EMQ » January–March 2019 » Volume 55 Issue 1
[memberonly folder=”Members, EMQ2YearFolder, EMQ1YearFolder”]Alex G. Smith
Two centuries prior to the incarnation of Christ Jesus, Indian Emperor Ashoka sent thousands of Buddhist missionaries to teach the Dharma throughout the world. Buddhist monks went as far west as Grecian Europe and African Cyrene (today’s Libya).[1] By Christ’s birth, Buddhism had spread across India, entered Ceylon, and penetrated eastward through Central Asia into China.[2] First century evangelism and churches also expanded across the planet. Along China’s Silk Road near Dunhuang and Turpan, I visited the ruins of a church, reputed to exist in AD 67.
Earlier, during Augustus Caesar’s era (27 BC–AD 14) Strabo records a monk’s sensational self-immolation in Athens.[3] Whether he was Buddhist, Jain, or Hindu was unclear. Maybe Paul had this event in mind in his reference to giving “my body to be burned.”[4] Obviously, early Christian missionary expansion had contact with Buddhists.
Consider the Buddhist Context
The worldviews and religious presuppositions of Buddhists helps us comprehend the complexities and difficulties of planting churches among them. Ralph D Winter told me, “It is much harder to reach Buddhists than Muslims.” Christians, Jews and Muslims hold somewhat similar beliefs in God, Scripture, and Jesus. These correlations provide natural connecting points. On the other hand, Buddhists deny God as Creator, view Jesus as only human, and have little connection with Bible truths. Also, since Buddhist liberation totally depends only on oneself, they lack concepts of substitutionary help.[5] Therefore, proclaiming Christ’s sacrifice to Buddhists makes little impact. Like slicing water with a knife, no perceptible change occurs in their divergent monistic worldview. Furthermore, on entering a culture Buddhism saturates it so deeply that ethnicity and nationality are often tied to it. To be Lao, Burma, or Japanese is to be a Buddhist.
Historically, Buddhism was like a vacuum cleaner sucking up local beliefs, religious systems, and various spirits, assimilating all into myriad forms of folk Buddhism. This plethora of syncretized mixed beliefs makes it difficult to establish any single approach to these variegated Buddhists.
Today over one Billion Buddhists[6] including many Chinese, pose significant challenges to church planting globally. For a century, like a persistent dripping tap, it has seeped into western culture too. From Sri Lanka to Siberia, Kashmir to Japan, Buddhism holds sway over multitudes. Ironfisted karma dominates Buddha’s billion followers.
When tribal Christians are excluded, church membership among Buddhist peoples is small, usually less than 1%. Church planting is slow. Church movements are tiny, often only a few thousand. South Korea is an exception, with approximately one quarter of its population giving allegiance to Christ. Mongolia had only 100 Christians when it broke away from Russian oppression in 1990. By 2000 it had 10,000 in spite of a Buddhist revival. Following the 1970s genocide, Cambodian church growth accelerated. In contrast, after 470 years of missions, Japan still has only 0.5% Christians. Consider Thailand, the most Buddhist nation on earth (94%). Its church is around 1%. Most Thai Christians and half of its churches are in the north. An early movement under Daniel McGilvary, multiplying from 140 in 1882 to 7,000 in 1914.[7] But 65% of current northern believers are tribal! More recently small movements arose in some Thai provinces such as Udornthani and Phechaboon. So the challenge is how to stimulate stronger church multiplication among Buddhists. Here are some pointers gleaned from lessons learned over the years from principles I followed while doing pioneer church planting among Buddhists.
Implement A Comprehensive Plan
As a good recipe is essential to baking an edible cake, so a comprehensive strategy is necessary for producing, under God, successful church movements. This covers all phases of sowing, nurturing, reaping and multiplying. Plans to enter, engage, energize and expand movements should be projected early and implemented expediently. In the cultural climate of Buddhist presuppositions, clear and accurate communication of Christ’s gospel is paramount. The vehicles needed to accomplish emergence of churches, require consistent plans, clear operating patterns, and concise execution. Anticipate and include the following important ingredients to achieve strong church proliferation.
Central Spiritual Disciplines
Practicing spiritual reliance is a critical priority. Key disciplines include complete dependence on God and His Holy Spirit, concerted prayer, and clear heralding of the word of God—His gospel of salvation. Through total confidence in God’s power, workers’ genuine spirituality sets the tone for hopeful expectation, determination, and perseverance. It is through servants from all nations faithfully exercising these disciplines, and not by their skills, education or abilities alone, that lasting fruit occurs. God’s word is powerful.
As I listened to a Buddhist leprosy patient, Gorn, share his deep problems and frustrations I realized it was fruitless to ask him to accept Jesus. He did not believe in God at all. Therefore, I offered to give him a copy of John’s Gospel if he promised to read it before the next clinic. He agreed. Four weeks later he came running to me. Excitedly he shared that he read John, even while he was cultivating his fields with the water buffalo. One day as he plowed a crushing burden came upon him. He stopped the buffalo, got down on his knees and cried out, “Oh God—if there is a God—please help me.” Immediately peace flowed into his troubled heart. He went home and witnessed to his parents and four brothers with the families. Within a few months all the families believed and a church emerged.
Creative Local-flavored Communication
The gospel message must be couched in local cultural communications the audience comprehends. Indigenous media forms like drama, dance, song become good channels for passing on the Gospel and teaching believers. This is important for semi-literate peoples or those in oral societies. Indigenous forms communicate to the deep needs of the native peoples. Many rural Buddhist groups in Asia learn readily from stories, fables, myths, local illustrations, art, and artistic performances. Churches can adapt these forms. All printed resources should be in large print with creative illustrative pictures to help readers understand. In Thailand poster presentations such as The Gulf Bridged, The Sinner’s Dream, and the Village Pump became effective tools for proclamation. Utilize some Buddhist stories like Prince Mahanama’s deliberately giving his life by drowning in an ordeal contest, in order to preserve his city’s starving people under siege.[8]
Integrated Systems of Propagation
Concentrated practices in outreach lay firm foundations for increased growth and extension. First, Jesus and the apostles itinerated widely to give the masses access to the good news. As they travelled through “all towns and villages” they proclaimed salvation to all, taught the believers, and healed the sick and demon afflicted.[9] One secret of McGilvary’s success was itineration. This is still vital to do in pioneer or largely unchurched areas.
Second, effective church movements begin with extensive evangelism, using all means to reach some. One best missionary practice is taking local believers along to participate in spreading the word. By this many mutual lessons are learned. An important principle is to mobilize lay movements for witness and church planting. Such teams impact Buddhist families in rural and urban communities.
Third, all evangelism should have one specific goal, namely to identify the receptive families and individual “persons of peace.” By evaluation we discover where the Holy Spirit is working so we can come alongside Him. In one unreached area we pioneered, Soot moved in from another province. Soon he believed and witnessed boldly to all in his village. He received much opposition, especially from the village policeman who threatened to shoot him if he did not stop spreading “the foreigner religion.” As people began to show interest, we helped evangelize the area using nearby Christians and a Bible school team. That week eight came to the Lord and were baptized, including a widow and her two sons and Soot’s family. A week later a house church was started in the widow’s bamboo and thatch home. At that first meeting a Buddhist nun who had been troubled by a violent spirit for years believed. Through the witness of new believers, the gospel spread north and south along new trails. More churches were planted. Soot proved to be a key person of peace.
Fourth, another priority among Buddhists is to focus on whole families[10] more than on lone individuals. In Asia the family defines the individual, not vice versa. In another pioneer area one man believed. Within a couple of weeks, he led his wife and brother to Christ. Other family members followed, and a church was established in that town. Consequently, our team began to pray for God to bring families into his kingdom. That first year sixteen whole families came to the Lord. Analyzing connections of twenty-six baptized in one town, we discovered that twenty-two of them were interrelated. Focus evangelism on whole families.
Fifth, efficient communication of the gospel requires building genuine relationships with families and individuals.[11] In Asia this is paramount. While it requires time to develop, it is essential for Buddhists, especially in Japan or China, where reciprocal expectations accompany real mutual relationships. Asian cultures are shame-based and that can cause problems for evangelism. When overly pressed to accept Jesus, Buddhists don’t want to lose face and often respond without any accompanying real decision. On the other hand, they also don’t want to make the evangelist feel bad by rejecting. Forced responses to the gospel from that perspective often inoculates Buddhists against the gospel.
Sixth, having repeated contact with receptive groups and families is strategic and also more productive. Receptive families need repeated follow up until the gospel takes root. After we showed gospel films in a distant town, Dock, a local government leader came to me with his wife and said, “I heard this Jesus story twenty years ago, and have been waiting all this time to hear it again.” I will never forget what he told me. Two decades earlier a single missionary in a small launch came up the river and showed filmstrips of Jesus. He projected them from the launch onto a sheet screen set up on shore. Dock said “It was not a good production. The tape recording broke often and the man stopped to fix it several times. Then the projector reflector shattered. The missionary found a tin can and shaped a reflector and carried on showing the slides … But I never forgot that Jesus story.” That night I led Dock and his wife to Christ and a church was started in that town soon after. Repeated contact needs to be sooner than twenty years!
Completing the Final Objective
Beware of falling short of the goal. Never stop evangelism to consolidate through discipleship. Like two parallel rails of a train line, evangelism and nurture must proceed side by side simultaneously. Consistently manage and maintain both together. Once evangelism is interrupted or suspended it is difficult to restart it.
Intense follow up of enquirers and new converts is critical and paves the way for strong growth and the establishing of cells or house churches. Having national believers baptize new believers is preferred to missionaries doing so. It leans more to an indigenous church ethos. One of the problems of church planting is the foreignness syndrome that often arises. As much as possible, from the beginning replace that with indigenous involvement and appropriate contextual patterns of worship, witness and service.
Start house churches promptly; soon after conversion of families and individuals. Multiply new churches rather than just add members to existing churches. Develop biblical churches to function locally in three dimensions: worshipping God (vertical), sharing burdens of one another (centripetal), and serving the surrounding community in witness and compassion (centrifugal).[12]
Train believers in simple styles of self-nurture through worship, prayer, bible study, and witness. Teach them easy methods of Bible studies in small groups (cells) to 1) read Scripture together, 2) recap the gist of the passage, and 3) respond with practical applications from it. Let believers conduct communion without depending on a professional ordained minister or missionary. Free the local church to worship and extend outwardly. Multiply new churches.
Implant in new converts the vision to evangelize their relatives and friends. Give high priority to this. New believers are often strong witnesses, fervently influencing others. Train converts in integrated reproducible models. We taught them “Five Fingers of Family Evangelism.”[13]
- Pray for your relatives and close friends specifically by name.
- Go witness to them using God’s word and your testimony.
- Visit frequently those most interested until they believe.
- Teach the new believers to obey Christ and all you know about God.
- Train them to repeat the five finger process with their own relatives and friends.
The vision needs to include global mission also. One weakness of missions has been to focus on the immediate people of that nation without including the unreached peoples elsewhere. Several children of the first families coming to Christ became career cross-cultural missionaries to other people groups. Pass on the vision for global church planting movements.
Also give attention to raising local church leaders. Identify and encourage leaders from within the local group, rather than import them from the outside. Train them to be unpaid lay pastors[14] and evangelists. Give them basic training that can be built on in more depth later. As the movement expands some paid or partially paid area-leaders who supervise, encourage, counsel and develop the vision may be needed. Converted well-known monks usually continue to receive high respect from their Buddhist communities. Some become acceptable church leaders.
Consolidate gains. Some means to integrate and unify scattered believers is essential. In our area cells and congregations met weekly. Celebrations were held in districts quarterly, province-wide each half year, and nationwide annually.
The cell in various forms provides the basis for individual participation, involved action and personal growth. The basic evangelistic prayer cell is essentially the church in embryo, where small groups pray for relatives and friends, use the simple Bible study approach, and then go out and witness to those they prayed for. This voluntary model involves all believers.
The congregation or assembly provides unity and local identity. It keeps local believers accountable to each other. It provides for weekly worship, a place for united prayer, spiritual stimulus and caring fellowship. It also assimilates new believers and their local families into the body of Christ.
The celebration usually covers a broader gathering like a conference. It adds renewed strength and encouragement. It provides awareness of belonging to something bigger than the local small group’s feeling of isolation. Since most churches are like tiny boats surrounded by a vast Buddhist ocean, convocations of celebration affirm and stimulate a greater sense of belonging, being part of a larger whole, and consequently enthuses and encourages new believers, especially in hostile environments.
Finally, boldly experiment realistically to find better ways to multiply churches, but also carefully evaluate the results realistically. Then recycle and repeat the best methods and lessons learned.
The secret to productivity in catalyzing church movements is to know when and how to change roles as needed for each fledging church at each stage of development. Avoid the danger of church development syndrome, where energies are focused on helping believers while ignoring evangelizing the masses. Also avoid churches becoming dependent on the missionary or even a local pastor. Beware of accepting a role as official pastor of mission churches. Missionary apostles may need to do pastoring on occasions, but always raise up local pastors from the developing congregations. Churches require indigenous pastors as early as possible. Produce truly indigenous churches that function biblically: seeing themselves as Christ’s servants to their own societies, self-governing, self-propagating, self-nurturing and self-supporting – not relying on outside funding.
Conclusion
The greatest threat to the church of the twenty-first century may be Buddhism’s quiet invisible infiltration into cultures by its influences through concepts, thinking, media and practices. In the West, Hollywood advocates and their movies as well as modern legal systems and wellness-health-counseling professions have adopted and introduced much Buddhist thinking into our culture. Buddhist “churches” are spreading across the West like the tentacles of an octopus. In the East Buddhism still reigns supremely in multiple people groups, large and small. Church planting among Buddhists demands high spiritual commitment and perseverance in intercessory prayer and personal sacrifice.
Alex G. Smith earned his DMiss at Fuller Seminary, served under OMF International for over fifty years, including two decades in Thailand and currently as International Trainer and Advocate in the Buddhist World. He co-founded SEANET (broadest network for Buddhist peoples), has authored books and articles, and speaks globally.
Notes
[1] https://davidderrick.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/ashokas-missions/ April 26-27, 2012.
[2] Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity (New York: Harper and Row, 1953), 274.
[3] Strabo, xv, 1, on the immolation of the Sramana in Athens (Paragraph 73) (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0239&layout=&loc=15.1.73)
[4] I Corinthians 13:3
[5] Alex G. Smith, A Christian’s Pocket Guide to Buddhism (Ross-shire Scotland: Christian Focus Pubs, 2009), 61–62
[6] 1.29 billion: Todd M. Johnson & Kenneth R. Ross, Atlas of Global Christianity 1910-2010 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 14-16
[7] Smith, Alex G. Siamese Gold: The Church in Thailand. Bangkok: Kanok Bannasan (OMF Publishers, 2017), 93, 99.
[8] “http://www.chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com/en/index.php?title=Mahanama&oldid=178055” Access 8/8/2017
[9] Matthew 4:23, 9:35; 10:1f; Acts 8:4-5; 9:32f; 13:4f
[10] See Paul De Neui, ed., Family and Faith in Asia: The Missional Impact of Extended Networks (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2010).
[11] Alex G. Smith, “Suitable Messages for Fear, Guilt, and Shame Buddhist Cultures,” Restored to Freedom from Fear, Guilt, and Shame (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2017), 69.
[12] Alex G. Smith, Strategy to Multiply Rural Churches: A Central Thailand Case Study (1977), 9–65, http://thaimissions.info/.
[13] Alex G. Smith, Multiplying Churches through Prayer Cell Evangelism (1971), http://thaimissions.info/gsdl/collect/thaimiss/index/assoc/HASH016c.dir/doc.pdf.
[14] Paul De Neui, ed., “Training Indigenous Leaders in Thai Buddhist Contexts,” Becoming the People of God: Creating Christ-Centered Communities in Buddhist Asia (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2015).
