About this time last year I was floating down the Mekong River in southern Lao to the Thailand border. After hours of counting Buddha statues placed by the river, drinking a couple Beerlao, and surviving a flash thunderstorm, my friends and I docked our longboat in a village called Puk Nha to stay for the night.

 

Puk Nha is a rural village of roughly 50 families tucked away in the jungle about 200 yards off the Mekong River. In Puk Nha time isn’t measured by iPhones or analog clocks, but by sunrises and sunsets. The luxury of electricity is unknown and to have a pizza delivered they’d have to tip about $2000. I spent the evening sharing laughs with the locals, eating ginger chicken, and kicking a makeshift bamboo soccer ball around with some kids.

 

As I was falling asleep that night under my mosquito net, I thought of a book I was reading just weeks before arriving in Puk Nha called The Hole in the Gospel by Richard Sterns. Sterns, in an almost identical encounter, was traveling down the Mekong River in Cambodia to visit a small man with a big smile, Pastor Ourng, who ran a small house church of 83 people. Richard asked the pastor how he became a Christian in a country that is 90% Buddhist. The story is astonishing:

 

Five years ago, World Vision (a Christian humanitarian organization) came into Pastor Ourng’s village to set up a Tuberculosis clinic, improve schooling, and teach better agricultural methods to farmers. With extreme skepticism of the outsiders, Ourng puffed up his chest and walked straight up to the World Vision leader demanding an explanation as to why strangers would help his community. The leader calmly said, “ We are followers of Jesus Christ, and we are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are here to show you that God loves you.” Ourng’s response was pure and innocent, “Who is this Jesus Christ?” The man went and grabbed a Bible translated to the native tongue and gave it to Ourng who read the book of Genesis that night. Astonished and a bit confused about the Bible, Ourng was filled to the brim with questions and excitement. The World Vision leader took him to a nearby city to meet with a Christian pastor who answered Ourng’s questions and lead him to accept Jesus. Five years later, Ourng uses the same Bible that was given to him by the World Vision leader to lead his home church off the Mekong River.

 

Richard, with goose bumps from inspiration said, “That is a wonderful story. Now, what about the eighty-three people who worship at your church; how did they come to follow Jesus?” With a beaming smile Ourng said, “ I was so excited to learn about Jesus that I had to share this good news with everyone I knew. These eighty-three, they are my little flock.”

 

Friends, we have a lot to learn from this dude.  The church is not a multimillion-dollar facility with projector screens and unlimited coffee. The church is a body of people, and this body of people can meet in multimillion-dollar facilities, cathedrals, schools, or even in the home of a tiny Cambodian man with a beaming smile. We don’t have to be experts in theology or have all the answers to tell people about Jesus. All it takes is a willing heart, a little courage, and enough humility to admit that we don’t have all the answers. Ourng sure didn’t. He was just a happy man with a story to tell. Turns out, it was a story people in that village needs to hear.