Recently I got an email from a friend who is involved in seeing church planting movements started.  I was challenged by some of his thoughts.  Many mornings I wake up and I ponder the question, "am I really effective here as a westerner involved in church planting?"  When I don't have answers or clear direction in trying to process this question it can be confusing to see what is our role as  Western missionaries in Thailand.  There are many things I like to do, but I have to come to terms with not doing them if they do not lead to seeing more churches planted, but cause dependency on  the westerner.  There are many things I could do that would be helpful, but I often wonder if they are leading to what needs to be done.  In my thinking and in our vision here in this work we want to see multiplying simple churches established from the Andaman Coast to the Bay of Thailand led by Southern Thai people reaching out to neighboring provinces and beyond.  I love this vision that God has given us here in Southern Thailand and I feel very privileged to be able to spend my days trying to fulfill it.  But when I ask the question, what will it take to see Southern Thai people reaching out to their neighbors and going beyond that it feels over whelming and impossible.  It is a God sized vision, something we could not possibly do. So, that makes it dependant on God moving and working in the hearts of people here in Southern Thailand.  Prayer is so important to seeing people change and we have started to concentrate on praying for 3 specific neighborhoods.  We go prayer walking and we are prepared to meet the people God has arranged for us to meet.  Jesus loves the Buddhist people and we would love to see them come to Christ and lead their own communities of Christ in a Southern Thai way.

Something else my friend mentioned was  that the starting point is faith, courage, passion and being a man of action like Jonathan in 1 Samuel 14.  I like this and I wonder how to be more like this. We want to be people of prayer and then action put together.

In the end something I have been learning from another friend is how we get our peace, joy and love from Christ indwelling us each day.  If it was dependant on the work, we have made ministry an idol.  I don't ever want to do this.  One of the biggest lessons I have learned personally on the mission field is that if you try and do ministry, serve God or whatever you do for others or for yourself, you become a problem for the body of Christ.  You actually do damage with good intentions.  Wendy and I have been learning to seek his face and be prepared for when he tells us to be people of action. That way we are ready to go and we do it according to the Spirit and not according to our flesh.

For all of you who are reading this, please pray for us as we continue to prayer walk and seek Gods face in who he would bring in our lives to be light and salt to.  We are busy with art, music and English as a way of outreach and being a part of the community.  We want to bring some young teen believers when they are free to come and be a part of the things God will open up in these 3 neighborhoods.  It is our prayer that God would open up 3 homes to start doing some evangelistic, chronological bible studies.  It would be great to see some of the teens get involved in meeting and sharing in these groups as a way of doing discipleship in real situations.

In the end we are excited to be involved in this work and joining God in reaching Thakua Pa with Christ and seeing disciples born.  It is our prayer that churches would start with the DNA of multiplication built into them.  This again is a God sized vision and we are excited about what he is going to do.