What is ESL? And why should we start an ESL ministry? The past weekend, eleven of us from NCFC had the opportunity to attend an English as a Second Language (ESL) Training Seminar at Chapelgate Presbyterian Church in Marriottsville, MD. The training seminar was for churches who have a burden to start an outreach ministry, especially to their surrounding community of international students, immigrants, refugees, and non-native language speakers. NCFC is definitely situated in an international neighborhood and community in Germantown, MD, and there are still many who do not know our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ! We learned that the primary goal of church-based ESL ministries is “to intentionally share and demonstrate the gospel of Jesus Christ as we help people learn to speak English.”
Some of us were frightened at first by the packed schedule, which ran from 6pm to 9:30pm on Friday evening and from 8:45am to 5:30pm on Saturday. But after helping ourselves to a cup of Keurig coffee and the variety of sweet and salty snacks provided, we were ready to tackle the training! We learned the nitty gritty details of how to organize ESL classes and recruit/train volunteers, how to place students in the appropriate class levels, how to plan out an ESL lesson and effectively teach it, and how to deal with cultural misunderstandings. At the same time we also learned how to incorporate biblical material into our ESL classes. We realized that ESL ministry is more than just about providing quality language classes, but also about building relationships with people, meeting basic human needs, physically demonstrating Christ’s love, and providing a natural setting for sharing the gospel. Oftentimes, ESL ministries also result in new missions and church starts.
But perhaps the most inspiring part of the training seminar for me was the many testimonies that the trainer, Nancy, shared from her 25+ years of involvement in ESL ministry as a lay church member with no professional training in ESL. Here is one that I would like to share with you.
After much prayer and hard work, Nancy finally witnessed the wife of a Chinese couple come to believe in Jesus Christ as a result of attending ESL classes. Even though the husband is not a believer yet, both of them decided to start a weekly bible study at their home. At one point, they were expecting her parents to visit from overseas, and they were hoping that her parents would sit in on the bible studies as well. What they did not realize was that her parents were extremely against Christianity. In fact, they had called the police on a house church just above them in their apartment complex, which led to the church shutting down. As you can imagine, the parents were adamant about not joining the bible studies during their visit. But the Holy Spirit was working! By the second week, the pa rents were eavesdropping from the staircase in the house. By the third week, the parents continued to eavesdrop, this time pretending to clean in the kitchen which was situated closer to the bible study. By the fourth week, they were finally sitting in the bible studies. Her parents eventually became Christians through the bible studies, and returned overseas with the intention to start up the house church that they had originally helped shut down!
I hope this testimony inspires you as well. Our God has literally brought the nations to our doorsteps right here in Germantown, and he desires for us to engage with and transform our community for His namesake! May NCFC take on the call “to love those who are foreigners” (Deut. 10:19).
From Pastor Dave’s Heart
March 6, 2016
“A few more minutes, Dad!” was the groggy response I heard back as I tried to wake my 2 older boys. With the start of the New Year, I have asked Caleb and Caden to commit to waking up early with me to do bible reading and devotionals before they head off to school (in the past, we had read the bible together before bedtime). With Old Man Winter finally arriving, the lure to stay a little longer in a warm and cozy bed is very inviting. Lately, God has placed on my heart the hope and prayer to see the next generation raised up, a creative and passionate generation who would be willing to take steps of faith and at the same time persevere when the going gets tough!
Working with the younger generation can be very capricious at times (just ask any parent)! There are days when you scratch your head and wonder if any change will come about. But I was reminded of God’s goodness and faithfulness in the midst of our perseverance through a Facebook message I received a few months into our Home Assignment here in the U.S. Over ten years ago when I was still a single man, working as a civil engineer, God had given me the privilege to meet up and disciple a group of students at the University of Maryland. Week after week for about four years, I would commute to campus right after getting off work, and lead a bible study with this group of young men in their dorm room. After they graduated, we parted ways and I didn’t feel like much really resulted from my efforts.
A couple months ago I received a Facebook message from one of the young men in that group. All he wrote was, “Thanks for making those long commutes out to College Park, Dave!” And right under the message was a link to a testimony he wrote for a Christian website. You have to understand that he was the only non-Christian in the group at that time. In fact, he shared in his testimony that he was furious when confronted with the existence of hell and the exclusivity of Jesus as Savior and Lord in one of our bible studies. He even exclaimed that he would rather be in hell than believe in our kind of God. But along his spiritual journey, he came to believe in Jesus Christ by God’s grace through the Alpha Course in a local church, and is now currently a fourth year graduate student at Westminster Theological Seminary preparing to be a pastor.
So what is the point of sharing this story? Sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with the younger generation is not always easy. Ministering to and discipling the next generation is not always effortless. Many times we may not see any immediate results or fruit either. Yet, the bible says, “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58).
With the recent Timothy Retreat, it was quite encouraging to see so many young adults be small group counselors – to listen, to love, to pray, and to pour into the lives of the Timothy students. As a church, may we recognize the need for inter-generational ministry, and learn to cherish and invest in the next generation with perseverance!
From Pastor Dave’s Heart
January 10, 2016
One of the things that our boys miss about Thailand is all the 7-Eleven convenience stores that seem to be at every street corner (and in between as well)! Whenever we were hungry and all the street food stalls were closed, 7-Eleven was always our go-to place for drinks, snacks, and fresh steamed pork buns. You can even pay your water and electric bills there!
So you can imagine Caleb and Caden’s excitement when we shared with them that they were building a new 7-Eleven just right beside the Harris Teeter grocery store near our home here in Clarksburg, MD. (By the way, I have already brought our boys to the grand opening of this 7-Eleven, and they got their fill of free Slurpees and snacks!)
A fun fact is that Thailand ranks as the country with the 3rd most 7-Eleven convenience stores in the world (behind Japan and the United States). There are actually over 8,300 stores spread out across the country, and they are constantly building more! In contrast, Thailand as a whole only has 5,120 churches. In South Thailand, where we serve as missionaries, there are only 411 churches. So that means there are far more 7-Eleven stores than there are evangelical churches in Thailand! Why are there so few churches in Thailand? There may be various reasons, but one of the contributing factors is that Buddhism is so embedded in Thai culture. The saying goes, “To be Thai is to be Buddhist.” And so sometimes it takes a generation to even establish a solid church plant. It’s certainly not quick and easy!
Perhaps a more perceptive question to ask is why 7-Eleven stores are so popular in Thailand. The central underlying values in Thai culture can be summed up in the four S’s: sanook, sabaay, saduak, and suay. Roughly translated, they mean: fun, comfortable, convenient, and beautiful. 7-Eleven stores are so popular in Thailand because they are convenient. Especially on a hot and humid day, you wouldn’t want to walk too far to get your cup of Slurpee and steamed pork buns!
The sad reality is that the four S’s of Thai culture is evident in our churches as well. How many times have we made decisions based on what is fun, comfortable, and convenient for us? How many times do we make an effort to look beautiful on the outside while at the same time hiding the mess that is on the inside? With this type of mentality seeping in like spreading yeast, it is no surprise that the church has become more a consumer church than a missional church.
There is a fantastic diagram that delineates the difference between the consumer church and the missional church. It defines the consumer church “as a dispenser of religious goods and services. People come to church to be ‘fed’, to have their needs met through quality programs, and to have the professionals teach their children about God (i.e. I go to church).” In contrast, the missional church is “a body of people sent on mission who gather in community for worship, community encouragement and teaching from the Word in addition to what they are self-feeding themselves throughout the week (i.e. I am the church).” So which one are we? And which one do we want to be?
Information from Wikipedia, eStar Foundation website, The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball
From Pastor Dave’s Heart
November 15, 2015
Where is home? That was the question that Caleb, our oldest son, asked when we were packing up and preparing to return to the U.S. He was five-years-old and his younger brother, Caden, was three-years-old at the time we had left the U.S. for Thailand, our mission field and home for the last four years.
But before I answer the question of where is home, let me take a moment to introduce ourselves for the benefit of those who don’t know us. Though I was born in Taiwan, I grew up in Saudi Arabia from age one to seven. It was not until my family immigrated to the U.S. that we came to know the Lord through a Chinese church in the southern Bible belt state of Alabama. Lila on the other hand was born in the Midwest state of Illinois, and grew up in a Christian home with Korean parents. It was not until her parents divorced and her dad remarried that she relocated to Maryland. She started attending NCFC in 1992, and gave her life to the Lord in 8th grade at a church retreat.
Fast forward a few years, and the Lord brought us together as husband and wife in 2005 with a passion to glorify Him through our mutual call to cross-cultural missions work. Both of us received a clear calling from the Lord. And so after I worked seven years as a civil engineer and Lila worked eight years as an elementary school teacher, we decided to quit our jobs to attend seminary in preparation for vocational ministry. Eventually, I graduated from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 2009 with a Master of Divinity and joined the pastoral staff of NCFC briefly on a part-time basis. Lila returned to teaching in the public elementary school sector, while we continued to prepare for the mission field. At some point, we had two little boys, Caleb and Caden, along the way!
Currently, we are serving as full-time missionaries in Thailand with OMF International. We have just completed our first term of four years church-planting in South Thailand. We were involved with language and culture studies, relational evangelism, English teaching outreach, and partnership with an existing OMF church plant. Our youngest, Corban, was born in South Thailand, and we joke that he is half Thai!
And so that brings us back to the question of where is home? I must admit that at first I did not quite know how to answer that question. I have had my own personal struggles with answering that question myself because of my own cross-cultural childhood experience. Everywhere seems to be home, and nowhere seems to be home as well. But the best answer I could give Caleb was that home is where our family is together at the time. And so if we are in Thailand together, that is our home. And if we are in the U.S. together, that is our home. We also thank God for you, our church family, because you have warmly welcomed us and made the transition back to the States so much easier. And for that, we are grateful.
Ultimately, I am learning to teach my boys that home is where heaven is as well because, as believers, we are all on a journey towards that direction, and Scripture reminds us that “our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). Even with the reverse culture shock that comes with adjusting back to the U.S., we are learning to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and reminded to always be gazing heavenward.
From Pastor Dave’s Heart
September 20, 2015