Chiang Mai Orality Network

The world breathed a sigh of relief when the news came that the 12 Thai soccer team members who had been trapped for 9 days in a cave near the golden triangle had been found. Yet now we realize that finding them is relatively easy compared to rescuing them from their watery grave. There was a similar joy when the 32 Chilean miners were found alive after 17 days of searching back in 2010. However, it took a massive international effort taking 69 days to actually rescue them. Three parables in Luke 15 illustrate a similar joy when a housewife, shepherd and father find what they had been so diligently looking for. Yet with the prodigal son, more work needed to be done before true restoration could be accomplished.

The same is true in missions today. We have found and identified most all of the UPGs (Unreached People Groups) in the world. The harder work is to show them that Jesus is the only one who finds [spiritually] lost people and rescues them. The Thai are one such UPG, numbering 69 million souls. There are hundreds more UPGs throughout East Asia. Who will be willing to leave their comfortable surroundings to make the effort and count the cost of going into the pit to pull them out?

I just spoke at a church camp for 70 Thai people. I counted only 11 males which works out to a 1 to 7 ratio. On a regular Sunday, this church has a higher ratio of males to females, but overall the predominance of women in Thai churches is a well known fact.  An article from the West, “Why Women Are More Religious” prompted me to sit down and reflect on this same phenomenon here in Thailand. There are many factors that contribute to the high percentage of women in Thai churches. I will mention only six:

1. Security – Thai women often gravitate to the security offered by God, especially when faced with financial, parenting, cultural and relational pressures.
2. Time constraints – Thai men often put you off by claiming that making a living takes up most all their time.
3. Social differences – Boys are often raised in female dominated households where they become used to women taking the lead in both domestic and religious life. This tends to create a lackadaisical or “sabai” (ease/comfort) lifestyle on the part of males, whereas Christianity demands a strong commitment of both time and energy.
4. Gender differences – Thai women are naturally nurturers, sacrificial and networkers. Accepting an invitation to church is not so difficult for a female, but becomes a major step for a Thai male.
5. Church environment – Thai men, upon entering a church, can feel that it is suited more to women due to the predominance of women/children, testimonies dominated by females and emotionally oriented music, etc. Developing and discipling new male converts is often seen as a long and difficult task for Thai church leaders, and as a result more attention is given to discipling seemingly more pliable females.
6. Positive Male Examples – Many have written about why the first disciples to witness the resurrection were all women. The Father heart of God and winsome appeal of Jesus continues to be a strong appeal to Thai women who, like women in the first century, were often disenfranchised within their society.

Pray that Thai churches will be able to address this disparity and develop creative ways to draw more men into significant roles of leadership both in their homes and in the church.

Researchers answer: Why are woman more religious?  By Bob Ditmer

One glaring concern missionaries have working in Thailand is Biblical illiteracy. One Thai leader admitted, “Thai Christians are unable to put events in the Bible into any sort of a timeline. This affects negatively their ability to understand both sermons and in their own personal study.” Having been exposed to Walk Thru the Bible in seminary made me think of how WTB OT/NT might be part of the solution for the Thai. WTB is a creative, participatory and fun cross-cultural teaching method for all ages that helps the Thai recall key Bible events, people and places. Knowing the framework of the Bible allows the Thai to see the big picture of God’s Grand Story of Redemption from Genesis to Revelation. The newest version condenses the OT/NT down to only 80 key points, each supported by a hand sign. The 40 points for each section are always taught in a live seminar which usually lasts three hours. It can also be incorporated into a six-week church wide campaign including suggested sermons, small group materials, vdos and a 40 day devotional. It is a blessing to see the Thai churches I’ve taught start to review the 40 points and use them immediately. Presently tribal workers are starting to put the WTB into various languages. Do pray that WTB will expand into local Thai churches and Bible schools throughout Thailand.

http://www.walkthru.org/list-of-events/old-testament

I just got word that Billy Graham passed into glory at 99 years old. I immediately thought of the impact that his life had on me as a young Christian. I grew up watching Graham before color TV in Oklahoma and followed his exploits around the globe (total of 185 countries). As a world renowed evangelest, the Urbana Mission Conference of 1976 asked him to be the plenary speaker ).

Urbana is a tri-annual conference, which I had the privilege of attending three years previously, along with 17,000 other young people who were seeking to discern God’s will for their life and ministry. At that Urbana I signed a card smaller than a post card, yet that decision card propelled me to eventually apply with OMF in 1978. I am now 40 years into that journey. Some thirty years after my first Urbana I found myself again at this conference as a OMF mobilizer. OMF almost rejected me since the conference was a “young peoples conference” and they were looking for younger mobilizers. This time I was accompanied by my wife and three of my four children. Two of my children were impacted for missions at that Urbana with one ending up as a missionary to muslims in Albania and a second presently preparing for a possible ministry as a mission pilot. Billy Graham’s Radio program I watched as a youth was called, “The Hour of Decision”. The decision card I signed in 1973 expressed my “hour of decision” for missions, a decision that I hope this generation will consider seriously as they discern God’s will for their life and ministry.

Recordings Urbana conference 1976

On a recent trip to South India, I watched my host communicate effortlessly using numerous Indian languages. When I asked him how many languages he knew, he pulled out a Rupee bank note and pointed out the 15 languages that are listed there. He was fluent in a number of them and could get by in most all the rest (There are 24 official languages in India with over 400 other spoken tongues). After one interchange, my host pointed out how helpful it has been to his ministry to be able travel the breadth of the vast Indian continent and communicate intelligently with most everyone he meets.

In Thailand there are 74 languages spoken, but fortunately the main trade language is Central Thai which all OMF church planters need to study. Interesting enough, Ethnologue states that 67% of Thai speakers speak it as a second language. The vast majority of those 67% are fluent in Thai, an elusive goal for many of us ex-pats who often come out of monolingual environments. Do pray that missionaries here will have the necessary listening, memory, pronunciation and reading skills to make the gospel clear to the Thai and other people groups living here.

Since my marriage in 1978 I have lived in 30 houses. I just moved into my most recent domicile today after spending the last couple of months in a guest room at the top of the Bible school I teach in here in Chiang Mai , Thailand. I was counting up the number of towns I have lived in during the course of these years and came up with eleven cities scattered around three countries. This may seem like a lot of moves, yet I have talked with missionaries who have made many more transitions than I have. The verse that came to mind today was 1 Peter 2:11, ““Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from fleshly desires, which war against your soul.” This verse reminds me that this world is NOT my home, that I am heading to my true home which Jesus is preparing for me.

When I came to Thailand our family made a strong effort to become integrated into Thai life by studying the language, customs and temperment of the people. So now, after 37 years of working with the Thai, I no longer feel like a stranger and alien to all things Thai. And although I do feel quite at ease in this culture, I will never totally assimilate. In fact, Romans 12:2 reminds me to not integrate or be conformed to the world system which surrounds me, whatever that might be. One can unconsciously pick up worldly interests or behaviors in a country like Thailand if you are not careful. Thus, we need much prayer in order to balance this desire for integration with our true Biblical status as an aliens and strangers in a hostile world.

Back in 1980 the OMF Orientation Course in Singapore lasted a couple of months. Part of our training was in the LAMP method (Language Acquisition Made Practical), which included learning basic phrases and then practicing them out in the community. I was glad that Indonesian was assigned to me since I had been told that, “Bahasa Indonesia may be the easiest non-Indo-European language for a native English speaker to master.” I was grateful they didn’t assign me Chinese or Japanese, because I had heard that those languages required two full years of formal class study (Bahasa required only six months and for Thai it was a year).

The other aspect of Chinese that concerned me was the many tones and the fact that one needed to memorize 3,000 characters to read a newspaper. When I was eventually assigned to Thailand I began to work hard to attain a large Thai vocabulary by labeling virtually everything in our house with Thai phonetics (a practice that thoroughly bugged my wife). Later on I met a OMF missionary in Central Thailand named Grace Harris who put my inordinate stress on labels and flash cards in perspective. The following is a segment from a vdo on the history of OMF work in Thailand: “The language supervisor said, ‘Grace you only have 600 words of Thai,’ Grace cheerfully answered back, ‘Readers Digest material bases on 600 words, so all you need is to use the 600 well!’” The narrator of the vdo goes to say, “Grace’s speech was so clear and anointed by the Spirit of God that children listened and believed.” Over the years I’ve run into a number of highly effective missionaries who had less than stellar language ability. Like Grace they had learned to use their 600+ words well, but it wasn’t just their words that impacted the Thai, it was their obvious love for the people and Christ like example.