Outlined Transcript:
The Dedication of the Hilltribe Mission Center
Recently, we dedicated the Hilltribe Mission Center as a church, the Lahu Church that we are members of. There was a gentleman from the provincial capital who's kind of the overseer, so to speak, of this particular region of Lahu Baptist churches. I've met him before—this is not the first time he came to speak—but he came for the ceremony and he spoke.
One of the things he talked about was an observation about trends within Thailand: how different churches have these plots of land and these small buildings, which is our situation. We have a small little building with lots of land and lots of capacity and space, but not a lot of money. They're still paying off the land. The church building was donated, or money for the church building was donated years and years ago by some Korean businessmen who generously paid for everything to be built, but the church is still in debt to the bank for the land that they're still paying off.
The Need for Discipleship Space
They don't have money for another pastor. They don't have money for a Sunday school building to disciple the kids because there's not enough space in the church building for all the kids. So, they try to teach them outside under the shade of trees and kind of like bamboo lean-tos and pagodas. That's why we built the Hilltribe Mission Center, thanks to many of you who have given to that.
He was making the comment as he was speaking for the ceremony about how these various churches in these hill tribe villages basically don't have any discipleship plan or program for children. They don't have any sort of family discipleship resources, ways to teach the parents to disciple children.
The Challenge of "Functional Orphans"
Part of the problem with that is that a lot of the parents don't live here. Sometimes they do, but maybe one of them, or some other cousin, lives in other countries serving in, working in factories, and making money that way. They send money home and maybe they come home once every five to seven years for only a week at a time.
So, a lot of times the kids are raised by grandparents or uncles or aunts or various other relatives and relations. In some ways, kids can be almost functional orphans because their parents are not here, especially their fathers. It creates this void of gospel teaching that is not passed on to the rising generation.
Preventing a New "Unreached People Group"
The man who was speaking recently was talking about how this Sunday school building or the Hilltribe Mission Center is so strategic for generational discipleship because what will happen is if those kids are not raised to grow up into the church to pass on the faith, in a way they will become their own unreached people group again.
It's not like in the English-speaking world where there's so many systems and there's so many programs and there's even in post-Christian Europe, there's still good churches. There's still actually lots of ministries. There's fewer Christians to be sure, but God still has a pretty vibrant remnant even within post-Christian Europe.
It's not like that here where you don't have generations of Christian legacy to go back to. You don't have hardly anything to retrieve. The process of theological or historical retrieval in this particular region—there's nothing there to retrieve. For some of these language groups, they don't even have a total Bible in their spoken language. That is certainly true of ours; they borrow an adjacent dialect and they kind of get it, but even still they don't really get it. They need somebody to explain it to them.
A Biblical Metaphor: Philip and the Eunuch
I was thinking of one thing I'm going to share with you that's kind of a good metaphor or a good analogy of what I do. It's from Acts 8. You know the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip. I'm just going to read it to you for those of you who may not have familiarized yourself with it in recent months or weeks:
"Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, 'Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.' This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go over and join this chariot.' So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, 'Do you understand what you are reading?' And he said, 'How can I, unless someone guides me?' And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: 'Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.' And the eunuch said to Philip, 'About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?' Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news about Jesus."
The "Slow Slog" of Missions
In a lot of ways, this is kind of like the ministry that God has given me here: there are people who are like the Ethiopian eunuch. They might have a Bible in an adjacent language or maybe even in their own language, but they're not fully literate. They're aliterate. This doesn't mean they're illiterate; they're just not dominant readers. They're slow readers. They're just not well-educated. They're farmers, they're peasants, they're poor people, and they learn through talking.
But we know that God speaks through the Book. And we need an Ezra to give sense to the teaching, or we need a Philip to open the word and to explain what it means. That's a lot of what I do: I try to take the worn-out, sometimes broken tools that they do have and try to work with those in a way that is useful for them, that makes clear the scripture.
There's a lot of people that I work with that are like Nicodemus: they're right up against the kingdom of God and they just need a nudge across the finish line. Or they're like the Ethiopian eunuch and they just need somebody to give a sense, to explain what the text says. And then God gives them understanding. Sometimes they're resistant, of course, and sometimes it categorically or intellectually doesn't make sense, and that's okay. This is why Paul says in 2 Timothy we must teach with all gentleness and patience, and God might grant repentance, God might grant the changing of the mind.
This is the work of the slow slog of missions: just giving sense, being an Ezra giving sense to the text, being a Philip opening it and explaining how it points to Jesus. You can pray for us, pray that we would abound in the work of the Lord, be steadfast, immovable, knowing that in the Lord our labor is not in vain. So, thank you for your prayers and we'll look again at the centrality of the word and discipling people and what that means for generational discipleship in a future video. God bless you.