A way of determining the strength of the national church is to find out who is starting churches in Thailand. Are they mostly started by nationals or is there extensive missionary help involved in starting new churches?

To help answer this question we randomly called over 150 churches that worship in Thai. These churches were located all around the country and from many different denominations. All the churches we called were started between the year 2000 and 2011.

The question we asked each pastor was “Was there any foreign missionary involvement when starting your church?” This was a Yes or No question. If they responded “Yes”, we then asked, “Was the missionary a resident missionary in the area or did they live elsewhere?” This question would give an indication whether the missionary was directly involved with starting the church or more indirect such as supporting the church start financially.

What we discovered was very encouraging. Among the churches that worship in Thai 85% were started by nationals, there was no missionary involvement. Of the 15% with missionary help, 6% were started by resident missionaries.

We then randomly called over 60 churches that worship in one of the tribal languages; the results were surprisingly different. 60% of the churches that worship in a tribal language were started by nationals with no missionary involvement. 40% had missionary involvement of which 19% were started by resident missionaries.

From these results, we can praise the Lord that the national church in Thailand is up to the task of starting new churches. Through missionary help is very important, it is not essential for multiplying churches.

• Continue to pray for TEC’s National Plan (Vision 2015) where church members from all over the nation are committing to being “1 out of 100,000 to reach 1 million for Christ by the year 2015.”  

• Pray for the new churches that are starting every month in Thailand, that God would strengthen  and encourage the pastors.  Pray that they would be faithful to God's word in the difficult task of starting a church.

For God’s Glory,

Dwight Martin
Research Coordinator
Thailand Evangelism & Church Growth Committee

PS.  We have created a new map on Thailand Population Migration.  This map shows the migration of the Thai population.  It can be used to point out areas where people are moving.  This can serve as an aide for knowing where to start a new church.