Why are Tai Yuan (Northern Thai) churches finding it hard to reach out to their Buddhist neighbours? What are some of the possible barriers towards a local Tai Yuan church’s evangelism efforts?
This is a personal reflection through conversations, interviews and observations living in a Tai Yuan Christian village, interacting with people working amongst the Tai Yuan and the Tai Yuan Churches (Tai Yuan believers and Tai Yuan Church leaders).
Here is the second.
HIERARCHY OF SOCIAL POSITION
The Tai Yuan are a very status-conscious people. There is not only a hierarchy of ethnic identity (as shared in the previous post), there is also a hierarchy of social position. Whenever one meets a Tai Yuan, the introductory conversation will always lead to occupation, children’s school, the village where one is staying or family name. These are ways the Tai Yuan evaluate another’s social position.
Some initial struggles for us as missionaries is how do we introduce ourselves that makes sense to the Tai Yuan? Even living in a Christian community, we experienced the initial difficulty to explain to them what our work is. Yes, even local Christians find it hard to understand the role of missionaries learning their language among them. How do they address us? What do we want in their village? What do we actually do with our time? How do we make a living?
Through time, when relationships deepen, through conversations with them, we saw these questions being asked subtly and politely to us. And it is interesting, looking back now how their views and ways of addressing us changed. It took us some time (about a year of living in the village) for them to ’embrace’ us as part of the community. What I realised was that it took the leader of our community, also the Pastor of the Church we attend in the village, to first acknowledge our presence publicly. The way they addressed us changed, following the way the pastor addressed us in public. From ‘Mr’ to ‘Teacher’. They see us now as ‘partners of the Church and a blessing to the community’, as described by the Pastor. It seems our social position moved with the affirmation from someone of a respected status in the village community. The Pastor is what I would call a ‘core influencer’ in the community.
But there were a few occasions when we met with non-Christian Tai Yuan, we struggled in our introductory conversations to the basic questions of who we are and what we do. And these introductory conversations help determine to some extend if they would like to ‘keep in contact’ further, based on where we are on their hierarchy of social position.
What are the effects towards evangelism and church? There is an increasing group of unreached Tai Yuan who are business people, professionals, academics, where the local Tai Yuan church struggle to reach out to. Because many local Tai Yuan churches are made up of farmers, builders, small convenient shop owners, all of which are village based occupations. Most Tai Yuan Pastors are inadequate to reach out to these new group of people because of the gap in social position and education. It doesn’t help that the Tai Yuan are also status conscience because of this hierarchy of social position.
There is also an increasing group of Tai Yuan Christians, most who have accepted Christ overseas through work or studies, now back in North Thailand, struggle to be part of a local Tai Yuan Church. I have not done much observations or study in this area, but would definitely love to have a conversation or two on the struggles they face.
A Million Rice Fields ล้านนา 