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.  

Starting conversations

Last week I took one of the students I mentor to a local cafe to give him practice telling Bible Stories. I asked him how do you start a conversation with someone which will lead to a spiritual conversation. He didn't know.  Then I pointed to the picture on the wall of the cafe.  "Do you think that might be a starting point?",  I asked.  "How?".  "Well, those 3 words are actually from the Bible - 1 Corinthians 13 and that can be the starting point ...".  

The woman we spoke to didn't know where the sign came from or what it meant.  Now she knows that it is actually from the Bible.  We didn't tell her a Bible story that day but we hope to go back this week.

3 Books impacting my life right now

Did someone say that "you are what you read"? or is it "you are what you think"?.  There was a time a couple of years ago when a minister asked me what I was reading at the time and my mind went blank.  It might have been because I hadn't been reading anything significant at the time.  It probably reflected the spiritual state that I was in at the time.  I had been stagnate as a Christian for a few years, not moving forward, not growing.

Fortunately, God helped me through that time and my passion for reading, learning and growing as been rekindled.  I have 5-6 books on my desk now which reading.  

But the 3 books that have had the greatest impact over the last year are these:-

1. Telling the Gospel Through Story - Evangelism that keeps hearers wanting more (Christine Dillon)

2. Unreached - growing churches in working class and deprived areas (Tim Chester)

3. Discipleshift - Five steps that help your church to make disciples who make disciples (Jim Putman & Bobby Harrington)

"Telling the Gospel Through Story" continues the journey God has been taking me through in relation to Bible Storying.  The way I do evangelism and teach the Bible has been completely transformed by this journey which started 5-6 years ago.  God brought the author, Christine Dillon to visit us at a crucial time when I'd gone off the storying track for a while.

"Unreached" was highly recommended by Ray Galea in a talk I was listening too.  It exposed my middle class and how it had affected my efforts at ministry to the working class and deprived areas.  

"Discipleshift" I came across as I was following an email thread on Bible Storying.  Jim Putman's church was given as an example of where a discipleship approach to church was implemented successfully with great effect.  Robert Coleman who wrote, "Masterclass of Evangelism" which is a key book for our centre, contributed to this book too.  

You won't regret buying and being transformed by these books.

God goes ahead of us

Karen Church Camp

I don't think that I've ever been as scared in a car as I was on this trip (o.k. perhaps going 180km in a toyota corolla on a road in South Africa comes close - I wasn't driving!).  The roads were mountainous, steep and narrow.  A few times we slipped backwards down the hill and the student who invited us jumped out of his seat petrified.  He had in this situation before a few years back when some of the other passengers in the car had been killed.

But God went ahead of us, providing a member of the local church to be the driver for the 12 hour journey who had experience in this type of journey in his days in the army.  There is no way that I would have been able to drive like he did.

God worked in many other ways, especially in giving opportunities to train our students and the church members in Bible Storying.

It was not an easy trip with cold showers in the river and no electricity,  but there were many blessings in what God did in us and through us.

First fruits

I have lived in cities all my life before moving to the James O Fraser Centre.  I wasn't much of a gardner or farmer or handyman.  Here we raise pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, farm rice and corn.  It's been a steep learning curve but a good one.  I've learnt so much.  My latest project is a strawberry patch.  Back in Australia I couldn't even keep any of the strawberry plants I bought alive.  Here after learning about soil, watering, sun and fertiliser, strawberry runners, I've taken 1 strawberry pot and grown it to 3 patches of strawberries with about 20 strawberry plants.  The first fruits have just come out.  Who would have guessed all this from a "city boy".  There are so many new skills I've learnt since coming to Thailand.  It's wonderful the places God has taken me to.