When movements are mentioned in this video recognize which large population segment has not yet been mentioned.
Most Of Thailand is Not Truly Buddhist
True Buddhism or Not?
If you have ever read anything about Thailand you may be led to believe that Thailand is a majority Theravada Buddhist nation. Some would say 95%. While it is true that the majority of Thai people would claim themselves to be Buddhist, the reality is that majority are not what the Thai would call “kreng sasanna” or fully devoted to their Buddhist faith.
In fact, most Thai would have a wide variety of things that they respect, worship, or venerate in a typical day or week that would not be considered Buddhist at all.
Most of these other things have to do with “spirits” or ghosts of people who are believed to have lived before in a past time.
Daily Needs
Each of these articles of daily worship and veneration mainly have to do with one of the felt needs of:
- Good Luck
- Prosperity
- Protection
Here are a just a few of the main ones I see daily:
Nang Kwak or แม่นางกวัก – She is the patron spirit deity of all sales people and businesses and can be seen in most every business in Thailand. Continue Reading…
How Will This Practically Happen?
The National Christian leadership of Thailand has promoted a slogan that represents their vision for 2015. It is known all over Thailand in every local church. It says,
“I’m going to be one out of one hundred thousand that will reach one million for Jesus Christ by 2015.
(This means they want the total number of Christians to be 1 million by 2015.)
So this begs the question for both Thai Pastors and the missionaries sent to help them,
“How will this practically happen”?
I could spend all of my time trying to do it as one single missionary. A Thai pastor could do the same. This would be impossible for a whole huge denominational team, much less for one person. Or we could choose to find ways to empower the people and influence the direction of training and practical strategy. We could teach them to be disciples who disciple others who disciple others…
This is where I have chosen to spend the majority of time and energy. Continue Reading…
Empowering Every Day Local Believers
There was a very important recent study done here in Thailand on factors related to conversion and church growth among the Thai people. A high level study of this type had not been done since 1982 which was the first time it had ever been done.
Some interesting findings came out of the study that have impacted our focus in ministry and how we prioritize what we do.
A friend recently mentioned to me that she believed missionaries were sent to places to “win people for Jesus.” This is true in one sense, but is also a common misconception that misses the fact that the job of winning people to Jesus doesn’t depend on an elite highly trained few, but on every single believer in Jesus, whether local or foreign.
This is especially true in an area where less than 1% of the population even claiming to believe, trust in, and follow Jesus as Savior and Lord.
As a missionary called in one of the five giftings mentioned in Ephesians Chapter 4:11, my primary role is to “equip the saints” (the whole body of believers in a given area) for the “work of the ministry.” That means that I am not the only one, or even one of a elite group, who is expected to do the normal work required of every believer.
No, I am expected to find my place in equipping the believers and coming along side existing groups and empowering them through the gifts and teaching abilities that God has given to me. Continue Reading…
5 Mistakes In Sending Missionaries
Guest Post from Seth Barnes. (Great hard earned insights from a modern missions pioneer)
For 24 years I’ve been sending people on short-term missions (STMs) that challenge them to live the kind of life God dreams for them. STMs are great discipleship tools.
This year at Adventures, we’ll send out our 100,000th person on an STM. Our goal is for our STMs to activate participants to one day go and bring the hope they have to those that have none in some dark place in the world.
But moving from a short-term to a long-term focus requires a different set of tools. While Jesus sent all his disciples out on STMs (Luke 10), only a few were called to cross-cultural missions (in Acts). This may be one reason why he asked his disciples to go only to their own countrymen.
In my eagerness, I’ve made mistakes in sending people out for the long-term. Here are five:
1. Not enough screening. To be an effective long-term missionary, you’ve got to go as a learner. You learn the culture, the language and you learn people’s stories. To do this, you need a mindset and you need skills.
Sometimes in my enthusiasm to help, I’ve not spent enough time asking if candidates to go long-term had the mindset and skills they needed. Continue Reading…
T4T Training For Trainers: Chapters Thirteen Through Sixteen
T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution: An Overview by John Lambert
Chapter Thirteen:Your T4T Package: Gospel Presentation
A “bridge” can move a person’ heart to listen, but only the Gospel can save them. Acts 2:21; 4:12; Romans 10-13-17
What is the Gospel?
The good news that Jesus Christ provided redemption for us and that we can be saved by faith in Him.
Found simply in: Luke 25:45-48, I Cor 15:1-6.
Any presentation of the Gospel must include these core truths and a call for people to respond the the message.
How is it good news to the people you are sent to?
- Animists: Jesus’ power over the spirits.
- Buddhists and Hindus: Jesus’ power to break the cycle of rebirth and bring them to heaven.
- Muslims and Jews: Jesus’ has the ability to break the futile attempt to gain salvation through good works.
- Post-Moderns: Jesus offers true eternal relevance. He changes lives.
The Gospel is always the same, never changing. But the way you share it varies from place to place. Continue Reading…
Over 2,000 Schools in Thailand Still Don’t Have Electricity
Over two thousand schools in Thailand that don’t have electricity and the students who attend these schools will not be eligible to receive the new PC tablets that the government will be handing out to all Grade One students by the end of May 2012. Even more will be excluded that do not have “adequate facilities.” Read the full story here.
While Thailand is trying to catch up with the world in regards to technology, it runs the risk of creating an even greater divide between the the “haves” and the “have nots” through its government sponsored PC tablet program.
One of the campaign promises of the current administration was that it would supply a PC tablet to every child. Now they are working to make good on that promise by providing a basic PC tablet with educational games for various subjects including English.
I guess that if they have the money to do this then it could be considered a bold move to push Thailand forward in regards to using computers in the classroom. Or it could be a colossal waste of resources, especially considering the immediate needs being faced after the flooding.
Thailand is place where most of the PC hard drives are manufactured in the world. They are over 13 million Facebook users in Thailand and that number is steadily climbing. Thailand is working hard to catch up although a majority of its citizens live in rural areas with weak or little Wifi access or availability. Continue Reading…
Thailand Recognizes Palestinian State After Terror Alert by U.S.
Following the recent issue of a terror warning lead by the US to all of its citizens in Thailand and followed by a dozen or so other nations, the government of Thailand issues a statement recognizing the Palestinian State. But why?
First we have to look at the story that came out just a couple of days before this story. Both the US and Israel issued a terror alert for all of its citizens living in Thailand because of intelligence of a very real and credible threat. Other key nations began to follow suit.
But what was the story before even this one? Thailand has just recovered from one of the worst periods of flooding in over fifty years. Almost a thousand souls perished and the Thai economy took a beating, especially in the area of tourism. This tough period in 2011 followed a very volatile election period and civil unrest in 2010.
Tourism in Thailand is one of its largest national money makers accounting for 7% of its GDP. Thailand is desperate to recover its foreign tourist revenue. The nation is struggling to get back on its feet after fighting the devastating effects of the flooding for many months.
When the US and Israel issued the warning, they essentially scared off many would-be travelers. This infuriated the Thai government who worked hard to down play the threat even though they made an arrest of a Lebanese man with connections to Hezbollah and found bomb large stashes of bomb making materials just outside of Bangkok in Samut Sakorn. Continue Reading…
T4T Training For Trainers: Chapters Nine Through Twelve
T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution: An Overview by John Lambert
Chapter 9: ”Starting New Generations, Not Just Multiplying Groups”
T4T is different than traditional small group multiplication. Instead of grow THEN multiply, it is launch and repeat. You don’t wait for a new group to grow before launching new groups out of it.
These new groups become their own house churches or sometimes new small groups under the Lordship of Christ in a larger existing church.
Every new believer is potentially a new group.
The trainee may lead his family and friends to faith and incorporate them into his group. At the same time, he is training them to be a witness to their circle of influence and launch new groups with them.
People you are training should not bring new believers to the original group but rather start a new group with them. If they do, you must take steps to get them pointed back in the right direction. If a new believer comes into the group, you should stay with the original lesson, but also be willing to stay after with the new believer and go through lesson one.
Generations of Groups
The author points out that the goal is get consistent 4th generation groups and for a CPM to emerge. (How often do we lose sight of this or do not ever have it as something we are aiming for? I would say more often than not. This maybe why we don’t yet see CPM emerging in our own contexts though we have trained on it.) Continue Reading…
T4T Training For Trainers: Chapters Five Through Eight
T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution: An Overview by John Lambert
Chapter 5: “How To Begin”
T4T is a process, not a set of lessons (The author drives this home!)
He says it is often misunderstood as a set of lessons or an outreach, but he says it is meant to cascade as a church planting movement, generation by generation. Each challenge faced at each new stage in the process is still part of the T4T process.
Many learned that Ying Kai:
- Had 6 initial lessons
- Encouraged new believers to witness 5x per week
- Had frequent training retreats for leaders
- Used inductive Bible studies after the first initial lessons
But those same folks didn’t understand that T4T is an “all-in-one-process” that God uses to take a person from lostness to maturing disciples who can start new groups and train others to reproduce the process. They just copied parts and were not successful.
What has T4T done? Basically it has tied all of the basic parts of a CPM plan together well and enabled believers to naturally progress from one stage to another as they are trained: evangelism, discipleship, church planting, leadership development-repeating the process generation by generation.
Measuring Rod For CPM: When groups consistently reach 4th generation with new churches formed in several places over a short period of time, then a sustained CPM has emerged. (One trainer, David Watson, says 200 churches in less than two years with at least 4 generations) Continue Reading…
T4T Training For Trainers: Chapters One Through Four
T4T A Discipleship ReRevolution An Overview by John Lambert
Chapter 1: “Kingdom Come!”
This chapter starts with some impressive stats. Since its inception in 2001, the CPM initiated by Ying Kai has yielded a conservative number of:
- 1.7 million baptisms
- 150,000 new church starts
- 2,000 new churches started each month in places from high rises to factories
T4T is said to be influencing missions efforts throughout the world.
Steve Smith is introduced as a CPM Trainer and Ying Kai is introduced as the father of T4T.
It is said of T4T that it is about:
- Cooperating with God to see CPMs
- The Development of a CPM plan
- God’s vision for a MOVEMENT
- Majoring on practical ministry
The question that arises in Chapter One is, “What are Churches”? Steve says in a footnote,
I will define this more later, but these are Acts 2 type churches that display the basic covenant and characteristics of that Acts 2 community whether they meet in homes or in dedicated buildings. Usually I am implying house churches or church-like small groups of a larger worshiping community.
Ying Kai had an end vision of 200 churches in his CPM plan. He reached that in three months! These groups were meeting in homes, parks, and factories.
Based on conservative reporting, researchers found 18 generations in this movement in only 4-5 years. Continue Reading…
T4T Training For Trainers: Background
T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution: An Overview by John Lambert
Background
In the world of missions, a new wave of the Spirit of God is moving across nations and people planting churches where there were little to none before. This phenomenon has been called “Church Planting Movements” or “Church Multiplication Movements.”
In the book T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution, missionary practitioners Ying Kai and Steve Smith seek to lay out the principles and background involved in one of the most explosive examples of “CPM” in modern history.
This book was born out of a growing hunger for missionary practitioners to understand the movement and how they can prepare themselves in their own contexts for a new move of God’s Spirit by implementing the key principles laid out in the book.
Asian Born
It carefully documents the work of an Asian couple (the Kais) working in an Asian context. Contrary to some thought, it is not another Western import or new method.
After reading this book, I can confidently say that for the serious missionary practitioner this may be “the most important book you’ve not yet heard of.”
Among the global missionary community and those who have heard the term “CPM” there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding as to what the term really means. A “CPM” is not a method or a strategy, but simply an observation of the phenomena of rapidly multiplying churches among a people group. Continue Reading…
Entrepreneurs As Missionaries
In this video I picked up from the site Missionary Confidential, John Doerr speaks students at Stanford University about how entrepreneurs are like missionaries.
He speaks of entrepreneurs being risk takers who are focused on getting rapid scalable change.
By definition he says that they do “more than anyone thinks possible, with less than anyone thinks possible.”
He contrasts what entrepreneurs (and missionaries) could be like; mercenaries.
In this video he shows a comparison list that basically says that missionaries are known for
- Passion
- Strategy
- The Big Idea
- Partnership
- Meaning Continue Reading…
Christmas and Contextualization in Thailand
Have you ever wondered about how Thai people view Christmas? What do Thai Christians do to celebrate the holiday? Do people realize that Christmas is the work of missionaries? Why does this matter for the Thai church?
A Time To Work
I was talking with my friend the other day about what Christmas was like for him growing up. He is from the island of Samoa. He told me that since he was a boy Christmas was always a season of outreach and work. It was only after he married an American girl that he understood Christmas to be a time for family, rest, and worship.
On his island, missionaries worked to share the Christmas story with those who had never heard. They brought, not only the Gospel of Jesus, but also their Western holidays with them. So it only followed that the new believers would follow that same customs. I’m sure the missionaries thought to themselves, “how can we simply spend time with our families sharing in our own custom when there are so many who still haven’t heard the message of Jesus”? Everywhere they looked they must have been reminded of the need.
So the Christmas season became an intense time of getting the message out to those who had never heard.
A similar scenario plays out here in Thailand. Continue Reading…
Happy New Year From Thailand
Here is our latest family picture going into 2012. Hope you have a blessed and prosperous New Year, from our family to yours!
Training: Engage, Empower, Equip, Expand, Explode
I recently completed a new training time here in Thailand that I felt went really well.
My goal in training for the most part is to help get people mobilized to fulfill their callings as well as play their part in God’s purpose for their generation. I try to accomplish this by helping shift some key paradigms and mindsets.
I wanted to take a moment to share the general outline I use.
I believe it could be helpful in your own context as you seek to take people further in their walk with God.
The 5 “E”‘s, are tools which I use to guide me during teaching.
They are:
- Engage- We must first understand that there is a problem. What are the problems in your local context? How can you build your case so that others can join you? We must “engage” the issues involved and be convinced of the problem from God’s perspective. Most “change-agents” fail in their goal because they spent most of their time talking about solutions when they have not taken the proper time to convince their audience of the problem. Therefore their audience is not engaged. The problem has not yet become personal.
- Empower- We must understand that we are a part of the solution. Continue Reading…
Playing To Your Strengths
Thankful that one of my local ministry partners (who has the strength of Individualization) convinced us all to take the Strength Finders 2.0 assessment.
He told us that many large companies have used it to revolutionize the way that they work together. He also said that it was the driving force behind why certain companies became some of the best working environments in the world.
I have taken personality tests and even spiritual gift tests, so I was already thinking…”Do I really need another one of these tests”? But I would later see that the Strengths Finder 2.0 helped me understand some key things about myself that I didn’t know before.
Since taking the tests, we have a couple of axioms that we have been trying to live by.
- There is no such thing as a truly well rounded person, but there is the chance to have a well rounded team.
- We cannot use our knowledge of each other’s strengths to point out what the other person is not.
- We will use our knowledge of our team mates strengths to call out greatness in one another.
- We can use our strengths to assign a team member to a project that they would be the most fitted for. Continue Reading…
Steve Jobs Goes To Heaven…
I’ve been continuing to get lots of traffic on my article about Steve Jobs and his Buddhist faith. There seems to be many people who are weighing what it means for them personally, so when I saw this cartoon posted by Steve Addison I had to repost.
This is one interesting “tongue in cheek” take on how things could have played out. Continue Reading…
Francis Chan Planting Churches
Fresh from time spent on a spiritual pilgrimage and ministry here in Asia, author and speaker Francis Chan has moved to San Francisco in order to bring the Gospel to the people of the “Tenderloin” district working in conjunction with a ministry called San Francisco City Impact.
His heart and passion for what he senses God calling him and his team to do shines through in this video. I love his strategy and emphasis of going to the people of their city.
I look forward to seeing what God accomplishes through him and his team as they break paradigms and bring the power and love of Jesus to people in California. There is lots of room for the Gospel to break out into the streets, businesses, and apartment buildings of my home country! Agree?
Here is the video where he shares the vision. Continue Reading…
Words Revealing Function
People sometimes ask me how I view my missions work and what I do.
My short explanation is…
“I am a mission strategist and mobilizer, a thinker and practicioner. I work to empower local leaders through training partnerships & consultation, while also pioneering new context appropriate outreaches, “groups”, and resources.”
But beyond my own role in cross cultural missions work, I have thought through some words that can reveal function in “missions.”
When you think through your own work, key words can also help you understand how you view your own work and function.
Here are some of my own words with a little blurb of my thoughts on each one:
Learner- Taking in new information constantly as a way of life, whether it be through various types of media or in one on one conversations with people who are outside of your normal scope of conversation. This heart is essential in missions work. Many times we come in as the teachers when we should first be entering in as the learners. Continue Reading…
John Lambert
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