In Bangkok, fan club takes fanatic to new heights. They change their dress, vocabulary, manners and more to express their adoration of the latest pop star or pop group.

Teenage girls are the same around the world

This picture jumped out to me when we were talking to some of the people in our church here in Bangkok. We were talking about what does a disciple look like in Thai understandings. How are disciples thought of from the Thai perspective?

They answered first with the idea of sticking close to Jesus, following him and similar descriptive language. As they explained a little more, they blurted out  like his fan club. At first, I wanted to discard this comment as flippant. But  I came back to fan club again in the conversation and they agreed wholeheartedly.

That is when I started to remember how passionate a person gets as a member of someone’s fan club. They go all out in following their celebrity. Isn’t that what we should do in following Jesus?

Can I be a groupie for Jesus? Can you be a groupie for Jesus? How do you define disciple?

I went to find one of my heroes and former pastors, Ted Olbrich, who now serves as the foursquare missionary to Cambodia. I wanted to tell him how I recently read Leading Across Cultures by James R. Plueddemann. In this book, the former director of SIM (Serving in Missions formerly Sudan Interior Mission) and professor at Trinity’s Intercultural program stated that he finds farmers make the best missionaries. Plueddemann brought out this claim after talking about the difficult balance missionaries have to juggle between planning and preparation against waiting and ambiguity. Westerners love to think they can manipulate outcomes with excellent planning and forethought. Many in the rest of the world think we are foolish in trying to predict the future. Probably the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It is always there somewhere in the middle isn’t it. Right there where we left it before taking sides on an argument.

As Westerners, we love to plan and manipulate outcomes. However, much of the rest of the world lives comfortably in ambiguity with an understanding that we cannot predict the future. Plueddemann noted how farmers live in that balance of planning for the harvest while preparing for adjustments, unexpected and big changes that come to a crop.

My former pastor grew up on the farm. Maybe this is why he thrives in a country like Cambodia as the Foursquare church in that nation continues to be the world’s fastest growing church. The hindrances, corruption, and spiritual warfare that they navigate keep one nimble on that balance beam of strategy and sensitivity to the Spirit.

Here’s the story:

When I talked to Ted about this observation by a former mission’s executive, he said, It’s like that old story…let me say, he is chalk full of those old stories. He has more metaphors than a lady at the Kentucky Derby has hats.

His old story this time talked about the man from the East and the Man from the West who thought they saw a side of a coin. They argued over which side of the coin was more correct. However, as they got closer and closer they realized that was not a coin after all. In fact, as they came right up to it, they saw that it was in fact a ball. The reality Ted told me was that we have to have an integrated view of being spirit led and having strategy. Both have their place. We just need to know when to use which.

Do you find yourself wanting to map out the future or take it as it comes?

With good things like new cool friends always come unintended benefits.

One such benefit for us comes as we see Thailand afresh through new eyes. So often, we grow accustomed to the ways of Thailand and the Thai people that we miss subtle nuances that have changed over the five plus years we have lived and served in Bangkok. We get to see this place once again through a new lens.

I love all the fresh excitement bubbling over in their kids even as they grapple with living in a new place where few people speak English. Things that have become commonplace to us, jump out to the newest members on our team as they see a band clump lying tossed in a field. I didn’t even remember banana trees grew in this concrete jungle known as the city of angels, the literal meaning of Thailand’s capital.

The new experiences and observations bring memories flooding back to us of our first days in a new country. Memories of pure joy, and sometimes thoughts of what were we thinking coming to live in such a strange place. Now this strangeness seems so normal. Yeah, normal to ride a motorcycle taxi sidesaddle with a baby strapped to your back as my wife recently tweeted. Oh yes, normal eat tasty food off of the street vendors carts. We just don’t ask how long the meat has been outside. Yep, this milk tastes normal. We forget how it took us over a year to be able to drink it plain.

As we are reminded of our initial bumps on the road and uncomfortabilities with the new life we took on, we have had a chance to reflect and see how we processed change and transition. I remember long nights lying awake in bed debriefing with my wife about observations and experiences. I remember asking our friends and other missionaries to describe and articulate what was happening around us. Another tool that helped us assimilate came in the form of a super friendly older man in the church who also taught in the school. He loved sharing his joy and passion for his homeland with all of the foreign workers that came to Thailand. He helped us take excursions around Bangkok and the surrounding area to see the traditional and ancient sides of Thai culture. We rode elephants, ate in restaurants built from bamboo on stilts over the Gulf of Bangkok, shopped in the famous floating market, visited Tigers, and a host of other activities. We fed off of his joy in seeing us soak in the beauty that is Thailand. Our friend, no adopted elderly uncle, loved prompting us to take pictures. I think he was almost as excited as we were to catch a glimpse of the monitor lizard on the side of the river bank. No, maybe he was more excited when he saw our love for his country grow.

Even as we reflect on our initial impressions of Thailand, we also see anew how culture continues to shift in Bangkok. This city is in hyper flux as it bounces from one fad to another led through such mediums as Youtube and Facebook. Bangkok recently became the world’s No. 1 city for Facebook with over 8 million users. But other things have changed as girls dress far more risqué than five years ago. Couples might be seen holding hands in public when that was a big taboo, even five years ago. Meanwhile the foundation of Thailand’s political stability continues to be fluid.

As we come along side our new teammates, we get an added benefit of reflecting on our own understandings of Thailand. I always hope to be a person that reflects and learns from my experiences. It is good to have a new perspective to Thailand again.

I must say, we love this place and the sweet people here.
(Andy)

In Sri Lanka, dozens of nations gathered together for prayer and encouragement as the church. These nations gathered under the banner of Foursquare, connecting people from this nation and that throughout the Asia pacific.

English of all things binds these nations together. For some English is the national language. However, nations that have a low, low English proficiency have joined together for these meetings and worship sessions as well. Here English opens the door to networking like never before in history, aside from the Greek speaking world of Jesus’ time. I wonder how many have calculated the affect of English and the spread of the gospel has been. Hmmm, thoughts for another day.

As we mingled with leaders from Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Myanmar, and many other parts of the Asia pacific world, we saw English as the bridge. I am fascinated how much English has penetrated this half of the globe while everyone talks of it’s soon demise.

One presenter spoke in Chinese having her presentation translated into English. At the same time I could hear the soft hum of headsets all around the room translating the message into their native language. However, English allowed the connection. In this unprecedented era of partnership in the global mission, I am interested to watch as the Westerners continue to move from parenting the mission to partnering with the mission. Will English vanish from the center of these meetings or continue to play a pivotal role?

At the same time as communication and information made its way through the conduits of English, worship was another matter.

The conference’s worship leaders led us in English songs, but in some commonly translated songs I heard a brief foretaste of Revelations 7:9-11 being fulfilled. I could hear Thai, English, Singhalese and other languages sung out in unison as we all worshipped the lamb that was slain. What a beautiful day that will be when God draws all nations before him in worship. What a glorious sound that will be before his throne.

These leaders gathered for the ECFC conference, that is the Eastern Council of Foursquare Churches. These meetings are so colorful, passionate and spirit empowered as they gather every other year for prayer and enrichment. It was great to be at the ECFC conference again. Some of my heroes in the faith lead churches in these 30 nations represented in this meeting from Asia and the South Pacific. This wonderful collage of all these nations gathered together and seeing good friends again.

One of these good friends also happens to be one of my favorite mentors who I happened to catch for lunch. We sat down and discussed missiology, ministry and how we were doing. In this conversation, my mentor told me how that night’s speaker explained leadership. Rather than doing what us Americans often do wrong in implementing American leadership that follows the CEO model and looks very foreign in most of the world, to look at leadership differently. He used the picture of a father.

Leading like a father transcends culture, he explained. As he continued, he said that a leader does not have to be old or in certain position as long as he leads like a father or with the heart of a father. All peoples can catch that kind of leadership and be willing to go with that.

Truly, I can say in a culture like Thailand, people see their leaders like a father. If someone is having a difficulty or hardship, the leader goes out of his way to help these people. The leader sacrifices and leads out of relationship in such a deeper way than can easily be sensed at first.

I wonder how much more impact can be made worldwide when we see leadership through the lens of a father, a good father who wants to see the best in his children.

Do you have any word pictures that help you see leadership that transcends context or circumstances of an organization or group?

Thailand’s national leader for Foursquare, Pastor John invited us to join with him as we remembered his father who passed at the age of 80. Yet this time, more than most, I realized how different a death can be. In the US, we presume Christianity on most and rarely wrestle with the questions of eternity. At least we do not outwardly struggle with the question of where someone is. At the least we hope to see them again on the other side.

On the other hand, In Thailand, the Christians in the church agonize over the never so subtle reality of where their relatives go. For the most part, they know their family is or is not Christian. Perhaps the abstract became concrete on Friday when we asked the church to pray for Pastor John and his family before I went north. The girl leading the announcements asked me if Pastor John’s dad was a Christian. When I responded that he was, she quickly replied, Oh good. That makes for a very different kind of prayer. The Christian faith which he found near the end of his life made for a different kind of ceremony too.

In the West, we avoid these questions of truth not wanting to cause excess grief. In a predominately nonChristian society, the truth smacks them square on the nose.

The gnawing feeling of death’s finality kept scratching away at my soul this weekend. So now what?

· I want to redouble my efforts to get the story out of what Jesus can do for people willing to turn their loves over to him.

· I want to maintain strong ties with my father, and extended family.

· I want to impart as much as I can into my daughter while I can.

· Finally, I want to live each day like it is my last.

How does death shape your attitude toward life today?

I am no tree doctor, but I do know that trees need to be cut back from time to time to create opportunities for further growth, healthier growth. Sometimes, we just want growth, so we neglect sharpening our blades, and pulling out the clippers to trim back a few bad branches.

Still in further cases, we let sickness go unchecked so long that a tree needs to be cut back further and further.

A pruned tree and I am not so sure why I want to say prune as much as I do in this post, but it sounds pretty cool, can give off false perceptions. To an untrained or unattentive eye, a pruned tree looks awfully dead. Perhaps a parallel analogy could come from the winter season when a tree loses all of its leaves. Seasons come and go, but as long as the tree stays rooted in the right place, the fruit will come in the right season.

What is the point of all this pruning and season mumbo jumbo you ask?

Well, Jesus promised us that the father would prune us. Sometimes that gets interpreted individually. Yet, can I daresay that the passage in John 15 could also apply to the community of faith in a collective us as the people of God issue.

Sometimes, the church will go through season when God prunes and cuts out the branches that should not be there. And no matter what, as one who has led a church through a pruning from God…it is not comfortable. However, I am looking forward to the further fruitfulness this church and all others that hold onto as God shapes them into the healthy trees that he wants them to be will have.

The spiritual world is wreaking havoc on our little neighborhood in the eyes of this woman. As Westerners, we neglect the spiritual realm as affecting our physical world. In Thailand, people believe spirits are in play with everything. If they are not appeased through spirit houses, offerings and other traditional rituals, the spirits can bring turmoil into this world…thus people in Thailand live in fear.

The fear was all over this woman. Here is how the story went.

I was taking our puppy for her morning walk when this Thai lady came up to me saying, pastor, pastor. This was a twist to my morning ritual. I should say my rather new morning ritual the past couple months. Laguna, our Golden Retriever, helps motivate me up early for some strong prayer time. Oh boy, she loves to get up early.

I have begun using these walks to pray over our street. The morning walks give me an opportunity to pray for the church members who live on this street as well as those on this street that God is drawing to know him. The middle-aged, Thai lady came to me noticeably concerned. I thought, how does she know I am a pastor? Thailand never ceases to amaze me.

She told me that things have been difficult on this street and implored me to pray for the people. I told her that I was praying, but she insisted that I pray more. As she explained, I felt God confirming in me that he is watching over the street. To summarize, the concerned woman wanted me to know that basically, the happiness index of the street had gone down, jobs were not as good, problems in the lives of the people and so on. All of this was due to the evil spirits, she explained.

I stopped with her right there at that moment and prayed intentionally that god would be present with us in power.

The spiritual strongholds fighting to maintain their ground and prevent God’s kingdom from coming in are persistent. But God will win. I believe God wants to unleash his kingdom power on this city, beginning with our street in Bangkok in the near future. I continue to pray for an outpouring of his Holy Spirit.

When you observe problems in your community, do you blame evil spirits or circumstances…or something else?

Not only was my precious wife carrying double, no triple, no triple-and-a-half load for over two weeks, Tina was left home alone on our anniversary. But she never held that against me, supporting me all along as much as any wife could do. She even sent me love notes every hour, scheduled on our Mail Chimp service used for newsletters. I kept getting emails from her throughout class wondering what she was doing up so late. Finally it sunk in when I kept getting Mail Chimp alerts. Mailchimp wasn’t sending me some update about their service or promotion for something new…my wife had a well-crafted and perfectly executed way to show me her love and devotion. I want to share one such letter here that perfectly illustrates contextualization.

Andy,

I hope your enjoying your class today. I was thinking about contextualization and how our lives, our love, themselves became contextualized when we moved to Thailand. No longer could we hold hands or show affection in public after we moved here. It didn’t change our love, just our expression of it. I think the Gospel is the same way. The message, the content, shouldn’t change when we bring it from one country to another but how it is expressed changes. The same base is there but superficially things have changed. Anyways, just a thought…

Love and kisses,

Your wife

Succinct and to the point…We cherish even little trips out of the country for a visa run where we can hold hands again. No holding hands in Bangkok also means no pecks on the cheek, no smooches in public, no arms around the waist…no public displays of any kind. Yet we love each other more now than ever even if some of the forms have changed in how we express and communicate our love.

Shouldn’t the love story of God with his people be able to transcend culture while at the same time inculcating itself within each and every people group?

What word picture would you use to describe contextualization?

Now, as an adult, I am comforted to know my father in heaven can beat up anybody. I don’t have to cower in fear before evil spirits, overwhelming circumstances, or difficult situations. My God is a great Father, and I love being his child.

The Bible draws several word pictures of what the church is, or rather who the church is. The church is the bride of Christ, the church is the body of Christ, Again, Peter tells us how the church is living stones, Paul teaches Timothy, and the church is the household or family of God. Businesses, a common ministry model for church today, are not great at producing disciples. They produce products pretty well, but families, bodies, living stones, intimate connections with Jesus produce real disciples.

More importantly, family creates an identity of who we are. When we know who we are as the children of God, and that we belong to the house of God, we know what we can become. I love how Ephesians 2:19 puts it. We are no longer strangers, or aliens as Paul pulls on the former verses that say how we formerly were far from God. Jesus changed everything when he came to bring peace to us. We belong to the family of God not because of anything we do or how the family feels about it, but because of what Jesus did. I love belonging to God’s family. I know he will take care of me, watch over me, and lead me in his path.

We have the ultimate Godfather.

How does knowing your identity shape your behavior?