What I'm Reading Now: Planting Churches Cross-Culturally

This book is almost (or is) a classic when it comes to church planting. I've heard of it, probably was taught a lot of it at college or at church planting conferences but it is the first time I'm actually reading it. It has been very helpful and challenging, the bits I've read so far.

Here's a thought provoking section on p.116.

" .... four factors should be give preliminary consideration before actually establishing contacts in the target area:

1. Newcomers to a society may find it easier to related to people of difference classes (i.e people of the classes higher or lower than the class to which they belonged in their home culture) than will a person who is native to that society. (Rich: I think the implication is that missionaries as newcomers to a society can cross the class divide more easily than locals)
2. Results of undifferentiated initial contacts can mean that new churches become identified with marginals and outcasts who attach themselves to the missionary-evangelist for purposes of self-aggrandizement. These people may have little power to persuade their fellow citizens to accept the gospel. What needs to be thought through (but rarely is) is the implications of the rather widespread non-strategy of making initial contacts with those who are most easily approached.
3. It can be of great value if a core of solid citizens can be won to Christ and to the church... If the first converts are from the lowest class, the conversion of middle and upper class people will be made more difficult.
4. The experience of many Pentecostal and some Baptists groups should cause us to give more consideration to reaching the lower-middle and upper lower classes where “education and work go hand in hand”. Biblical precedent and the success of these groups indicate that many denominations and missions may be missing an opportunity for great growth among a responsive people who obviously make good timber for building churches."

A word of warning comes from my friend and fellow missionary about how modern missionary is not hemmed in by Scripture (Learning from John Nevius). The comments sections has our additional discussion.

Hesslegrave, David J. 2000. (2nd Ed). Planting Churches Cross-Culturally. North America and Beyond. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

Is Using English Teaching as Outreach a Deception?

Steve and Sophie - Short-termers teaching one of my English Classes

There are differing views amongst missionaries of using English Teaching as outreach.

1. Some believe that the practice is a bit of a deception because the goals of the missionary and the goals of the students are usually very different. The goal of the missionary is to be able to tell the students about Jesus. The goal of the student to increase their job prospects. So they don’t teach English out of principle.

2. The other point of view is that English teaching meet a felt need in the community, something which we as native English speakers can do easily and more proficiently than the local people. In most cases the students know we are missionaries and they are happy to put up with some teaching using Biblical material to get native speaker teaching. One extreme would be just using entirely Biblical material to teach English. At the other extreme of this camp would be only using a portion of the time to teach about the Bible and the rest of the time straight English teaching.

3. Or a middle road might be that the missionary teachers English, but would not teach anything Biblical at all. Through English teaching, the hope is that relationships will be build and there will be opportunities to share the gospel outside of class times.

An additional factor is whether you charge for the English teaching or not. In charging a fee, you are more obligated to teach with the goal of the student in mind.

So what are we doing in Lampang? We charge 200 baht (AU$ 8) a month for 2 hours aper week of English class. In our advertising we don’t mentioned anything about there being any “Christian” content.

I guess I started of in camp 3. I didn’t teach any Biblical material at all. But after about 8 months of this, I got a little fed up and thought what’s the point. I’m teaching English but no one is getting further in my aim of them eventually getting to know Jesus. So in the last couple of months, in the last 30 minutes of my 2 hour English Class, I’ve started telling Chronological Bible Stories in English and explaining in Thai when needed. I’ve felt much better about this and don’t feel so much that I’m wasting my time. I didn’t come here just to teach English.

However, my wife recently had a conversation with a missionary who is in camp 1 and I’m thinking through again how we do English teaching and whether we are being deceptive in anyway in how we promote our English class.

As an aside, a student shared with me at the end of class today that he had downloaded the Bible into his iphone but was having difficulty understanding it. So I gave him a picture Bible we have in Thai and organised to meet him on Thursday nights to answer any questions which he may have and help him understand more about the Bible.

Opinions?

Why I wouldn't supplement a local pastor's salary

One of the most painful issues for our team leader is the issue of gradually withdrawing financial support from a significant number of Thai churches that our mission is still financially supporting. In most cases these churches have been started by one of missionaries in the past, and the church started receiving financial support from the mission to help it along. The old policy I think was that within 5 years the financial support would gradually stop and by that time the church would be self supporting. In reality, almost always the financial support was still needed after 5 years. When you try to reduce the support, the church makes it clear that they feel like you are abandoning them. The current mission policy is not to provide any regular financial support to a church or a pastor. However, there are many legacy situations still being resolved.

In my opinion it would have been better to have never provided financial support in the first place. In almost all cases it is unhelpful and cripples the church with a dependency on foreign money. I recently heard that perhaps as many as 90% of 4,000 Thai pastors who attended a recent Evangelism Conference in Bangkok are supported in significant way by foreign funds.

Although it is so hard to cut financial support to these financially needy churches in the long run it is that best thing for that church. If it can't survive without foreign funds then maybe it is best that it doesn't. It sounds harsh but I think it is the truth. Then the congregation will face the problem for themselves and work out a viable solution. Perhaps it will mean that the Pastor needs to find a part time job to supplement his income. Perhaps the congregation will realise that if they don't give more then they won't have a Pastor. For foreign missions to continue to fund these churches isn't viable or the best use of fund. Also as long as those funds are there the church will know that there is always a fall back option. Ask the mission.

When you give money to one church to buy land or to build a church, the other churches see this and come asking for money too. When you don't give it to them, they think you are showing favoritism. You gave it to them but why not us?

At college we saw a case study of a church in Africa which had depended on foreign support for decades. When the support was cut the church in time actually developed and icnreased their giving to the point that they were giving almost $500,000 to overseas mission. They learnt they could do without foreign support and took it upon themselves to find the funds to self support the ministry of the church.

If a new church plant cannot afford a Pastor, I say it should not have a Pastor. Work out some other way to lead the church. The worst thing you can do is to prop it up with foreign money making it anemic and dependant. The church must be self support from the start or not at all.

I can see first hand the heartache in our househelp's eyes and face when the Korean missionaries cut her husband's salary last month. They are just barely struggling to meet the bills. The missionaries never should have put him in the situation first place and it has put so much tension in the relationship between them.

Sad News

A couple of days ago a missionary in our organisation took his life in a nearby city leaving behind his wife and two children. They were fellow Australians and we got to know them a little bit when we were on holidays last year at our organisation's guesthouse. It has come as a real shock to us. Please pray for this family and those who are greiving this loss. Please continue to pray for all those in ministry as it is not an easy life.

International Evening: Nitendo Wii Fun

Guitar Hero on Nitendo Wii

Wii Sport - Tennis

I had an idea a some months back of getting a Nintendo Wii for our International Evening. Numbers had been low for a while and I felt that we needed something more to attract students and young adults. However, when I went to Chiang Mai the price of a Nintendo was almost double the price back in Australia so I gave up on the idea. We happened to be in Bangkok to extend our visas a couple of weeks ago and I happened to pass by a shop selling Nintendo Wiis. Out of curiosity I asked about the price and was stunted to find out that it was half the price I'd seen in Chiang Mai. I ummed and aahhed a lot over when I should purchase it as it was still not a cheap purchase by any means. However, I went for it.

Anyway, the Nintendo Wii has been great fun and I invited a couple of people telling about what great fun it was and they turned up on Friday. In fact, we had to give them a hint that it was getting late at around 10:30pm (the evening is meant to finish at 9pm) and I had to teach English the next morning.

It is hard knowing sometimes what you should spend money on and what you should not. I guess the tendency has always to be as frugal as possible as missionaries. But has cost more than a hundred thousand dollars in preparing for and being in Thailand for 2 years so you've really got to keep things in perspective.

The next thing we are thinking of spending money on is a large vinyl banner for in front of the Lighthouse house. It will cost around 2500 baht (AU$100). Some may say that is too much and just make do without or go for a cheap cloth one, but if it is going to attract more people to the Lighthouse and get us to our goals quicker, then in the end it is going to save a lot more in the long run because we won't need to be here as long.

What am I reading now? Simple Church

Thom S Rianer & Eric Geiger in their book “Simple Church” discuss the implications of their survey of around 400 evangelical churches, split between those which are growing (at least 5% p.a for 3 consecutive years) and those that are not. They argue that in the growing churches everyone in the church understands and is clear about how each activity of the church contributes to the overall goal of the church. A non-growing church maybe doing the same things as a growing church but are ineffective because there is no clarity about how each activity fits into the overall goal of the church, there is no clear process of moving people to greater areas of commitment. They may not be abandoning things which don’t fit into this process.

In other words two churches may have the same activities but the growing church has a clear process of growing the members in the church in maturity and commitment (movement), whereas a non-growing church maybe doing the same activities but people aren’t moving to increasing maturity and commitment.

One example would be both a growing church and non growing church have small groups. But in the growing church there is a focus on making everyone at church aware of the small groups. There is a clear process of how people can join these groups. In these groups, people join smaller serving teams. There is a set process which people are clear about.

In a non-growing church theses small groups exists but maybe announcements are made once in a while to join a group but not much else.

Simple, but very few churches are doing it.

This is Thailand: Answer

The answer to what this truck is doing parked on the side of the highway:

Up ahead is a police check point. This truck is stopped about 50 metres before the police check. Behind this truck is about another 5 trucks all lined up behind it. The truck has stopped probably because either the truck is overweight, incorrectly registered or the driver doesn't have a driver's license. The truck will wait until the police check point moves on. This could be an hour, several hours, or even the next day. These trucks will wait, presumibly so that they are not fined. The incomprehensible thing is though that this truck is in view of the police at the check point. It is obvious what they are doing, but the police will not walk 50 metres down the road to book them. This is Thailand.

Homesick

We have been in Thailand for over two years now. Our first term is meant to be 4 years but we plan to return to Australia in December 2010 (3 year and 9 months). I haven't really been too homesick in the last two years. Sure, I'd love to be closer to the beach, have a good affordable steak, good friends who I can have fun with without there being significant language barriers etc. etc. but none of that had me longing for home.

But today I read a prayerletter of a friend who is a missionary returning home after 3 years on the field and planning to remain in Australia for 3 years to do further study (and possibly to return to that country in the future) and felt a bit homesick. We get our fair share of prayerletters from friends who are missionaries. In fact about 10 people in my year at college became missionaries and went overseas. All but 1 or 2 of those missionaries have been back to Australia either for home assignment or some other reason (such as having a baby or attending a wedding). So that's been increasing our homesickness as we read of them being at home and enjoying life back home.

It is probably a good thing that our first term is almost 4 years. If we went back to Australia now, we might now come back. It hasn't been easy over the last 2 years, but they say that it gets easier from about this point on (the 2 year mark). I guess we are seeing hints of that recently. Still we do think about home. Don't know whether it is a case of "it's greener on the other side" though.

There’s something terribly wrong

This photo is very blurred. Probably a good thing.

I was invited by a Thai friend last week to go and see a play at a local university. He said it was put on by students about to enter Chiang Mai university. I wasn’t at all expecting what was to come. The play was full of sexual innuendo of a very degrading and debase kind. I couldn’t understand much of what was being said but the dances and the acting was hard to mistake. Guys with bras on (blurred photo above), transvestites, other things which were too gross to mention. There was a American woman who I’d met just before the play started who was invited also by my friend. At one stage she walked out because it was too much. Initially I though it was university students putting on the production. Then I was shocked to find out that they were highschool students performing from the major highschools in Lampang. More Specially those who had just finished highschool a couple of months before and had been accepted into Universities in Chiang Mai. It was beyond belief that 17 and 18 year old would be involved in such a play. Worse still there were many of their highschool friends in the audience, cheering and laughing at the sexually charged scenes. I couldn’t work out whether they were laughing out of embarrassment (which is what Thais do) or because it was funny.

If a play like this was put on in Australia, there would be an uproar. There is no doubt in my mind that the students would be expelled and the event banned. But this has been an annual event for the past 23 years.

There are real and serious problems with sex and sexuality in Thai society. I have no idea how it got this way but it is clear that it starts at a very early age and is rampant throughout the society. It seems very ironic in a “buddhist” nation, because a key tenet of Buddhism is to extinguish “desires”.

What am I reading now? The Rise of Christianity

I borrowed this fascinating book at the OMF Guesthouse in Bangkok while we staying there. It is an attempt by a social scientist to explain the rapid rise of Christianity, as the title suggests, “How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries”.

As far as I can tell the author, Stark is not a Christian. He estimates that there were 1,000 Christians at 40A.D and just over 33 million by 350 A.D (which was 56% of the population of the world at the time). This kind of growth requires 40% growth every decade. Sounds very dramatic but this works out in the following numbers.

No. of Christians
100 A.D. 7,530
200 A.D 217,000
300 A.D 6.3 million
350 A.D 33.9 million

Surprising, Stark reveals that the Mormons have grown at a rate of 43% per decade for the last century!

Stark then introduces social science's explanations for people converting to minority religions such as sects and cults. He and a colleague went and observed people converting to the Moonies, in particular a group started by Yong Oon Kim in 1959 in Oregon, America.

[Miss Kim tried to spread her message by talks to various groups, press releases. radio spots and renting a hall for public meetings. These methods yielded nothing. “the only ones who joined were those who interpersonal attachments to members overbalanced their attachments to nonmembers. In effect, conversion is not about seeking or embracing an ideology; it is about bringing one’s religious behaviour into alignment with that of one’s friends and family members.” (p16-17.)

“attachment lie at the heart of conversion and therefore that conversion tends to proceed along social networks formed by interpersonal attachments”

“Conversion to new, deviant religious groups occurs when, other things being equal, people have or develop stronger attachments to members of the group than they have to nonmembers.” (p.18).

Data based on records kept by a Mormon mission president gives powerful support to this proposition. “When missionaries make cold calls, knock on the doors of strangers, this eventually leads to conversion once out of a thousand calls. However, when missionaries make their first contact with a person in the home of a Mormon friend or relative of that person, this results in conversion 50% of the time.” (p.18).]

What do you think? In your experience is this true? Stark is talking about people making a major religious shift from say Christianity to Hinduism, rather than how life long Christians are born again.

Stark has many other very interesting observations which will follow in future posts.

Stark, Rodney. 1996. The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press.