Around Lampang

Local shop selling shrine down the road from where we live

Taxi! This is the equivalent to a taxi in Lampang (A Song Theew)

I recently bought a new mobile (cell) phone with a camera on it so that I could take snap shots of Lampang without having to remember my camera.

More recently the focus of the blog has changed to more theological thoughts I've been wrestling with rather than a photo blog. I don't know whether you like the change or not. Feel free to comment on where you like the change or you preferred the posts of the past.

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.

A new way of evangelism or just a return to past?

I kind of stumbled onto to Chronological Bible Story telling in the last couple of months. I was searching for Mark Driscoll’s last words and assessment of Sydney Evangelicals when he visited last year and came across the Sydney Anglican’s website with a great collection of sermons which you could download for free. In amongst this sermons was a series of 5 talks by Don Carson on evangelism to the post modern, post Christian world (download here). They were eye opening talks which radically changed my view of evangelism. I was left wondering why I hadn’t heard this kind of thinking before of world view evangelism. Don Carson makes the point that to preach the gospel without having explained the Christian world view first makes no sense to someone with a different worldview. So if I tell a Thai Buddhist that Jesus died on the cross for there sins, they don’t see the great sacrificial love of Jesus for mankind but they see a man with obviously bad karma to have died such a terrible death. They can’t understand why you would ever want to follow a man like that.

In addition to this what I’ve been coming across more recently is material from Larry Dinkins, a former OMF missionary to Thailand that oral story telling of the Bible, in his experience is much more effective in reaching Thais (listen here - choose the iphone option). Although Thais are 95% literate, the underlying culture is oral.

So I’m convinced (at the moment anyway) that oral Chronological Bible Story telling is the way forward for evangelism in Thailand. May God use it to bring people to him.

To read more on this go to the God Story website.

Why did Jesus decide not to reform the church from within the system?

I've been thinking lately about why Jesus chose to 12 unknown ragamuffin disciples rather than using Rabbis and other Jewish religious authorities? In effect he chose to start afresh rather than reforming the existing Jewish church. He worked outside of the system to overturn it rather than from within the system to reform it. May be it was just easier this way. I have no problems relating to this if I think of how hard it would be to reform modern day denominations!

Sometimes working within the denominational system is so hard, tiring and disheartening when you try to do something outside the box. It almost makes you want to throw up your arms and say that's it, I'm outa here. Perhaps a blog isn't the best place though to air my gripes so I'll resist the temptation.

In terms of what we are doing right now in Lampang, in many ways we are working outside of the system. We are not working at the moment in co-ordination with the other local churches in Lampang. Of course we would love to, but it just wouldn't work. Our vision is for a movement of house church with no paid professional pastor, no church building, small groups of up to 12 believers. The vision of the existing church is exactly the opposite.

We are looking and praying for a Thai believer to join our team but we want someone who shares our vision. Without a Thai co-worker we are very much constrained in terms of cultural insight and Thai way of thinking. We pray that God can overcome these constraints until God provides a Thai co-worker.

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?

The bhikkhuni question

Ajahn Brahm - Abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery in Australia

I thought that the issue of the ordination of women was limited to the Anglican denomination (in the media anyway). Not so. I was surprised to read about the bhikkhumi issue in yesterday's Bangkok Post. Bhikkhuni is a fully-ordained Buddhist female monk. Apparently the practice Bhikkhuni died out many centuries ago and now it is not legally possible to become a fully-ordainted buddhist monk. Now there are people calling for it to be reinstated. A case of dejavu? Interesting what Ajahn Brahm states as reasons for reinstating bhikkumi: "It's often said that Thai people, both in Bangkok and the provinces, are moving away from Buddhism. Having bhikkhunis would be one very powerful, effective way to restore that confidence in Buddhism. It'll show that we're modern. And it'll show that we are a fair religion. How can we say that we are following reason and truth and fairness when we deny 50 percent of the population the same opportunities?

In a country like Australia, there is no choice. When other religions are introducing equal rights to women, if Buddhism doesn't we're not going to survive. It's culturally unacceptable to have a lack of equity for men and women in Western countries and it's becoming that way in Thailand.

Buddhism is also fading in Thailand because people aren't respecting monks so much. Get the women on board and they can help clean it up."

Hmmmm... Why do these arguments sound so familiar I wonder?

You can read the whole article here.

Lost in translation again

Last night I rung the Pastor of a church in Lampang who I heard was moving to Bangkok next month to do his Master of Divinity. I invited him for a meal together so that I could see him one more time before he left. I told him to come to my house at 1pm so that we could go an eat lunch together. I was very surprised when I came home at 12:30pm after teaching English at the Lighthouse to see his motorcycle parked outside our house. I was even more surprised when Lisa told me that he's been there since 11:45am. I was sure that I'd said to meet at 1pm. How was I misunderstood. Well, in Thai, the literal translation of the word Lunch is "food at midday". Obviously, I hadn't explained that I wanted to meet at 1pm clearly enough and when I mentioned having lunch he said that in Thai culture you arrive 15 minutes before noon to go eat together. Oh, well, I'll know for next time.

Above is a photo of what I had for lunch. I think it was chicken joints. That's what it tasted like anyway. It was o.k, a bit too sour and salty for my liking. Sorry I forgot to take the photo before I started eating.

Princess in town

The Crown Prince and his third wife, Princess Srirasmi

Yesterday, around midday when I went to Big C (a shopping centre) there were lots of police around and the outside car park was blocked off. I thought that maybe there had been a robbery or bomb threat. Late afternoon, I took the kids to Big C and there were even more police, not only at Big but on the road to Big C. When I asked someone who was coming, I gather it was someone in the royal family. I thought it was the daughter of the crown prince but my language teacher explained today that it was actually the 3rd wife of the Prince of Thailand. I was able to get a glimpse of her coming up the escalator. Probably the closest I've come to royalty. If Lisa was there with our baby maybe the Princess might have stopped to say something as the Princess stopped to briefly chat with a mother and her child at the top of the escalator.

Outreach wth Premier League Football

Going home from the Lighthouse tonight, a little discouraged as only one student turned up to the International Student Night, I had an idea. What if we got cable T.V at the Lighthouse and showed Premier League Football (Soccer) regularly. We have a data projector and screen already at the Lighthouse. Most Thai men love premier league football. Last week I saw a crowd men watching the big screen outside the entrance to the shopping centre watching a big premier league game. They had finished their shopping or about to go in and they just stopped to watch the game.

I know that Tai is really into Premier League Football, and even one of my year 10 girl students in my English class lit up when the discussion got on to which football team they followed. Apparently, our neighbour's son in law stayed up until 5 am to watch a premier league game recently.

One problem with the student night right now is that one or two students who come regularly aren't inviting their friends. I think it would also be easier for them to invite their guy friends to watch Premier League Football than to a Student evening.

Also, there is the Football World Cup next year in South Africa. We could be showing the World Cup games at the Lighthouse too. I don't know how much it would be to get cable T.V. 300-500 baht per month? I think we could trial it for a year and see how it goes. The premier league season finishes in 6 weeks I think so we could start the subscription for the start of next season so that it included the World Cup as well?

If you were a guy, wouldn't you want to come watch Premier League Football on a big screen. Maybe play some football on a Playstation first.

Anyway, I'm very excited about the possibility.

Would I become a Buddhist?

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.