Beautiful Singing Without Musical Instruments

Lahu Church Service in Chiang Mai

On Sunday I had the opportunity to visit and preach at a Lahu Church pastored by one of the graduates of the James O Fraser Centre where I used to work.  It has been a while since I have last been in a tribal church and I was struck by their singing.  They did not have any musical accompaniment, just their voices and it was amazing how great and loud they should even with any microphone and amplifiers.  I wonder what we lose/gain in having loud music blasted out from the front?

ACT Church Leaders Camps 8-10 Nov 2016

ACT Church Leaders Camp 8-10 Nov 2016

I had the privilege of attending the ACT (Associated Churches of Thailand) Church Leaders Camp from 8-10 November 2016, when around 135 pastors, church leaders and missionaries gathered for the first time in almost 10 years (?) to mutually encourage one another.  It was held at the Wang Taan Resort in Doi Saket. It was a great opportunity to worship together, listening to the word of God and sharing communion together.  I met a number of pastors who I hope to visit in their ministry contexts when I return from home assignment next year.

Baptisms at Mae Moh Church

 The Mae Moh Church at the Baptism Ceremony of 8 new Christians

Two weeks ago we had the blessing of witnessing the Baptism ceremony of 8 members of the Mae Moh Church. “Baptism” is the Christian ceremony proclaiming publicly that you have new life in Jesus Christ and that he has washed you of your sins. We prayed for these 8 people that God would protect them and help them in their new life.

Deep Church

There are so many books on church planting and church how do you decide what you should read and what you shouldn't?  On the front cover of the book "Deep Church" by Jim Belcher, it had Tim Keller's endorsement "This is an important book", and that was enough for me.

And being 3 quarters of the way through it, I agree that it is an important book.  It suggests a "third way", that doesn't have to be "traditional church" or "emerging church" but a "third way" with a mixture of both.  In my opinion though, Belcher in his "third way" leans much more towards a traditional model in the end and I wonder in reality what he offers is that much more different than a traditional church.

What I like about this look is that Belcher is very balanced in his assessment of traditional church and the emerging church.  Something which generally I find is handled very poorly.  Most of the time, writers say they are trying to write a balanced view and in love but in the end they fail on both counts.  They end up just taking snip shots at the other camp to justify their own positions.

Evidence of this balanced view is that on the back cover you have endorsements from people like Mark Driscoll (Traditional camp) and Rob Bell (Emergent camp).

Belcher's background is interesting.  He knows and dialogued with the some of the main emergent figures as they were just "emerging" but ended but being a Presbyterian minister and started his own church in this "third way" model.  But he was once part of ministry team of 17 at a 5,000 member congregation, then he became disgruntled and started a small organic church in his home.  He's really read up on all the traditional and emergent conversation, actually visited some the churches of the emergent leaders and talked to them.  Then he went out and tried to start a new church with the ideals of his "third way".  Once his church grew he faced the problem of some of his key original church planters being unhappy about the structure and vision of the church as it grew and the Presbyterian denomination had to step in to help resolve the conflict.  This is real experience and not just someone writing from theory.

So this is an important book to read especially in the traditional vs emerging church debate and one I'll need to go over again.

How social class can alienate people from church

I was reflecting on this quote this afternoon which I think has huge implications for how we do church.

“People are often unaware of how much the culture of their church is shaped by their social class. Someone on the door of a church, for example, may hand a newcomer a hymn book, Bible, service guide and bulletin with a smile and greeting without realizing how intimidating these can be to someone from a non-literate culture. The social activities to which the poor are invited, the decision-making processes of the church, the unwritten dress codes, the style of teaching, all can be alien to the marginalized. As a result, however warm the welcome, the poor can feel marginalized within the church just as they are outside...

If our congregations are full of respectable people, then it may be that we have not truly grasped the radical grace of God.”

P. 79 Total Church: A radical reshaping around gospel and community (Tim Chester and Steve Timmis)

If we are preaching sermons that only those with a university degree could appreciate, with references to the “Greek” or how “the NIV gets it wrong here”, are we surprised that the majority of the people in the congregation are from the middle or upper class and there are hardly any working class or poor people? Can we really think that just by preaching the truth that everything else will somehow fall into place?

How a church treats (or mistreats) the marginalized is an important measure of a church.

Becoming Global Conference at SMBC

Today I attended the "Becoming Global Conference" at my old Bible College, SMBC. It is an annual conference which helps the local church with missions. The 3 seminars I attended were excellent with each presenter having vast amounts of experience on their topics.

First I went to Bruce Dipple's (my missions lecturer from college) seminar, "Developing a missions programme that will intentionally strengthen your church". He talked about the false dichotomy of "here" and "over there" and how the missions enthusiasts can talk about the rest of the world but not be occupied with what's happening here, and how churches can be too occupied with local church growth and the rest of the world is forgotten. I was struck when he minded me that our partnership in mission is the Gospel (Philippians 1:5) not the missionary. It is wrong to have the missionary or their family at the centre of missions. No. We should have the Gospel at the centre of mission.

Some quotes: "Mission conforms to the purpose of God. It is God's mission not our mission. Missions finds Biblical basis in not what the church wants to do but in the misison of God. God's purpose is that the whole nations will come to worship him. It is not just in the great commission, but mission's basis is the nature of God."

I left the seminar full of ideas and a longing that churches would just do some of the things suggested by Bruce in this seminar. It would so impact local churches.

Brian Stark spoke on how to make short-term mission trips worth while. He argued that the goal of the short-term missions trip is to help those who go become more Christlike. It is life change of the people going, people sending, and those they go to serve. Short-term missions can have a significant impact on the individuals, the church and the community. That is, if it is done well. For it to be done well requires 2 years. 1 year for preparation and 1 year afterward to cast the vision after you come back. This seminar was really helpful in thinking about how to organise short-term missions. There was so much good stuff in this seminar.

Lastly, I went to Helen Macnaughton's seminar on how to help missionaries re-enter their home culture. There was one slide which struck me about the factors which affects re-entry stress.

The reason for return
Physical/emotional/spiritual health at the time of return
The stage of individual and family life cycles
The degree of preparation for return
The amount of accumulated stress from on-field experiences
The number of other stresses concurrent with re-entry
The opportunity of have good closure before leaving the field.

Gosh. Many of the above factors were not ideal for us and our re-entry.

I learned so much today at the Becoming Global Conference. So much more than I expected. Local churches would benefit so much from this conference. It is such a pity that so few go and miss out on this blessing.

Churches in Lampang

Kelang Phantakit Church, Lampang

Motana Church, Lampang

In the last month we have started visiting churches around Lampang, partly to see what the churches were like and partly to hear Thai Christian Language which will be important for our Thai language exams.  So far, the 3 churches we've been to have been welcoming and it is nice to be able to understand much more than we did a year ago.  Also we are thankful we haven't had any major incidents with the behaviour of our children (although my language teacher who goes to one of the churches, informed me that my son putting stickers on my face would be a complete no no for a Thai child - you should never touch a Thai person's head).  For me it is has been interesting to see the Pastors who I'd met playing soccer last year at their various churches.  

Here is the service outline of Kelang Phantakit Church which we went to today.

Prelude

Call to Worship Ps. 117:1-2

Hymn TH#11

Prayer of Praise & Confession

The Lord's Prayer

Responsive Reading Mal 1:6-14

Pastoral Prayer

Music

Choral Response

Scripture Lesson Mal 3:6-12

Hymn TH #140

SERMON

Offering - Offertory Prayer

Hymn TH #239

Benediction

Closing Response

The service outline looks pretty familiar doesn't it.  It would be typical of the other two churches we visited also (excluding the Choral response).  Of the sermon I had a chance tolisten to and understand, the preacher seem to be advocating that everyone should be tithing 10% from a passage in Joshua.  

Putting Preachers in their place

I've having recently been thinking about and blogging concerning the role of preaching in the church. The issue I’m trying to deal with is “Is preaching as it is done today, a monologue usually by one Senior ministor/pastor week by week to a passive audience, is that what the Bible intended for the Church?”. Recently, someone directed me to a talk by Mark Driscoll title d "Putting Preachers in their place" dealing with this issue. Driscoll argues yes and almost goes as far as to say to think otherwise might put you in the category of being a cult or a sect.

I’m a big fan of Driscoll and I listen to his sermons regularly. However, I must say that I did not find the argument in this talk convincing.

Driscoll supports his argument by referring to numerous passages of preaching by Jesus, Paul and other Apostles, but nearly all these passages are in the context of preaching to Non-believers outside of a church. The context is different so to then argue that preaching is essential part of church from these passages I don't think is right.

Driscoll says that Acts 13 clearly shows that there was a team of preachers at the church in Antioch. But when you look up Acts 13:1 it says “Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers”. O.k. it is possible there were a team of preachers at the church in Antioch but is this what the verse is actually saying? Is these passage advocating the current practice of most churches of one pastor preaching every week?

Don't mishear me. I’m not against preaching in church. Not at all. I’m just questioning whether preaching by one pastor every week in church was what the Bible is advocating. I believe that the word of God is central to church. I’m just not sure that preaching by one ordained person though is what the Bible is teaching. It could possibly, but it is not as clear cut as people make out. I think there is room for several teaching elders. Does preaching have to be a monologue? Is the Bible teaching this?

In Driscoll’s argument for preaching being the central part of church he goes to the teaching of the Reformers, Calvin and the like and their definitions on the marks of the church. But he does not show us where from the Bible this is evident.

Looking at preaching today. Almost all of it is done in the church to believers and hardly any to non-believers. In the New Testament most of the preaching is to non-believers. Preaching in the church context and what form it took I don’t think is clearly addressed as opposed to preaching outside of church to non-believers were there are numerous examples.

I'm happy to be corrected or convinced otherwise. Please do. But please take me to the Scriptures. However, if the current model of one pastor/minister preaching a monologue week by week to a passive audience arose through church traditional or practice then we need to recognize that this is what it is and not read back church traditional into the Scriptures.

Comments to "In Defence of the Sermon - Part 2"

A fellow missionary working in Thailand wrote on his blog "In Defense of the Sermon - Part 2" dealing with 3 common objections to maintaining the sermon as a central part of the life of the Christian Church.

Objection #1 "Sermons are ineffective",

Objection #2 "People learn better in a participatory environment. Listening to a sermon is too passive.

Objection#3 “The sermon is a Western church tradition, rooted in culture and not the Bible. We should find more indigenous ways of teaching the Bible.”

To be honest, having graduated from a Bible College which is perhaps the only one in Australia to have a school of preaching, I had no doubt in my mind that it was the central and most important aspect of church. However, I now have a few questions which I expressed in my comments to my friend's post which follows:-

"Dear Karl,

In terms of objection #2, Frank Viola (Reimagining Church) argues that "In the first-century gathering [i.e church], neither the sermon nor "the preacher" was the center of attention. Instead, congregational participation was the divine rule" (p.53). So he is arguing that not in terms of participatory being better because of learning styles, but this was the biblical norm for the early church. He argues that there different types of meetings where preaching was central, i.e Apostolic Meetings where apostolic workers preached to an interactive audience with the goal to plant a church from scratch or to encourage an existing church one. Evangelistic meetings. These commonly occurred outside the regular meetings of the church (p.49-50). However, normal church meetings were participatory as described above.

I haven't had time to look into Viola's claims to be honest (hopefully I will find time one day), but he provides another view perspective which I was not aware of before.

I'll still thinking through this one. To be honest, I would have agreed completely with your comments upon leaving college and ministry in Australia. But being in Thailand and thinking over the role of the sermon, I'm wondering whether we can put too much emphasis on the sermon and that it becomes an idol of sorts (extreme example would be a pastor sending 30+ hours on his sermon to get it perfect while neglecting the congregation pastoraly) rather than emphasizing the Word of God . Is the sermon what is important or is it that people are receiving the Word of God. Can you even separate the two?"

Any thoughts?

Reflections on church traditions

One part of me (and my wife and probably a good number of other people) thinks I shouldn't write this post. Being Asian I'm very good at conflict avoidance and not rocking the boat. But some things really need to change.

To be honest, in Australia I never had problems with the ordination services of friends I attended. But since being in Thailand and thinking long and hard about church and church models, I saw the photos above on facebook of a friend's ordination and was quite dismayed at some aspects of church tradition still being practiced today.

Why do bishops need special hats, staff, medallions, fancy robes and candles? Why do we need a procession with incense (?) burning, long stick with a cross, a picture of Jesus? What does that say to the person in the pews? Perhaps it is justifiable in the Roman Catholic tradition where the priesthood of all believers denied, but this was a protestant denomination ordination.

I'm sure my friend who was ordained would have been happy to be ordained without the garb. Unfortunately, it is go along with the tradition and be ordained or protest and be unable to be a minster in that denomination.

It may not be so much of a problem in Australia to just go along with tradition, even if you disagree with it, because what does it matter anyway. But in Thailand, traditions like this get incorporated into church life and causes great problems. In Thailand, ministers are set apart from the ordinary Christian and very much exalted above the laity. At an all church worship meeting I went to in our region, all the minister were ushered to the front 3 rows of the church. After the meeting, they went into a special room at the back of the church to have lunch together while everyone else had lunch outside.

With ministers holding such exalted positions it is very difficult to convince ordinary Christians that they can actually read and interpret the bible for themselves and apply it to their lives. It leads to the thinking so prevalent in Thailand that without a full time paid minister and a church building that you cannot be a real church. It leads to Christians leaving everything to the minister and doing nothing for themselves.

When will the day come when enough people will stop towing the line and say enough is enough. This is wrong. We need to change it. Or as some commentators foresee, will the traditional denominations in the West continue their slow decline and in some distant future the problem will solve itself.

First Lord's Supper

At a recent OMF retreat for current language students and those who had left in the past year, I was asked to lead communion. Not being ordained this was the first time that I've led communion. When I read the accounts of the Lord's Supper in the Gospels of Mark & Matthew and the instructions for the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11, it seems clear that the Lord's Supper was celebrate over a meal. However, most churches now only have a small piece of bread (or wafer) and a tiny cup of grape juice. I believe that this is an unhelpful tradition which has developed and been accepted. Some argue that the Lord's supper was orginally a joyful meal which we have now turned into a very somber ritual.

So I suggested to the co-ordinators of the retreat that we celebrate the Lord's Supper over lunch on the final day rather than in the meeting room. They seemed hesitant at first but then agreed.

So on Sunday we celebrated the Lord's Supper during lunch and it was much more meanful in my opinion.

We did have one problem though. We were sharing the camp site with another group within OMF who had Thai Christian workers with them. When they found out that we were going to celebrate the Lord's Supper this way, they said that it would be better if we have separate lunches, because they felt that the Thai worker would not cope with the Lord's Supper being celebrated outside of Church. It is sad that like in Corinth, the Lord's Supper became a cause of division rather than reaffirmation of the unity we have in Christ by his death and resurrection.