We started the day renting bikes for $1.50. I could use a few more days like this. FREEDOM.
But more than bikes and adventures, today we looked forward to another ministry meeting!
Brittany, Jaimie Rae and myself biking around Chiang Mai
The Background
Lauren, our team leader, hails from North Carolina. Before her pastosr and his wife (Mark and Tiffany) started up Christ Alive Church back home, they were a part of a traveling ministry called Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames. During that time Mark became good friends with Rob Moore who would later move to Thailand with his family to bing the hope of the Gospel through nonformal education. And so on this sunny Monday afternoon we found ourselves frolicking via rental bike to meet Rob.
The Centre
Rob, in three words, is open, ready and eager. When he and his family moved to Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand 5 years ago, their first endeavor was a massive renovation of The Centre to bring it to the condition we enjoyed it in today. The Centre is located in the heart of a massive shopping area in Chiang Mai. Its 9 classrooms, kitchen and coffee bar are perfectly poised to reach the over 30,000 Thai university students who flood the area every evening.
Several renovated classrooms at The Centre
Students are invited to take classes of their choosing, popular ones including English, Spanish, math, cooking, sewing and guitar. Students pay a small fee and are placed in a class (upwards of four people per class) for 5 hrs/week. Classes run monthly and are taught by either Centre-trained volunteers or the 12 full-time staff members.
Teacher training at The Centre
Every bit of the ministry focuses itself on being that “third place” for the 80-100 Thai students who drift in every day. The third place is where you go between school and home. It’s where your community is built. Becoming the third place enables The Centre to build relationships with students, reaching their deeply entrenched Buddhist perspectives and inundating their once hopeless and broken patterns of life with the grace and hope of Jesus.
Thai Spiritual Landscape
The historical lack of foreign occupation has created a unique disconnect in Thailand to concepts we Western Christians rely on heavily as a baseline. Here, to be Thai is to be Buddhist. Being Buddhist signifies a loyalty to the King and the Kingdom. And in Buddhism sin, grace, salvation and righteousness are all foreign concepts. In spite of now 200 years of ministry in Thailand by Evangelical Christians, still less than 1% of Thai people know Christ, and 90% of that 1% are NOT converts from Buddhism. Karma rules the road here. Literally and figuratively. Until recently, no one stopped to help with roadside assistance, believing car trouble to be a sign of one’s bad karma, and fearing that helping out would alter their karma and therefore bring bad karma upon oneself. Our God, having died in such an excruciating way, is known as the “bad karma god”.
When it comes to money, karma rules the students in a more wounding way. Many students in Thailand, both male and female, participate in part-time prostitution to pay for their education and living expenses. They generate good karma in compensation by sending some of the money home to their families throughout Thailand. But although karma may be even, the wounds from the bars and the brothels remain. Many students are searching for more than just breaking even. They’re searching for full and abundant Life.
Testimonies of students whose lives have been changed at The Centre
The Centre Cafe: The Third Place
Through relationships in the third place The Centre is building from the ground up. The labor is slow but the need is vast. Rob’s vision for The Centre is vast and exciting, expanding to a network of 10 Centres throughout Southeast Asia by 2020. You can be a part of The Centre network by spreading the word and prayerfully considering their two main needs: more committed staff members and the start-up capital from financial partners. Contact Rob Moore: [email protected]
Myself, Rob and Lauren at The Centre
