Recent Activities at the Lighthouse & Lampang

It has been a busy time at the Lighthouse and in Lampang. We recently had our son’s birthday party combined with kidsclub at the Lighthouse. It was chaotic with nearly 40 children. This was the beautiful rocket ice cream made by Lisa.

The next day we had our fortnightly Sunday afternoon BBQ to which we invite all our Thai friends and those coming to the Lighthouse. We had the most people ever with 11 adults and 4 children (not including our team). We were having some great discussions too.

Finally we enrolled our eldest son in a Taekwondo school. At first he didn’t want to go but I persuaded him to just have a look. If he didn’t like it he didn’t have to go. We’ll from instant he stepped into the door he was wrestling with another boy and he couldn’t get enough. He wanted to go everyday after that. Many of the other parents send their children 5 days a weeks, but we can’t send our son more than 3 times a week. It has been a good chance to speak to the other parents for an hour many of whom are parents of children in our son’s class at school.

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.

Spolit brats get iRate at Apple

I was surprised to read this insight from a non-Christian journalist this morning.

“There are lots of reasons why Jobs (Steve Jobs the CEO of Apple) is under siege, but the most potent is the spoiled brat phenomenon of humanity.

The more we humans have, the more we want, the more dissatisfied and ungrateful we are.

Even though iPhone and iPad devotees revel in the functionality and design of the devices, at the same time we take them utterly for granted, as a natural extension of ourselves.

Of course I'm going to email on the bus. Of course I'm going to watch trashy TV shows on my iPad at the gym. Of course I'm going to read the newspaper or a book on my iPad in bed.

These things that were unthinkable 10, five, even one year ago, we now simply expect.

What we need is an app for gratitude, not cynicism, for just taking a moment to appreciate the magnificent achievements of the human mind, which are captured in that slim, sleek device our ancestors scarcely could have dreamed possible.”

From: Spoilt brats get iRate at Apple, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July 2010 Miranda Divine

Oversupply of Presbyterian Ministers in the US

 Tim Ryan, who lost his job as a pastor at a megachurch in Mechanicsburg, Pa., now works as a carpenter.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal (Joblessness Hits the Pulput, May 17, 2010) "Right now, the Presbyterian Church in America, which includes about 1,700 churches, has about five pastors looking for work for each of its 54 job openings, about twice the level before the recession, said the group's business administrator, John Robertson."

Seems like there is quite an oversupply of Presbyterian ministers in the US.  I wonder if some would consider relocating to some rural Presbyterian Churches in Australia.  Or there are always needs on the mission field.

US Center for World Missions

Last week Nick (team leader) had a chance to visit the US Center for World Missions (where the Perspectives course was developed), courtesy of Larry Dinkins an ex-OMF Missionary to Thailand who works there.  After Larry gave a seminar to the faculty on storying, he organised a meeting with most of the faculty to discuss evangelism amongst Thai Buddhist and our situation in Lampang.  Many of the faculty are experts in their fields and it was an amazing discussion.  It was a but surreal meeting many of the people who write articles for the Missions Frontiers magazine which I used to pick up at Bible college.  I certainly left the meeting with many things to think about.

I can say the same after the Threshold conference.  The sessions didn't help me as much as I had hoped, but hearing the testimony of a group which had started an organic church in Gainsville, Florida last year made me long for the community they had.  Many of them sold their homes to move to Gainville to join the new group which formed out of last year's conference.  The US economy is pretty bad so not all of have found jobs and are still living off the proceeds of their house sale.  The sense of community and love from what they were sharing was amazing.  I got many of their contact details so that I can keep up with how the group develops in the future.

I think the two things above made the trip worth the large personal expense of flying to the US.

In the US for the Threshold Organic Church Conference

I'm in the US right now to attend the Threshold 2010 conference, which is conference for those wanting to plant "organic churches".   I'm here with our team leader from Lampang.  Yesterday we had an opportunity to go to the US Center for World Mission with Larry Dinkins who used to work in Thailand with OMF.  It was an amazing time to chat with some of the staff at the US Center for World Mission about the issues we face in trying to reach Buddhists in Lampang and setting up organic churches.

I haven't slept more than about 3-4 hours in each of the last 3 nights due to jet lag and long hours of travelling, so I'm off to bed.

New Additions to our family

We have two new additions to the family given to us by fellow missionaries going on home assignment for a year.  They are two kittens which are just over 2 months old.  On our first term we were given a dog by some missionaries leaving Lampang and then quickly ended up with 8 extra puppies.  We decided that we weren't a dog family with our children so young.  They were like have extra children.  Cats apparently are less maintenance so we thought we'd give them try.

Well the kids absolutely love them and we hope they won't die from all the attention they are getting.  I love the fact that it was so easy to get them to use the kitty litter.  So far they are so much less work than the dogs were.

What! We have a new prime minister?

O.k. For all the Australians in Australia reading this, this is old news already.  But I only found out today that Australia has a new prime minister, and our first woman prime minister.  It happened 5 days ago already!  It shows how out of touch we missionaries can get living away from home.  I can't believe that only 5 days later, it wasn't that obvious on the Sydney Morning Herald online either.  There was a video clip of Julia Gillard (the new prime minster) moving into Prime Minister's office and I thought that's a little old.  Has Kevin Rudd (the deposed prime minister) gone on another one of his overseas trips.  I couldn't believe that she had deposed him (I didn't see it in her and neither did Kevin Rudd or the majority of the nation I'd think).

Stunned.  Unbelievable. Better go and break the news to my wife.  She's think I'm joking for sure.

Doing things "badly" but "wholeheartedly"

This year’s OMF Thailand’s conference speakers were Stuart and Jill Briscoe.  One thing which struck me and some of the other missionaries was when Jill advised us to do thing badly and wholeheartedly rather than not at all.  The context was when she had moved from youth ministry to become a pastor’s wife for the first time.  She had no idea about what being a pastor’s wife involved.  So she went round with a piece of paper and asked the congregation for their expectations of her as the pastor’s wife.  When she went home and read this extensive piece of paper she realised that she had none of the gifts to meet the expectations of the congregation.  In despair she went to her husband and showed him the list and he confirmed, “Yes, you have none of those gifts.”  What should she do then.  Her husband advised, “Then, just do it badly”.  When people saw her trying but doing it badly, what happened was two things.  People started feeling sorry for her and asked her “can I help you with that” and secondly, she stated to see that by doing it, she developed gifts she did not have before.

In my experience and that of many missionaries, we are put in situations where we just have to do things badly it needs to be done and there is no one else.  Before coming to Thailand didn’t think I was any good at cold turkey evangelism.  But after giving out giving out about 50 or so flyers advertising “The Lighthouse” (our outreach centre), it became almost second nature and people saw that I have a gifting in making new contacts and evangelism.

In the church culture in places like Australia and America, we’ve grabbed on to so much of the teaching on leaderships and gifts that we don’t tend to get involved in particular ministries unless we are “gifted” in it.  So we leave everything to the small minority who are considered “gifted”.  Perhaps if people were encouraged to do things even if it means doing it “badly” but “wholeheartedly”, then people would “discover” more of their gifts and more work could be done instead of the few doing everything burning out. 

On another topic, if we focused first on the character of our leaders (before putting them in leadership positions) rather than focusing mostly on their gifting, we’d have better leaders leading our churches.

Wrapping the Good News for the Thai

This extract from an article, "Wrapping the Good News for the Thai" by Alan Johnson highlights one of the problems we face as we try to share the Gospels with Thais.

"Although there were a number of experiences over time that helped to bring the reality of the complexity of communication home to me, one stands out in particular. I was conducting an English lesson with a couple of Thai high school students and we were working through Luke 5 in the English text. We came to the point where I wanted to discuss the meaning of the passage and some of its implications and since they were unable to converse easily in English I said that we would switch into Thai. I asked the question, why did Peter fall on his knees and say that he was a sinful man? Without a moment’s hesitation the young man said, “Because he killed all of those fish!” I have to admit that his response caught me totally off guard. He was reading the text through his “Buddhist eyes” of the principle of not taking life. It made me realize in a much clearer fashion that the worldview, beliefs, values and assumptions of my listeners were causing them to make different meanings than what I was intending, even when those understandings did not surface in conversation.

This started me on the process of trying to understand the meanings that people would be making in their minds from the terms and concepts that we use when we share the Gospel. It became clear to me that Thais were not simply rejecting the Gospel or Christianity, in reality the situation was much more complicated than that. At least part of their lack of response is a rejection of the linguistic and stylistic wrapping in which we as missionaries and local Christians were presenting the message. When the “wrapping” makes no sense it keeps them from ever getting to the wonderful gift of the Good News inside."