The 7th Evangelism Congress

David Johnson is a good friend, my Sunday School teacher, and an elder at Immanuel Baptist Church. Since today was a holiday in Thailand (Coronation Day), he invited me to ride up to the northern edge of Bangkok with him to join others from church at the Evangelism Congress. This is a meeting of pastors and leaders of nearly 700 churches throughout Thailand. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity. It's a week-long event, and we'd only join them for one afternoon, but I was eager to see this gathering of believers.

I did manage to be responsible for David getting a traffic ticket on the way up, for not wearing my seatbelt. Here, they take your license and you have to go to court and pay your fine to get it back. Sorry, David!

David, in front of the arena at Thammasut University, where we met. Already I could tell this was going to be a bigger deal than I had expected.

Probably 1,500 or so for the daytime session. In the evenings, lay people from nearby churches will come and the place will be filled. On thing I learned today was that the Thai churches' own figures are that the population of Thailand is only 0.51% evangelical Christian. And the numbers wold be worse except for the northern provinces, which have many more believers. I also learned that there are something like seventy districts (Thai provinces are like US states, and districts are like counties) which have NO Christian churches. THAT was unbelievable.

The goal is to plant around 150 new churches this year. Sounds do-able since you're talking all of Thailand, until you realize that would be averaging one new church every two and a half days. Yikes!

The banner emphasizes this group's goal. To reach a point in Thailand where everyone in the country personally knows at least one person who is truly living for Jesus.


These girls came out to some loud rock-style music and danced before a session. Those aren't traditional Thai dancing costumes, unless they are starting a new tradition, but I love the fact that there is room in this group for all manner of expression of love for Christ.

I caught up with my buddy, Ah Jan Vee and his wife Mhewi.