What does it take to start a Christian church in downtown Bangkok? Philip Bassham is a Protestant from the United States that has a religious worker visa for starting churches and propagating the Gospel. He has always wanted to be a minister on the “front lines” so, he ultimately decided to preach the Gospel in […] The post BiB024: From Zero to God: How to Start a Church in Bangkok with Philip Bassham appeared first on Thailand Starter Kit.
What does it take to start a Christian church in downtown Bangkok?
Philip Bassham is a Protestant from the United States that has a religious worker visa for starting churches and propagating the Gospel. He has always wanted to be a minister on the “front lines” so, he ultimately decided to preach the Gospel in Din Daeng, Thailand. Not just because it was the most populated city with the fewest churches and Christians, but it also seemed to be where people were “open-minded” to learning the faith.
In this episode, Philip explains the difficulties of teaching Christianity to the Thai residents even though, they seem to understand the concept of God. He believes Christianity brings people together, and although the Thai population might doubt the laws, court and the “finality of judgement”, they are a society that practices morality.
While, offering free English classes, he also tells of the importance of missionaries learning to be fluent in Thai and how he learned from tutors at Baan Aksorn and the computer software Glossika. Spending eight hours a day working with Thai citizens, he says that learning a language is all about motivation.
Preaching to a nation of 99.5% non-Christians, not only is Philip’s main focus to change the mindset of fear, hate and unforgivable sin…to love, compassion and personal responsibility to do the right thing, but also to teach people about the love of Jesus.
Mentioned in this Episode
* Project Thailand: Church Planting Missionary to Thailand – https://projectthailand.net
* Baan Aksorn: The language school where Philip studied – http://baanaksorn.com
* Glossika: The language software Philip used – https://glossika.com/courses/fluency123/thai
Credits
I had some help with this episode: Lou Pobjecky kindly helped me with a lot of the necessary audio edits to get the file in a listenable shape. Lou also put together the cover image and quick description for this episode.
Want More?
Check out the complete collection of Brewed in Bangkok episodes.