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 third.
PRESSURES OF A PASTOR
In my interviews and conversations with Tai Yuan Christians, almost all of them place a high importance on the relationship with and pastoral care of the Pastor when asked what contributes to a healthy church. Some even commented, “I don’t mind a pastor not preaching and teaching well, but I cannot accept a pastor that does not care and visit the believers.”
It seems to me that the pressure placed on Tai Yuan pastors are heavy. They are so busy upkeeping the relationships, making appearances for house dedications, birthdays, funerals, hospital visits, on top of turning up for meetings. They can hardly catch a breath, what more to think about evangelism. With this pressure on pastors to care for the current flock, many indeed don’t have the energy to think about evangelism. What more, with this view of what makes a healthy church from the believers, evangelism has been pushed down the ladder or priorities. It is no wonder why a Tai Yuan Christian once commented to me, “Evangelism is not for ‘matured churches’ like ours. Medium size to large Tai Yuan churches are already ‘healthy and complete’ they don’t have to evangelise anymore. It is only for the new or little churches who needs growth in numbers that should be doing evangelism.”
Many Tai Yuan churches have an ageing membership. What this means is that there are many funerals that take up the time of the Pastor. I remember there was a month when there would be a funeral every week in the village. Then there is also a big population of 2nd generation Christians who are apathetic and lukewarm. And they too need the constant prodding and visit of the Pastor.
Another interesting pressure of the Pastor is the reality of shepherding a self-sustaining Church. New believers don’t learn how to tithe till after a few years. Pastors hardly can be sustained by the tithings of the church. Not seeking new believers, rather strengthening the remaining members seem to be a logical strategy many Pastors would want to adopt.
Sadly, in many Tai Yuan churches, evangelism and witnessing then falls to the responsibilities of those few who other Christians label as “they love to share the Gospel, so we leave them to do the witnessing and evangelism”.
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