Changing Preaching Style.

The last two Sundays I have changed the way I preach in church. For the past year and a half, I have typed out my sermon in English, translated as much as i could. Then Tawm editted it or helped me to finish translating the sermon. Then Saturdays were spent memorizing the sermon. With all the translating and memorizing, it really cut down on time I had in really preparing the sermon. On top of that, I could only memorize so much and as a result, my sermons were pretty short. On Sundays when I preached, I was pretty rigid and I couldn't really go off on tangents because I didn't want to lose my place in the sermon.

However, I came to the point now where I figure my Thai is good enough to begin preaching. My Thai still needs lots of improvement, but I could be here 20 years and say the same. As a result, I decided to try to preach for real. I now go into the pulpit with my introduction typed out in Thai, just so I get off on the right foot and after that, my skeleton outline is in English and i preach from that. The past 2 Sundays have gone well, there is still lots of room for improvement. My sermons have now doubled in time (don't know if that is good or bad). The biggest plus is that I am now excited about preaching again and I feel my sermons have more life and passion too. A couple people have told me that they like it when I preach this new way better which has been an encouragement to me.

Walentine Quiz

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day or as they call it here in Thailand: Walentine Day (because Thais can't make a "v" sound and always forget to add an "s" to words). Most Valentine posts express a person's loved one for another person but since my wife doesn't read my blog, I won't do that here as it would be a waste of time.
Instead of writing a love note, I thought I'd post a quiz. In Thailand they use the word heart to express many different kinds of feelings. So I figured I'd give you some Thai words, there literal translation and then you have to guess what you think these words actually mean. You can keep the answers to yourself or leave a comment with your guesses. (If you speak Thai, please don't spoil it for everyone and give the answers away).
The word heart in Thai is jai. Pronounced like "my" but just change the m to a j. Here's an example - Jai Dee - good heart - it is the Thai word for kind.

1. Jai Yen - cool heart
2. Jai Ron - hot heart
3. Jai Gwaang - wide heart
4. Jai Dum - black heart
5. Cow Jai - enter heart
6. Sia Jai - broken heart
7. Paw Jai - enough heart
8. Jai Kod - crooked heart
9. Bralaad Jai - odd/weird heart
10. Hi Gum Lung Jai - give energy to heart
11. Mun Jai - fixed/certain heart
12. Dok Jai - fallen heart

Have fun!!
I will post the answers in a couple days.

Adventures in Language

Preaching in a second language is always a challenge. There is still so much that I need to learn about the Thai language and still feel very inadequate to be doing what I am doing but I know that God has called me to do this. It is only because of God's grace and His help that people can learn from my teaching and preaching. The compliment I hear most often about my teaching is that I make the Bible easy to understand because I use normal language (because that's all I know :)) People say other Thai pastors are difficult to understand because they use lofty language and sometimes never get to their point. I am thankful that I am able to do that.

Each Sunday is a challenge, but this past Sunday was an even bigger challenge as we had two guests from the Philippines come to Antioch. Both work in Thailand but neither of them spoke any Thai and so on the spot, I had to change from teaching in Thai to teaching in Thai and English. Sunday school wasn't too difficult because my notes were in English. Preaching was more of an adventure as only practice my sermon in Thai. I hadn't looked at my English outline in 4 or 5 days, so sometimes I couldn't remember exactly what I was saying in English. I didn't think the sermon went so well but I had more people encourage me after yesterday's sermon than any other sermon I have preached in Thailand. It is defintely true that God works best when we are weak so that we cannot take any of the glory.

Since coming to Thailand, I have realized how difficult being a translator is. Just because you speak 2 languages doesn't mean you can translate. It takes another skill and yesterday made me more thankful for the people who had helped me with translation work in the past.