“I do not remember my father. Not long after I was born, he left the family. My mother tried to take care of me as good as possible. She had some land, that she sold bit by bit. But her debts kept growing.

Much of her debt was with one lady in the village. In that family they needed someone to help in the house and in the shop. My mother took me to her to pay her debt. She told me: “She will make sure you have enough to eat. (more…)

How do you work yourself out of a job as missionary? By making sure local Christians can lead the church as soon as possible, and are taking responsibility for further church planting. But how do you do that? It is one of the big questions almost all missionaries struggle with.  Daniel McGilvary, the apostle of Thailand, has the following suggestions in his almost 100 year old autobiography. (more…)

Thai people have beautiful names. Only they are seldomly used. They are written in documents and said at official occasions. But in everyday life, only the nickname is used.

To outsiders, the nicknames can have a funny ring. ‘Bird’ is the most common name, followed by ‘Small one’. From a western perspective, that is quite accurate to describe most Thai, yet something doesn’t seem quite all right when a sturdy guy with a beer belly is called ‘Small one’. Yet it is as common as hearing a teeny-weeny woman being addressed as ‘Fatty’. (more…)

For six years I lived among the Thai, and now since 3 years I am living among the Isaan. Isaan is a region of Thailand, the northeast, but it is much more than that. The Isaan have an identity that can clearly be distinguised from the Thai.
Of course, the first question is: Should you write about Thai and Isaan as two different ethnic groups? Or are the Isaan a subgroup of the Thai? The Isaan themselves are clearly talking about it as two groups. They are talking about the Thai (so not the Central-Thai) language and the Isaan language. And you can hear things like: “My mother will not allow me to marry a Thai.” (more…)

A while ago I did research on how Protestant churches in Thailand grow. I wrote about this in Conversion Growth of Protestant Churches in Thailand (printed version, online version). In the coming weeks I am going to give a summary of some of my findings.

1. Buddhists are less likely to become Christians than adherents of traditional religions. Everywhere in the world, adherents of traditional religions are becoming Christians in greater numbers than adherents of world religions. The same is seen in Thailand. Christianity grows very fast among the tribes (8% a year), and only moderately fast among the ethnic Thai (4% a year).

2. There is no difference in openness for the Gospel between (more…)

There has been a time that I wanted nothing else but pack my suitcases and hop on a plane back to the Netherlands. That was when we were still living in Bangkok. I hated everything there, from the oppressive weather to the narrow (more…)

In the middle of Isaan is a university. It is located in the provincial town of Mahasarakham, and it still is a young university. It was only founded in 1994. Yet by now there are 42,000 students, almost as many as the official number of inhabitants of the town.

A while ago I walked around on the campus of the university. (more…)

I have an extra free evening. That’s not a reason to be glad, by the way. Since a few months I was teaching the Bible in a neighbouring village. It was a nice group. Often around 10 people showed up to hear the Bible stories. We had our meetings in the village shop, a corrugated iron shed. All passers-by could see what we were doing, and could easily join in.

But it’s over now. Why? Because I’m rumoured to have bought votes in the village head election. (more…)

A team member asked me: what are the most common mistakes starting church planters make? It wasn’t totally clear to me why he considered me a particularly good source for information of that sort. However, here is my recipe to fail as a missionary church planter:

1. Start ministry in an area where you know nobody, where your friends don’t know anybody, and where there is no opening for the Gospel that you know of. Then you can start with absolutely nothing, and do ministry exactly the way you like. It is also nicely slowly paced, so you won’t be too busy.
2. Make sure your friends are mainly in your home country. Because of Skype, your weblog, and Twitter there is no need at all to know your neighbours. (more…)