or that
our methods and ways are better. We need
a humility and respect for the local believers and their contexts.
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