Hell City

The Entrance to Hell City at a Temple in Chiang Rai

I had an interesting cultural experience when I took a team up to visit the work in Chiang Rai.  We were taken to a temple which had this "Hell City" inside the entrance to the temple.  It was a scary place even in the day time, but it would definitely be eerie and scary at night.

According to this buddhist website Buddhists don't believe that heaven or hell are eternal places but just temporary.  Buddhist believe that it is "unreasonable to condemn a man to eternal hell for his human weakness but quite reasonable to give him every chance to develop himself.   From the Buddhist point of view, those who go to hell can work themselves upward making use of the merit they had acquired previously".  Interesting they say "Buddhist never try to introduce Buddhism by frightening people through hell-fire or enticing people by pointing to paradise. Their main idea is character building and mental training. Buddhists can practise their religion without aiming at heaven or without developing fear of hell." I'm not sure if this is entirely true in practice if the "Hell City" at this temple is anything to go by. 

 Awaiting judgement and sentencing.

 The punishment for adulterers.  Climbing up this spiky pole, speared in your private parts, bitten by dogs, crows poking out your eyes and snakes biting you.

 Sinners being thrown into a boiling pot

Awaiting reincarnation.  Only humans can be saved so if you are an animal you must be reincarnated as a human before you can receive salvation. 

ST4T - Storying Training for Trainers

I've been doing a lot of reading and researching on Church Planting Movements (CPMs) in the last couple of months.  There are so much resources out there, but I was particularly looking for one that was simple, reproducible and effective.  The S-T4T (Storying Training for Trainers) method is the closest I've come to what I've been looking for.  What I liked about it was it had a clear process from the initial conversation to sharing your testimony and then into Bible storying or discipleship.   I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to meet the person who helped develop S-T4T as he had meetings in Chiang Mai last week and I was able to ask him some of the question that I had.  He said that the manual which I had download was an outline but to really understand and apply the strategy you really needed to attend a training and see it action.  

What I like about S-T4T is that takes the best principles from T4T (Training for Trainers) and applies it to an oral context (those who prefer not to learn from written materials) and using Bible Storying as its backbone.

Unfortunately, as with other Church Planting Movement (CPM) strategies, there is yet to be a CPM started in Thailand using S-T4T or any other method which has been verifiable.

You can find more information about S-T4T on their website.  http://www.st4t.org/

My prayer and hope is that before I leave Thailand I will have either been a catalyst to or have seen a CPM in Thailand.

The storying pastor

I have started to visit churches in Chiang Mai to build relationships with the churches and see where we can help.  I was so encouraged by this pastor who used an oral storying method to teach the members of his church and engaged them thinking about story and getting the main points of teaching and application.  If the pastor had trained some of the members of his congregation to do what he did on Sunday that would be even better.  Without this it would very difficult for this church to reproduce and multiply in a significant way.

Saved to serve

Neung (L) & Lawrence (R)

I met Lawrence for the first time on Sunday at the Chiang Dao Bakery Church.  12 years ago he was holidaying at Koh Lanta on the Andaman coast of Thailand on the day that the Tsunami hit.  He didn't understand what was happening when the water receded and neither did anyone else.  But he was praying asking God what to do and he heard an audible voice from behind him saying in Swiss for him to flee.  When he turned around there was no one there apart from American and French tourists.  He knew that the voice was from God and he told everyone he could that they needed to flee.  Only some listened.  He went to the restaurant and gathered two bottles of water into his bag and prepared to go when a Thai woman grabbed his arm and painfully dug her fingers into his arm in a iron grip.  He was about to hit her with his free hand and as he swung his hand was stopped mid flight and he couldn't move his hand any further.  He politely asked the woman in Swiss to let go of his arm and she complied and he was able to let his other arm down.  It was God again working to stop him from doing the wrong thing.  He fled about 300m from the beach when he heard the rushing surge of the waves, smashing the coconut tree with a loud popping sound. 

He was miraculously saved that day 12 years ago and every year Lawrence returns to Thailand each year to spend about 2 months going around the country telling people of the God who saved him.  For many years, he has been coming to drink coffee at Neung's bakery in Chiang Dao and he would give him the postcard with some Bible verses and pray for him.  This year it was different as found out that God had answered his prayers and that Neung had become a Christian.  

Lawrence speaks rudimentary Thai but he has a big heart and love which can speak wonders of the God he serves.  

Lessons from a elevator

Lift buttons in a Korean elevator

Do the notice what's strange about the buttons on this elevator in Korea?  I was told at the number 4 in Chinese sounds like the word for death.  So many Asian countries which use Chinese characters don't use the button for level 4.  I think the "F" they use instead stands for "floor"?  It is similar to the Western avoidance of the use of "13" in elevators.  You would think in a "advance" country like Korea that they would have gone past this belief in "lucky" or "unlucky" numbers.

For more information on lucky and unlucky numbers is Chinese click here.

Rice Harvest

 Rice milling machine

Rice harvest for the next year

Bible Storying

 Larry Dinkins - using "Simply the Story"

Our students leading Karen youth in the healing of the paralytic

Dr Larry Dinkins has taught at many of the Bible Seminaries/Colleges in Thailand and helped established Chiang Mai Theological Seminary.  However, he believes that the best way to teach the Bible is not through classroom teaching at Bible seminaries but through Bible storying.  His aim in teaching now is to only teach what the listener then can teach other.  Unless it is reproducible he is not so interested in using it.

Certainly, understanding the importance and significance of Bible Storying or orality for teaching and understanding the Bible has been a "game changer" for me.

We had an opportunity to take a team of 15 students from the James O Fraser Centre to a Karen Youth Camp in North Thailand and Larry came and taught using storying.  It was great to see the youth interacting with the teaching rather than just being passive recipients. 

Throwing away the lone pastor model

One of our students is a very gifted evangelist and has grown a church from 1 family to around 100 people in 5 years.  He and his wife have done a marvellous job.  However, they are tired and worn out.  He preaches almost every Sunday and his wife teaches Sunday school.  I challenged our student to have a plan for seeing one of the members trained to be able to preach by the end of the year and the same for Sunday school.  I encouraged a model of ministry where he is the lone pastor but is training up the members of his church (Ephesians 4:12).

Church discipleship at its best

In 1998, the author of this book, Jim Putman helped establish a church in Idaho, USA which grew from 4 families to over 8,000 people in 8 years.  The vision of the church, Real Life Ministries (RLM) is to "is to reach the world for Jesus one person at a time by making biblical disciples in relational environments."  This book explains how this is done.  Very few churches do discipleship as a whole church well.  This church is an extraordinary exception.  

Why I won't be preaching anymore

One of my students preaching for the first time

As a missionary I get asked to preach quite frequently when I go to visit a church.  In the past I used to accept these invitations to preach to encourage the church members.  However, these days I almost always politely refuse.  I would rather help the members themselves develop their own preaching or give an opportunity for my students to be trained in their preaching.  I don't know how long God will have us serving in Thailand, but when that day comes, I don't think any of the sermons I preached will have as much effect as the training I provided to others.