Abstract
Few studies have been done on factors relating to conversion of Buddhist background believers to Christianity, and there have been few qualitative studies on this subject. This limited qualitative study of factors relating to Buddhist background believers to Christianity focuses on the experiences of seven people in one evangelical church in Bangkok. The results find that three major factors contributed to conversion: dissatisfaction/incongruence, contact with Christians, and an encounter with the supernatural.
Sittawan was a graduate student at Ramkhamhaeng University in Bangkok and she came to a church based tutorial school to study English. There, she encountered foreign Christians and attended an Ameri Thanksgiving outreach in November 2000. “We served turkey, yams, fruit punch, cranberry sauce and, of course, rice (it is Thailand after all). We talked about the meaning of Thanksgiving and Sittawan became interested in all this Jesus stuff. One of the Thai staff gave Sittawan a book of testimonies about famous Thais who had received Christ” (Hilderbrand, 2009: 102).
However, as soon as she touched the book, she became filled with fear. “She sensed spirits—they were coming at her, surrounding her and even speaking to her. The idols in her home and car became alive and frightening. She couldn’t eat or sleep . . . After three days, Sittawan heard another voice say, ‘Try Me and you will know’” (Hilderbrand, 2009: 102–103).
Sittawan decided to test the latter voice. As she sat on a bus on her way to the government office to renew her driver’s license, she prayed a simple prayer. “Don’t let me wait in line more than 30 minutes to renew my license.” She of course knew that if that happened it would be a miracle. Government offices, especially the Department of Motor Vehicles in any country, are notoriously slow. However, within 30 minutes she had renewed her license and was on her way home!
Sittawan went on to test God several more times and saw several miraculous answers to prayer. She also faced several trials with her family who opposed her acceptance of Christianity. Yet, she was baptized shortly after her initial miraculous encounter at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Sittawan fit all of the main categories found in this qualitative study. Sittawan was dissatisfied with her life. She was a graduate student and single. She desperately wanted someone to love. She had contact with other Christians at the tutorial school, and she had several supernatural encounters with the Holy Spirit.
Understanding why Buddhist background believers come to faith
In the year 2000, my wife and I started a Thai church in Bangkok. Every new convert to Christianity in the church came from a Buddhist background. What factors contributed to these Buddhist background believers’ decision to follow Jesus? The church was turned over to Thai leadership in 2007, but recently, the church council asked me to return as senior pastor to give the church new direction and vision. I accepted the challenge. The struggle will be to discern how Buddhist background believers (BBB) process the decision to become Christian.
The goal of the church is not to pull already-converted believers from one church into another, or to reach out only to those who have a Christian background. The goal of the church is to communicate to Buddhist background Thai people the message of the gospel. According to the Pew Research Center (2012), this segment makes up 93.2% of Thai society. In order to witness effectively, we need to know the factors that contribute to a decision to follow Christ.
This article presents the findings of an exploratory qualitative study conducted in Thailand seeking to discover factors contributing to Buddhist background believers’ conversion to Christianity.
Research questions
The central research question for this research was What do Thai Buddhist background believers believe were the major factors or influences that led them to become a Christian? In Thailand, Thai Buddhist believers are almost exclusively Theravada Buddhists. The term “Theravada” means “Doctrine of the Elders.” It is a school of Buddhism that is “scripture”-based, relying, doctrinally, on the Tripitaka or Pali Canon. Most scholars agree that the Pali Canon contains the earliest and most reliable record of the Buddha’s teaching (Robinson, Johnson, and Thanissaro, 2005). Theravada Buddhism is the predominant religion of mainland Southeast Asia (Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia) and Sri Lanka.
Sub-questions relating to the main question included:
What was the influence of other Christians in leading Buddhist background believers to become Christian?
What was the role of hearing the gospel message from a non-personal source (literature, video) in leading Buddhist background believers to become Christian?
What was the role of miracles, visions, or other supernatural events in leading Buddhist background believers to become Christian?
What was the role of friends or a peer group in leading Buddhist background believers to become Christian?
This study will focus on BBBs who attend Our Home Chapel Foursquare Church in Bangkok, Thailand. I interviewed those Christian believers who primarily speak English, although some interviews were conducted in Thai as the number of English speakers is very limited.
This study was limited to one church, as the research is seeking an answer to the study question primarily with those people who attend this particular church and who have influence on the people living in the neighborhoods surrounding the church.
Understanding how people reflect upon their conversion experience and discerning the factors that relate to their conversion should help the leaders of Our Home Chapel create effective methods of communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ to others. This study can be used by other Christian leaders in Thailand who want to gain understanding about how Thai Buddhist background people come to a decision to become Christian.
Methodology
Participants in this study were both male and female. However, only two males were represented in the sample. The sample reflects the church gender proportionality, and represents the average age spread in the church. Participants were all from Thai Buddhist families. All but one became a Christian after their 18th year of birth. Ages range from 21 to 55 years old.
Data were collected in a short interview with each participant. Each participant was asked to tell me the story of their conversion experience with specific detail to the factors that lead them to become a Christian. As much as possible, I tried not to influence their story, but I did prompt them to recall specific events that might shed light on their experience. Not everyone was able to do the interview in English. At first, I translated during the interview so that the translation was recorded. Later, I did interviews completely in Thai as this made the discussion more natural.
Findings
Three factors continually appeared in each of the interviews: experience of dissatisfaction or incongruence, contact with a Christian, an encounter with the Holy Spirit (supernatural). The story of Sittawan, the first person to become a Christian under the ministry of this church, also seemed to fit these findings.
When my wife and I first began our ministry in Thailand, we opened an English tutorial school for university students. The tutorial school eventually grew to over 800 students and expanded to teach math, science, Chinese, Japanese, and even Spanish. It was out of this tutorial school that we had our first convert to Christianity. Others followed, and a Thai church was established.
Dissatisfaction or incongruence
Almost all the those interviewed indicated that there was some dissatisfaction with their present life. Ploy said, “Nothing was good in my life. I was just trying new things . . . I tried everything already. I [went] to the temple . . . fortune teller . . . Hindu temple.” Participants were not satisfied with how their life was going or they had some crisis in their life that created a sense of need or emptiness.
Five out of the seven experienced a crisis that was claimed to be critical to their coming to faith in Jesus: sickness, the death of a loved one, a miscarriage, a feeling of hopelessness, a break up, guilt, shame, and a general disappointment with life.
Dissatisfaction with Buddhism
Some had a clear dissatisfaction with the state of Buddhism in Thailand. That dissatisfaction was not necessarily with the religion itself. The dissatisfaction was with those who claimed to practice or represent Buddhism.
So you were dissatisfied with Buddhism?
No.
You were dissatisfied with the results of Buddhism? Or you were dissatisfied with the way people were living who were Buddhists.
Really, Buddhism is not bad, but I felt about it, the people.
So Buddhism was not bad, it was the people who were not living up to it.
Yes . . . The lifestyle of Buddhist people.
This is a warning for Christians. We must make sure our life represents our message. Buddhism itself was not the problem. The concepts of Buddhism are acceptable to most people in Thailand. What turns people from their birth religion is how people represent it. When asked about what she did not like about Buddhism, Beam noted that people were more focused on gaining prosperity through ritual, than focusing on the real teachings of the Buddha. Her bosses’ “beliefs were only focused on getting money and wealth,” Beam emphasized.
Meen became disgusted with people who called themselves monks, but did not act like it. “I was fed up with all the fake things, like fake monks.” Recently, pictures were posted, and then went viral, of Thai Buddhist monks trying on and shopping for women’s shoes (“Well-heeled,” 2016). Accordingly, the level of dissatisfaction with Buddhist Monks in Thailand has increased dramatically (Fifield, 2015). Beam emphasized her dissatisfaction by reporting the following experience:
It was my birthday and I went with my mom to a temple . . . We were planning to give food to monks on that day. And my mom drove a beetle. An old Beetle. VW Beetle . . . And then we saw some monks . . . about 5 of them. And then . . . there was another car, Mercedes Benz, came and parked right next to us. The monks changed the direction to that car and [waited] for the food which was supposed to be better than those who drove Beetles . . . Then I talked to myself and said, that’s it. That’s the end of the line.
A search for love
Natcha came in contact with the message of the gospel after experiencing a traumatic breakup with her boyfriend. “I was a freshman at the university. And at that time, I had a broken heart . . . I had been with my boyfriend for about 5 years . . . I was devastated. Very devastated. I felt that no one loved me. Why did no one love me?”
When asked what attracted her to Christianity, Meen answered, “I was looking for true love.” Beam concurred. After becoming a Christian, Beam claimed “About seven years ago . . . I began to understand true love.”
To quote an old country western song made famous by Johnny Lee, Meen was “looking for love in all the wrong places.” Meen’s life had been a series of disappointments. “I got so many boyfriends, right? And all of them were just trying to fool around . . . I didn’t believe in true love. There was no true love. Not even from my parents.”
One day a Christian friend confronted Meen:
I have observed you for quite a long time and I found that you never trust anyone. You are looking for something and you look unhappy all the time. I saw you frown most of the time. What’s wrong? And then I was talking to him like I was trying to find a true love. I didn’t believe in true love. There was no such a thing in the world.
A search for forgiveness
Meen’s crisis moment came when she crossed a personal moral line with one of her boyfriends. He was married. She had plans to leave her family, a serious moral issue in Thai culture, to run off with her married boyfriend. The plan never took place, but the guilt and shame of the relationship deeply affected Meen. She described guilt and shame. Her happiness was lost. She claimed “for Buddhism it will be there. It will be a scar. It will be your stigma forever.”
There is no true forgiveness in Buddhism. One must pay personally for all sins. What attracted Meen to Christianity was that Jesus could “erase all of my sin.” In Buddhism, she said, we must picture a scale. All of our sins are on one side and our good deeds are on the other, but the scales never balance. We can never erase our sins. Christianity is different. “God promised that he will erase everything that will no longer be my stain.”
The teaching of Christianity
Not every sense of dissatisfaction or incongruence was negative. In her third year of university, Meen studied the Bible, not as a religious text, but as literature. Her teacher read the words from the Gospel and “people laughed. Everybody laughed, including me.” The words did not seem real. “Slap you on one side of your check, just turn the other.” The class kept laughing because they thought the ideas were so absurd.
Beam noted that Christianity was very different from Buddhism. “The life of a Christian is like a monk in Buddhism . . . That’s the kind of life that is not selfish . . . I can share that life with other people.” In Buddhism, the focus is on ceremonies and rituals. Christianity is different. “You don’t have any life after this . . . So you need to do every life, every day, the best you can . . . In order to give glory to God, to Jesus.”
A search for understanding
Gift had no negative crisis before becoming a Christian. “I feel that my testimony has nothing interesting at all. There is no great failing or hurt, just I tested first.” Her dissatisfaction was a lack of understanding. She was curious about what Christians believed.
At the church, but I didn’t know it was a church. It was a center for teaching English. And there were many Christians, both foreigners and Thai. And there were Christian activities, prayer together, worship together. So, I started wondering why Christians did these activities? And that was the first question that came to my mind. Why do they do that? But I had many other questions that came to mind. Who is God? Why is there a God? What can God help with?
Contact with Christians
All the participants had some contact with Christians before becoming a Christian themselves. Several observed that there was something different or special about the Christian community. Gift asked, “I saw many of my friends, who were Christian. Why did they have something special?” When pressed about the definition of “special,” Gift elaborated, “The thing that I saw that was special in Christians was why did they have love and mercy for others? Why did they have no problem meeting with strangers? People that they didn’t know before. People who were not their friends, but they wanted to know them. It wasn’t how we were.”
Meen saw something special in a Christian friend she met in Singapore. He was kind and friendly, not interested in a sexual relationship. He just wanted what was best for Meen. Ploy saw something special in a Christian person she met at an English camp. “The first person I met at the camp was Sister Champuu . . . Sister Champuu asked me why I was so sad . . . She talked to me and prayed for me and invited me to church.”
Benz saw something special in his sister who had become a Christian. It was his sister that supported Benz to go to a Christian school, and it was through her influence that Benz’s parents became Christian as well. However, after her untimely death, Benz’s parents rejected Christ while Benz stayed faithful to Christianity.
In some cases, foreign missionaries played a role. Many of the believers at Our Home Chapel Church first heard the gospel message after attending English classes at our tutorial school. When asked if she heard the gospel at the tutorial school, Ploy replied, “Yes! They use the Bible, story in the Bible to teach.” But more than that Ploy expressed that she saw more than she heard. It was the actions of the Christians that most impacted her. “He show[ed] me . . . before eat food, he prayed. When he got sick, he pray[ed]. Yea. They show us at the school; they show us a lot.” Gift added, “I am a Christian because, because I knew other Christians.”
Ploy’s friend Bee was critical to her decision to become a Christian. “She like believe in God first and she invite me to pray and came to church. That time I thought, don’t believe God yet, and listen other people sharing about God. God is good. God is love. God have a plan for me”.
The thing that challenged Ploy was the radical change in Bee’s life.
She is like really stronger than me with the Buddha . . . We went to the temple. Do the everything about the Buddha. She very strong than me and she just “click” with God, and I don’t know what kind of that. But she just pray and she got a lot of the answer. She would like to have a job. She got a job. She would like to have a money she can give, they can get the money also.
A sense of family
John is 21 years old and grew up as an orphan. His mother had died and his dad had abandoned him. His extended family took care of him, but he lived alone in his own home, raising himself. His relatives made sure he had enough food, but he was on his own. A foundation for the poor provided funds so that he had tuition to attend school. John was always diligent, graduating from university in just three years. His chance to go to university came when his older cousin, Benz, invited him to live with him in Bangkok. Benz brought John to church.
“At first I wore my idols, brought my idols to Benz’s home. After that, Benz brought me to the church. And I checked it out. I just came to church.” John was not seriously interested in Christianity at first, but something happened when John travelled with members of the church to do a camp for children in the south of Thailand. He was not yet a Christian, but participated with the group to share Jesus with children in Phang Nga, the region hit by the Andaman tsunami in 2004.
I saw the brothers and sisters of the church really love each other. They were like a family. I never had a family like that. So, it was like a big miracle. Brothers and sisters who were winsome. Adults who were the same and they cared for me . . . They welcomed me into their family. I felt tied into them.
Encouraged to pray
At some point, each subject was encouraged to pray. Meen’s Christian friend in Singapore took Meen to a Christian meeting. They were praying. “What were they doing? They were so quiet people over there. And [my friend] told me. If you are looking for something, pray for it. And I said. I don’t know how to start. You pray for me. And he told me . . . talk by yourself. Try it. And I started praying. Then, I didn’t know what happened. I didn’t know who I was talking to then.”
Encounter with the Holy Spirit
The prayers often led to a supernatural experience. Christians will call this an encounter with the Holy Spirit. “So I prayed and I felt happy. Something happened in my heart. My life changed. I had peace. I had happiness. And more than that I got a job” (Beam).
Strange spiritual encounters have not been out of the ordinary for people at Our Home Chapel. Soon after the church began, a student from the nearby university walked into our Friday night service. She knew of the tutorial school and had taken classes there. Earlier in the afternoon she had been doing her homework and listening to her Walkman disc player in the library. As she started to doze off, she told me she heard a voice. The voice said, “Follow me.” She immediately knew that the voice was Jesus, but she had no idea how to follow Him. She came to the church to ask us how to follow Jesus. Noi was a faithful member of the church for many years, but moved away to live with her sister in 2009 (Hilderbrand, 2009).
Because of a lack of space, Meen had been living in the room where the family kept its idols. This was truly uncomfortable for her because, as a Thai female, she should not be sleeping in a room with idols. She started praying. “If you are God prove to me. Well, I don’t know how long after that, the ceiling right at that corner where we put a lot of idols, a lot of Buddha images, leaked. So, [the] monk moved all the idols out of my room. I felt amazed! Was that one of the signs?”
John had a supernatural answer to prayer.
As I was riding the tour bus to get there. It was Phang Nga province. Then Sister Ole prayed for me that I would be healed of my diarrhea. Then I had no symptoms at all, all the way there.
This was before you were a Christian?
Yes. Some people had witnessed to me before I believed. I had prayed. But I thought after that, I believe. I believed before I joined in the activities in Phang Nga.
Almost every new believer encountered opposition from their families, from mild to more harsh. Natcha exclaimed, “At home, my parents did not like Christians. They didn’t like that I had changed religions. The Christian religion is a foreign religion.” On one Sunday, a young university student was playing the bass guitar on the worship team. His father marched into the church during worship and dragged his son out of the church. He shouted that we were separating a son from his family. Students would attend our Friday evening service so their families would not suspect that they were attending a Christian church service.
Yet, God often delivered these new believers in miraculous ways. Sittawan, the first convert in our young church, finally gained the courage to tell her mom that she had become a Christian. Her mom was shocked and concerned, but Sittawan was not forbidden from joining in Christian activities. This may have been due to Sittawan’s age and status as a graduate student.
Instead, Sittawan’s mom hid a Buddha image in a drawer in her room hoping the spirit of Buddha would lead her back to their Thai religion. That evening, upon entering her room, that drawer began to shake. The noise drew the attention of Sittawan. She slowly opened the shaking drawer, pulled out clothes and found the idol. She removed the idol, walked to her mom and returned it, saying, “I don’t need idols anymore.” (Hilderbrand, 2009: 103–104)
The presence of God
Every participant in this study mentioned an experience with God, a feeling, a sense of God’s presence, either before conversion or at the point of conversion. Benz mentioned this feeling several times. “I have no one to take me to the Christian church. But God was all around . . . I felt that time I didn’t know what it was. But I felt the Holy Spirit.” Gift mentioned that when she opened up her heart, she felt something. She knew the reality of God. Natcha and Meen experienced the love of God. Beam became very emotional and happy as she experienced worship for the first time. “I feel so happy. So, very happy and now I would like to that moment in this time.” Meen mentioned a change at the point of baptism. “I didn’t get the answer until the day I was baptized.” She was changed after her baptism. She believed as she was baptized. Gift mentioned that her doubts dropped away when she decided to open up her heart to Jesus. Ploy talked about feeling God and being able to talk to Him. This was a universal result for all the participants.
Answered prayer
Meen’s Singaporean friend told her that she could talk to God. It wasn’t like Buddhist chanting or prayer. She was told that in Christian prayer you talk to someone who is there.
My friend . . . said, “If you want to talk to someone or ask for help, pray to God.” So, then I was on my knee and praying and saying if you were God, just let me know. Somehow, just let me know by any means . . . It was just like incense smoke . . . I just knew that there was something. I could feel that somebody heard my prayer.
All of the participants in this study, except one, graduated from Ramkhamhaeng University, which has 500,000 students. Its a difficult school to graduate from because of its size and the complicated labyrinth of requirements needed to graduate. Ploy, by her own admission, is not a very diligent or studious person. Ploy is a very caring and compassionate person, but the organization skills required to graduate from a university like Ramkhamhaeng do not come naturally to her:
I worked and I studied in the same time. My study time is not enough for me to graduate. But I asked God; he help me. If you are the real thing, if you are true, can you give me to be the, in that year, to graduate . . . and the impossible thing is happen. The teacher said, O.K. you can graduate this year!
Ploy shared her miracle forward. An older lady followed her son to church. Dim’s husband had abandoned her and she moved to Bangkok to live with her son and help him start his new business. She came to church and would cook lunch for everyone. She never attended the service, but during worship, she purchased food and made a meal to feed everyone who came to worship. Dim suffered terribly from the symptoms of hyperthyroidism. When Ploy found out about her suffering, she told Dim that Jesus could heal her. She prayed and her symptoms disappeared. Later, doctors declared her completely free from hyperthyroidism. Dim still cooks lunch for the church, but preparation is made before service starts so she can join the worship service. She is an enthusiastic worshipper and believer in healing prayer.
Natcha shared that her family had accumulated a great deal of debt. Her family had to choose between sending her or her older sister to university. Since her older sister was closer to graduation, Natcha had to drop out of school to work. She asked God for the money to register and graduate and God provided. She was able to re-enroll. Yet, even more miraculous, God healed her broken heart. Sister Champuu, “prayed about one minute. And then I didn’t feel the pain . . . My broken heart went away. I felt that I had a new life. I was happy. I felt like I had started a new life.”
When asked if God talks to her, Natcha answered, “Yes, it’s a lot and have a lot of the time . . . God still with me all the time. Always. I can feel that.”
A vision
Benz reported that he had a “vision from God.” Benz had grown up in a very small village in the northern part of Thailand near the Myanmar border. He had never left his province. He had only travelled to the town of Chiang Mai. Yet, he had a vision of himself standing before people and traveling all over the country, talking about Jesus. Today, Benz is the national director of a Christian foundation. He travels all around the country teaching and sharing about Jesus. His vision as a little boy has come true through Jesus.
Unprayed-for miracle
There were also unprayed-for miracles that attracted people to Jesus. Beam reported that she didn’t ask God for a miracle, but God just began blessing her. “I didn’t ask God, but I thanked God . . . I was dumb. I didn’t think I could do anything, but I got this job even though nobody gave it to me . . . I thought this was the miracle of God.”
A choice
Ultimately, people had to make a choice. For two of the participants, it was the choice to follow Jesus that initiated a miracle in their lives. Meen said, “I didn’t get the answer until the day I was baptized.” She just could not give herself over to God. But one day she felt pressured by the pastor to be baptized. She had been in the church asking questions for so long. She still was not sure she was a Christian, but she decided to be baptized. It was in the baptism that her life was changed and her doubts disappeared.
A similar occurrence happened with Gift.
Many people prayed for me . . . But finally after many years, I felt I didn’t open myself up. I didn’t open my heart up. And receive this person, so that God could do something. So I hadn’t received any answer from the things I had asked God . . . I thought I wouldn’t receive an answer from God until I believed there was a God . . . I had to have faith that there was a God, only then would I receive my answer . . .
So what happened
My doubts disappeared!
Discussion
A basic model was revealed in these interviews. Three factors were critical in conveying people to Christianity. These are outlined in Table 1.
Theological reflection
Classical Arminian theology (Olson, 2006) and Calvinistic theology (Grudem, 1994) hold to the doctrine that salvation begins with God and salvation cannot be accomplished unless God draws one to Himself. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44, ESV). The Holy Spirit must first draw people to him. The difference between a classical Arminian and a Calvinist is whether that work of the Holy Spirit can be resisted or not. In each case of conversion, God worked to draw that person to Himself.
A work of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity who draws people to Jesus. “And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8, ESV). We see with every participant the work of the Holy Spirit involved in bringing that person into a relationship with God.
According to the accounts of the participants, the Holy Spirit continues to work in a miraculous way as well, touching emotions, answering prayer, giving visions, unlikely events, and connections. In 2003, I was coordinating an outreach with an Akha tribal pastor in northern Thailand. Our target group was a Lisu village that had recently relocated over the hill from our location. The service was conducted in the Thai language with a person translating for the Lisu people. This group of people had never heard of Jesus or Christianity.
After a traditional service of worship and preaching, we began praying for the needs of our guests. One mother approached me with her young daughter. She was deaf in one ear. I later found out that this was a birth defect that had affected many of the people in this village. I prayed for her with care and concern and then asked the little girl if she could hear now. Honestly, I was not expecting any result. Being a Western Christian, I believe in the power of God, but my worldview does not expect the miraculous to be a daily occurrence. As things were being translated, the little girl spoke to her mother and her mother began screaming and dancing. The translator told me that the girl could now hear in her previously deaf ear. I, of course, assumed that something had been lost in translation, and I asked again if the little girl could hear. I was assured that the little girl could now hear from both her ears.
While I was trying to figure out what was happening, all over the room, the people who had been deaf in one ear were being healed of their deafness. Deaf ears were being opened. The result was a whole village was now open to hearing (literally, and figuratively) the gospel of Jesus Christ.
My experience since then is that the message of the gospel often is accompanied by supernatural acts of the Holy Spirit. Especially in places that have never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus before. Although Thailand has been saturated with television and cultural Christianity from media and the Internet, a true understanding of Jesus, who He is, and His teachings, is absent.
A choice
However, each person needed to make a choice to accept or reject the pull of the Holy Spirit. For two of the participants, it was that choice that allowed them to experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit. They tested God. Deuteronomy 6:16 commands us to not test God. However, in context, it is referring to tempting God to judge us because of our sin. We are not to test God to see if He will punish us or not. Jesus uses this verse in a similar context (Matthew 4:7; Luke 4:12). However, in several places in the Old Testament we are encouraged to test God’s faithfulness (Malachi 3:10; Judges 6).
To say it another way, we are encouraged to seek Him, to see if God is faithful. “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles . . . Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:6–8). Also, “ you who seek God, let your hearts revive. For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise his own people who are prisoners” (Psalm 69:32–33).
As a pastor, I encourage people to ask God to reveal Himself to them. He has always answered the prayer of those whom I have challenged to pray in that way.
Christian witness
A Christian witness was always involved. Does this mean that God always uses other humans in the process of conversion to Christianity. I do not know. This is a limited study. However, I believe that it is the way God usually operates. God works through us, humans, to complete His purposes, especially the purpose of making disciples.
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Romans 10:14–15, ESV)
Non-personal methods of evangelism were barely mentioned among the study participants. John read the whole New Testament. It may have laid the groundwork for conversion, but it was not noted as central or critical to the conversion process. Personal witness or a personal relationship was always central to a decision to become a Christian.
Incongruence
The beginning of the process contained some sort of incongruence for the participants. For some it was a personal crisis. For others it was just a curiosity about the teachings of Jesus or the attractiveness of Christian behavior and witness. Others were dissatisfied with Buddhism or those who called themselves Buddhists. The incongruence may not have been extreme, but there was always an underlining dissatisfaction with the way the world operated.
I cannot say whether this is a universal theme or not. However, it does seem to match the general understanding of scholarship on the conversion experience (Rambo, 1993, 1999). Biblically, we find Jesus addressing this incongruence in Paul: “I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads’” (Acts 26:14, ESV). In other words, Paul had, to some extent, been experiencing an incongruence in his life. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but did not address the issue either emotionally or cognitively or both.
Patron–client expectations
A regular theme in non-Western cultural constructs is the patron–client expectation. In the New Testament context, Rome had a well formed patron–client social structure very similar to Thailand. “Our English word for ‘patron’ is derived from the Latin ‘pater’ or ‘father.’ The word client is also derived from Latin, ‘cluere.’ The word literally means ‘to hear oneself called,’ as a child would be called by the father” (Hilderbrand, 2016). In a Christian context, God is our patron and we are his client.
Thai people place a high value on reciprocal or patron–client relationships. This is referred to as “bunkhun” (บุญคุณ). It forms the basis of the social structure found in Thai society (Podhisita, 1985).
This is a theme found in Muslim conversion as well (Farah, 2013; Houssney, 2013). This construct is found in human relationships and supernatural ones as well. Farah (2013) contends it is a biblical desire. “This understanding of salvation is commonly found in the writings of the Apostle Paul. Christ is our ultimate Patron (the Divine Lord). We must be found “in him” and part of the new people of God” (16).
Natcha expressed this need: “The thing that brought me to Christ . . . the reason, the main reason, at that time, I wanted someone who could help me, really help me.” Ploy concurred, “God, He help me.” The themes of God being there, and being faithful to us kept coming up. The response to God’s faithfulness is loyalty. People want a sponsor, a patron.
One day after church, a young woman approached me with a dilemma. She needed to return home to participate in a family religious ritual. She was torn. She wanted to honor her family, but also stay true to her new religion. May she participate in a ceremony that would require her to make offerings to idols? Being a Westerner, I wanted to be sensitive to her question, so I referred her to a Thai elder in the church. In this circumstance it was Meen. I expected Meen to be sympathetic to her plight and offer her some kind words of wisdom and compassion. Instead, to my surprise, Meen spoke harshly to her. Although not exact, her words could be closely translated as follows: “God has forgiven you of your sins. You are part of His family. You belong to Him. How could you betray His kindness by prostituting yourself before idols. He must be honored by you. You cannot participate in anything that would dishonor God.”
God alone is our patron. We must not dishonor or show disloyalty to our patron.
Further research
Further study must be done on factors in Buddhist conversion. Many informal studies have been done by missions organizations, like OMF and Frontiers, but more formal research should be done. The culture of Thailand is changing and new factors may be involved in Buddhist background conversions in Thailand and elsewhere.
This study examined the responses of urban Thai Buddhist background believers in one church. Thailand is a complex culture. There are different social strata and complex relationships that need to be studied. What are the hindrances to Thai Buddhist background believers becoming Christian?
In Muslim cultures, dreams are a major factor in conversion. This fits with cultural expectations of supernatural communication. How is God working within the Thai cultural context? It would appear that answered prayer fits with patron–client expectations, but what other ways is God communicating with Thai Buddhists? How can Christians take advantage or join with God in His activities?
Conclusion
The results of this limited study point to conversion as a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit where God intervenes through supernatural means to achieve Christian conversion. However, God works within cultural and situational contexts, including social and personal incongruence and dissatisfaction, to achieve the goal. A larger qualitative study still needs to be done.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.