Reach the Last: Waiting for a Movement of God in Thailand

A man uses his phone in the back of a vehicle in Thailand. Sixty-six percent of the population in Thailand uses Facebook. [Image by TWR MOTION]

Josh Terndrup and the Antioch Ministries International team in Thailand are asking God to work in the Buddhist world the way he has in the Muslim world.   

Terndrup, a church planter, read a book called The Wind in the House of Islam, which shares how, in the last 20 years, there has been a more significant church-planting movement in the Muslim-background nations than there has been in the previous 1,500 years.   

"That really touched our hearts," Terndrup said. "That really moved us to believe, 'God, would you do something like that in this generation among Buddhist-background people?'" 

The AMI team believes in a partnership between prayer and church planting and using every tool available to see the gospel come to the Buddhist world in this generation. 

According to Terndrup, 88% of Thai villages have no Christian presence. 

Animating Bible stories 

In 2020, when COVID hit and people could not leave their homes, the AMI team began asking how they could get the good news out. 

And the clear answer became digital discipleship. 

Digital discipleship is what it sounds like. This approach to sharing the gospel uses digital means – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google Ads – to connect with spiritually open people and, ultimately, move them into offline discipleship relationships with their friends and family. 

The average Thai person spends about two to three hours on Facebook daily, Terndrup said.   

"So if that's where people are living, if that's where people are engaging content and engaging with other people, then how do we bring the gospel to that place," he said. 

In areas like Thailand, where more than 50 million people are on Facebook, only 1.7% of people believe in Jesus. They are online watching videos, and AMI wants to meet them there with the good news of Jesus. 

Part of being in that space is having gospel-centered videos that show people that all the things they are looking for – acceptance, hope, peace, community, love – can be found in Christ.   

That is why, in 2020, Terndrup emailed the TWR MOTION team looking for videos his team could use as part of a digital discipleship strategy in Thailand. 

TWR MOTION is a ministry of TWR that equips church planters with culturally appropriate, gospel-centered videos they can use online for digital discipleship. 

"I'm convinced that making contextualized, Jesus-centered videos that are easily adaptable into other languages is the best use of our time," said Candace Mackie, director of TWR MOTION. "We have a niche ministry and more work and opportunities than we have time for, so I know what we're doing is important for the kingdom. It's an honor to create content that church planters can use to make disciples." 

Terndrup wrote to Mackie after he watched  Share the Story, a series of animated Bible story videos MOTION created for people from a Muslim worldview and requested a similar series for the Buddhist world. 

Share the Story focuses on the themes of sacrifice and redemption since those are a helpful bridge to the gospel for a Muslim audience. The same themes do not connect with a Buddhist audience.   

"The themes of sacrifice and redemption, or the stories of the prophets, are not as helpful to a Thai," Josh wrote, adding that these elements can be confusing because they do not line up with a Thai's worldview, which is based on karma and good and evil. 

Buddhist beliefs 

About 500 million people follow Buddhism in search of enlightenment, according to JoshuaProject.net. 

Buddhists believe in karma – that what a person does in this life will affect who he or she becomes in the next life. They believe in a continuous cycle of rebirth known as reincarnation. 

Buddhists believe in avoiding desire because it leads to suffering. And while they think Buddha was "extraordinary," they do not believe he was a god, according to History.com. 

"To be Thai is to be Buddhist," Terndrup said. 

 This is true of most cultures. 

"To be Turkish is to be Muslim, to be Cambodian is to be Buddhist, to be this is to be that," said Tom Khazoyan, a video producer and trainer working with 10xProductions, a ministry of Pioneers. "And it is so ingrained in most cultures that you cannot imagine ever being anything different. And if you became something different, you wouldn't be you. Well, that's not true of the gospel. 

"The gospel is universal, and the gospel is fulfilling who you are made in the image of God – even expressed in your local cultural expression and language and music and those kinds of things. But people have a hard time imagining that. They imagine this thing that came from the outside is only for outsiders." 

TWR MOTION's goal in their videos involves helping people imagine being a follower of Jesus in their culture. 

The beauty of the Bible is that it speaks to every worldview. For Buddhists, the stories of Jesus casting out evil spirits, setting people free, and bringing about physical healing are powerful, Terndrup said. 

Developing art 

Since last year, MOTION has worked with AMI and Wycliffe to choose 20 stories that connect with the Buddhist worldview, creating video scripts that are currently illustrated and animated. 

Creating culturally appropriate animations that share the gospel's truth is no small feat. 

"We try to take elements of their world – shapes, colors, line – and use that to try to tell the story of Christ in a way that is easier for them to understand," said Tod Polson, a consultant for the Buddhist series, which will be called Journey to Hope. 

As they create the videos, the MOTION team is walking a tightrope of making the art, animation, music and sound effects feel Southeast Asian but not Buddhist.