This post was originally published on January 17th, 2017.
For over 40 years Dr. Henry Breidenthal (52 years with OMF) has gone to a public park on Sunday afternoons to hand out gospel tracts. I had the privilege of watching Henry in this ministry at the Lumpini Park in Bangkok thirty years ago when I was a new faculty member of the Bible school he directed. Now I’m Henry’s director and he teaches in our school, so what a blessing it is for me to join him once again on Sundays in his tracting ministry.
Henry reminded me that Jews for Jesus in New York City handed out 1.3 million tracts in one year and had only 2,000 responses. Yet from those 2,000 came 200 professions of faith from a resistant Jewish population. A few years ago Henry’s Thai church handed out 20,000 tracts and got only 5 responses back in the mail. Yet, such statistics do not discourage Henry, because he knows that many of the tracts are indeed read and that 70% of those who come to Christ in Thailand are influenced by Christian literature. This reminded me of the admonition I received from David Pickard (OMF Thailand director at the time) back in the 1980s, that percentage wise one needs to share with a large number of Thai to get even one convert. He thus encouraged us to cast our nets broadly and sow the gospel seed as wide as possible. An apple tree can have up to 500 apples, each with an average of 10 seeds. Why so many if only a few trees germinate? God knew that most seeds never grow. So to see the gospel seed germinate among the Thai, we will need to be persistent sowers. My son-in-law just got a new job, but he had to send out 60 resumes to various companies first. My eldest son used to sell vacuum cleaners door to door. He probably had to knock on 50 doors before he would get a sale. Josh McDowell dated around 300 women before he met his wife Dottie (fortunately my number was much lower). The bottom line is that successful missionaries are those who persevere in sowing; they know what it takes to see a single gospel seed germinate and grow.
