A final post ... with thanksgiving

Yesterday completed my two weeks of teaching in Yangon. We ended our time by singing Amazing Grace together and in prayer. It has been a privilege to get to know my students, and hopefully, in some small way, to be of service to them for their ministry. Indeed, they can do what I could never do, and so I have had the honor of prayerfully helping them do it better.

The final activity of the class was for my students each to teach a part of the class. I am very thankful for what they were able to do.

So now I return to a different world. And how have I changed? I’m not certain. But I can see that I have gained from having studied this material alongside my students. My conviction for the significance of the educational ministry of the church is stronger than ever, and I am thankful for how this time has enabled me to develop my own approach to teaching and learning in a local church. I have gained by praying together with them through the various struggles and challenges of life. I have gained by my interactions with my roommate as together we thought through challenging issues related to life and ministry, and as he offered a listening ear and plenty of excellent counsel related to the vision of a “multi-national church plant” we are pursuing. I have learned from God’s Word as He continues to teach me, and from prayer, as I learn to listen more clearly to Him. I have learned from being distant from my family, when I was powerless to take care of things from afar. I am so thankful for how others have served, how God has provided, and how each one in my family has grown, in my absence. (And now I’m ready to be with them again!)

So thank you to all of you who prayed for this time. I asked for prayer for health and safety, and so far, I have had both. I asked for prayer that I could serve these people well. I think, in some small way, God has worked that through me by His Spirit. And I asked for prayer for my family, and God has been with each one.

One of my main challenges to my students was that they be involved in shaping the whole of people, and not just their minds as we so often do when we think about teaching. We are to love God with our thinking, with our emotions and wills and relationships, and with our strength. And so I endeavor to do the same, loving God with more and more of who I am even as I endeavor to help others do the same.

God is faithful, and He is good. So we walk in confidence into an unknown future … unknown only in the details. For the big picture is clear for all who have entrusted their souls to their faithful creator.

And a word about the students...

It has been a privilege and pleasure to get to know my students a bit more. I will tell you a little bit about them. One is a teacher in a Bible college. Her English is excellent, and she teaches in both English and Burmese. (Most seminaries here operate in English because there are almost no Christian books available in Burmese. It turns out that the task of translating is very hard and expensive, even when they can get the rights to do so.) When I asked about what people do for fun, she said that they like to play games. When I asked what games, she said, “Uno!” I was very surprised! And then I was even more surprised when she said her favorite game is Dutch Blitz! It turns out that she spent time with an American missionary family (in India, I believe) and that is where she learned Dutch Blitz. (She also learned that she didn’t like having pancakes for breakfast every day!)

Another student is a pastor in a church of about 150 people. They actually have 7 full time pastors, which in part explains why they don’t get paid very much. There are very many Baptist churches in Myanmar because of the influence of Adoniram Judson. Unfortunately many of them are very liberal, and this man was led astray by a liberal seminary here. So while he was a pastor, he had become a universalist (believing that everyone will be saved, no matter their religion). He said that the members of the church patiently prayed for him, and he has come to realize the unique claims of Christ and that there is salvation in no other Name. It seems that perhaps some of the courses from this seminary which whom I am teaching were helpful to him in that growth.

Another student has been a gift of God for our class. His English is exceptional, which helps us a great deal since he often translates what others don’t understand or what they want to say but are not sure how to say it. But more than that, he has a pastor’s heart and is very quick to understand what I am teaching. So he is regularly looking across the classroom, trying to decide how best to help the class with its learning. He has been married less than a year, and he and his wife live with his parents. That is important since he is one who only makes about $720 in a year as a pastor.

Each of these people, along with the others in my class, also has the typical struggles in life of health and conflict. And yet they are seeking to serve God by serving His church. What a great thing they are doing! And I am so thankful for the opportunity to offer some equipping and encouragement as they seek the Kingdom of God first before other things.

If you would, please pray for them. And pray that these last days of class would help solidify some of what they have learned and that, as they return to their churches and their teaching, they will find these things to be useful to be more effective in teaching and discipling their people.

I'm learning ... slowly...

The process of getting to know our students is a slow one. As Laura (our daughter) has observed from her experience in Jamaica, when you are a “short timer” (a foreigner vising for around 2 weeks or less) people aren’t likely to open up very much with you. She has the privilege of spending longer. Relationships take time.

But I have gotten to know the students some. In some ways, they are just like me. They have health issues, and transportation issues, and issues with relationships, and issues with the busyness of life. Yet they experience some of these things in much more challenging ways. 

For example, some of them are full time pastors and make roughly $100 or even $60 a month. Things are a bit cheaper here (a Coke costs about 40 cents in the store, but of course you pay with Kyat, and I’ve only seen people drink Coke in restaurants that cater to the rich or foreigners, and a new car might cost about $15,000). But that’s not enough of a difference to make it easy to live on $60! So they might live with family. Many (most?) don’t have bank accounts because there isn’t enough money at the end of the month to put somewhere. As many have said, no matter how challenged most of us feel in dealing with our money, we are nowhere near what so many in the world face!

But things aren’t entirely obvious either. For example, 7 of my 8 students have smart phones and/or iPads. (FYI, I’m down to either 5 or 6 students because of various issues.) Apparently parents or others have helped them get this technology, and what a fantastic resource it is for them. And they don’t complain about being poor. They eat rice for every meal, but not because they have to. That is what they like. They wouldn’t dream of having a car (although at least one of the pastors has one), yet life works pretty well without one.

It is so good for me to begin to see the world from within the eyes of someone else whose experience is quite different from my own. I quickly discover that what seems like the only way to think about things, and the only set of important values, turns out not to be the only or best way. And yet, there is so much for which I am thankful in my own context. It takes great wisdom to realize what is really good and what just seems good.

So I endeavor to keep learning, whether abroad or at home. Thankfully our God is patient and wise, and He loves to teach. And so much of His teaching He does through people, so I’ll keep trying to learn wherever I go.

Attending Church in Myanmar

Attending church yesterday was a great experience. I love seeing and experiencing how different churches live out their lives as church. And also how they are the same. Here is the pastor walking up the stairs to the second story where the church meets.

It was a strange thing to sing old Baptist hymns with the tunes I knew in a language I cannot understand. Yet the language we sang in, Tidim, has a Roman alphabet that is phonetic, so once you learn the sounds the letters make, it is possible to sing along with the people. (This language does not have its own writing system. The system they use was created by a missionary about 100 years ago.) It is also fascinating to try to read music written in the “do-re-mi” style (like the Sound of Music). What a great idea for writing out four parts with a typewriter alone!

The church is about 27 years old and has over 100 people. They sing enthusiastically, and many people travel an hour to get to church. In effect they combine Sunday School and the worship service. Part way through the singing, someone teaches for maybe 30 to 40 minutes, lecturing on a chapter of the Bible each week. Then after some more songs, we heard a sermon.

It is surprising how open the church can be here. Like in other countries, they cannot own their own building. Yet they do not have to hide. And praying in public places, like in a restaurant, is something their pastor encourages as a testimony to people of one’s allegiance to Christianity.

How satisfying it is to be able to play some small role in equipping the leaders of churches to serve and lead more effectively. I pray that God does that. 

A little bit like Adoniram Judson

200 years ago this very day (July 13, 1813), Adoniram Judson arrived in Rangoon, Burma (what today is called Yangon, Myanmar). So here we sit, a little like the great missionary who brought the Gospel to this nation. Even today, the translation he wrote of the Bible into Burmese is considered by some of my students as the best translation available. (Apparently there is one other translation that was made from an English paraphrase.) The Judsons were here, in the midst of heat and disease and opposition, for six years before their first convert. In the midst of his service here, Adoniram experienced the deaths of many of his children as well as both his first and second wife, as well as never seeing his mother, father, and brother again.

Here we sit in an air conditioned room, with WiFi that lets us talk with and see family and watch Major League Baseball, encouraged by many local Christians who boldly share the Gospel in spite of difficulties, with medicines to keep us well, with relative security and comfort.

Okay, so I am not much like Adoniram. It is amazing to read of his story. I encourage you to check out John Piper’s description of his life at http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/books/adoniram-judson.

So what do I believe about the truth of the Gospel, including both the bad news of the final judgment for sin and the Good News of adoption by the Father to live with Him forever? And what is the significance for the great number of people in this country, and in other countries, who may have heard the name of Jesus (as many in Myanmar have) but have never understood the real meaning of the Gospel (as most in Myanmar do not)? It is one thing to know the right answer. It is another thing to be gripped by the right answer, and to live it out.

I am put to shame by the boldness, the courage, and the sacrifice of people like Judson. May God be gracious to me, and may He change me, so that I also would take up my cross and follow, that others would know and submit to the great good news of the Gospel in Christ. And may He show us the place He has for us in seeking first His kingdom, that we might be tools in His hands for His glory.

Trying to find the right words...

It is very challenging to put into words the experiences of being here. That is a humbling thing for a person who tends to be very word oriented. This is one of the reasons that we need poets and artists … to say that which is hard to express in other ways. But since I'm not one of those, I continue to speak and write as I am able.

It is an amazing thing to spend time with people with great faith in God, people whom God has called to a great task, of bringing hope to many who are without hope, people who live in a world that is so different from my own and yet that is their home.

It is sobering to think what they must think of me as the foreigner, as one who is connected with the image of American culture that has been projected to the world.

Even as I begin to get some sense of what it is like being here, I realize that I haven’t got a clue! For my students, I fit into the category of American professors who come for 2 weeks at a time to teach, primarily to impart knowledge. For people on the street, I am an oddity that generally they seem to try to ignore. Yet there are people who seem not to be able to resist, smiling and waving or wondering what in the world I am doing.

It seems that people are fairly reserved, both in public and with individuals. In my experience, people have been less inclined to talk than many Americans. (Which leads me immediately to say that some Americans, including some in my family, are quite content to use few words in a day.) In an effort to get to know my students over lunch, I ask questions. Perhaps they think I am a non-stop communicator. Perhaps I am too pushy. My sense is that they are graciously putting up with us. Am I being insensitive? Or am I being loving to try to draw them out?

So what are the chances that what I am teaching will really help them in their lives and ministries? They graciously express appreciation, and it seems that they are wrestling with important issues. I give them time to speak in Burmese with each other, and they seem to be engaged in meaningful ways … yet how would I really know?

But then again, is that any different from preaching and teaching in the US? People graciously express appreciation, but are souls really being fed and shaped into the image of Christ?

One of our big ideas is that the work we seek to do in the church is a work that only God can do through His Spirit, and yet He calls us to be skillful tools in His hands to do that work. Generally we cannot separate what God does and what we do. We proclaim, and He speaks through our speaking of His words.

So in humility, we seek to be as skillful/wise as we can be while depending upon His Spirit to be at work doing what we cannot do, “as though God were making His appeal through us.” (2 Cor. 5:20)

So I continue to teach and live, longing to impart a spiritual gift even as we are mutually encouraged by each others’ faith (Romans 1:11-12).

The teaching and learning continues

Today I finished teaching day # 3 in class. We have been studying a summary of research on teaching and learning by Jere Brophy, a professor at MSU who passed away a few years back. One of the key ideas he covers in teaching is that input, processing, and output all matter. Unfortunately, we very often give greatest emphasis to input. That is, we think most about telling people the content we want them to learn. But Brophy points to the research that says students learn more when we help them engage in meaningful dialogue with other people about what we teach. And they also learn more when they engage in meaningful practice and application of what we taught. If we spend all of our time telling them what they should know, and we don’t take the time to help them process it or practice it, they are less likely to learn as much or to use it later on.

So we talked a bit today on how we, in the church, can do a better job of fostering meaningful conversation among people about what they learn in church, and how we can help them practice what they learn in realistic ways. It means that we can’t “cover as much content.” But it also means that what we cover will likely be remember and used again, instead of yet more content that we can vaguely recollect and not use.

I hope that these conversations are valuable for my students here. (And yes, I have had them in meaningful conversations with each other about the content, and I am giving them a chance to practice this next week when they get to teach in class.) It challenges me to think about how I, in my own settings, can do a better job of engaging people in meaningful conversations about a sermon or lesson in church.

On another note, I had the chance to walk about the city a little bit this morning. I encountered a market that had lots of fresh meat and fish. And lots of color!

Myanmar has a high power distance. That is, those in authority are to be shown great respect. It was interesting to think about good aspects of this way of thinking (such as obeying the fourth commandment to honor your parents as well as the call to submit completely to God as God) as well as the bad aspects of this way of thinking (such as people in church who are passive because they just let the pastor do the thinking and working as their superior). We in the US have the opposite problem in some ways … having to figure out how to have people see God as God and not just their friend. Meaningful conversations for me as well!