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In
the 13th Century the Mongol tribes, united under Genghis Khan, thundered across
the steppes of Central Asia and terrorized the known world. In a short time,
these fierce horsemen had carved out an empire that dwarfed those of Cyrus and
Caesar combined.
The Mongol empire was not to endure for long. The Mongols embraced Tibetan Buddhism and became a backward hinterland ruled by a succession of Chinese dynasties. In 1921, a Communist revolution turned Mongolia into the first "independent" Soviet satellite. All missionaries were expelled before any church had been planted, and the darkness of Communism settled over this "closed" country Mongolia was one of the very few countries on earth with no church, and no known national believers.
Doors Begin to Open
Finally,
in 1990, Communism released its weakening hold. The door closed for so long
began to open. Creative strategies sparked the beginnings. A team of Christian
Native Americans entered Mongolia as tourists in 1990. Their visit generated a
great deal of interest among Mongols and even in the national press. By the end
of their second visit in 1991, they had publicly baptized 36 new Mongol
believers. The spiritual landscape of Mongolia would never be the same.
A
young Swedish couple, Magnus and Maria, came to Mongolia intending to help
plant churches. They settled in the capital, Ulan Baatar, where they befriended
some of the growing number of local believers.
Eventually
Magnus and Maria moved to Erdenet, the third largest city of Mongolia. With
them went a nineteen year old Mongolian believer named Bayaraa. The first to
respond to their evangelism efforts were a handful of teen-age girls. It was
not a promising beginning, but after teaching on faith and repentance, several
of the girls invited their friends to follow Christ with them. In 1993,
Mongolians were baptized in Erdenet for the first time in the city's history.
Fourteen were baptized - all of them teenage girls!
The first fourteen converts were quickly organized
into three "cell groups." They gathered for prayer, fellowship and
teaching in an atmosphere of support and accountability. Together they learned
to obey the two greatest commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your
mind "and "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Luke 10:27) Active,
faithful believers were equipped to lead the cells as they multiplied. A
monthly "celebration service" formed for all the cells to unite. A
year passed: the number of believers grew to 120.. still, mostly teenage girls!
At this point the embryonic "church" was not multigenerational or
family based. It was essentially a rapidly growing youth group. After a year of
language study in Ulan Baatar, the capital city, my wife Louise, our three daughters
and I arrived to join Magnus, Maria, and Bayaraa. We were later joined by
others from Russia, 
America and Sweden.
Breakthrough into the Mainstream
We all realized that teenage girls were not an appropriate foundation for starting a church movement. At that time however, youth were the only ones responding anywhere in Mongolia. So we worked with the fruit the Lord had provided and prayed for a breakthrough to begin reaching whole families. We established "provisional elders" (starting with two younger men and Bayaraa) in order to begin the process of allowing a Mongolian style of church leadership to develop and to allow us to work more in the background.
Breakthrough of relevance
There was a great divide between the youthful,
urban circle of friends and the family-oriented heart of traditional Mongolian
society Even our early converts had the impressions that the gospel wasn't
relevant for "real Mongols." To the Mongol understanding, "real
Mongols" are the traditional shepherds and gher (traditional round
felt tents) dwellers. A visiting short term team began to pray for the sick in
some of the traditional gher suburbs on the outskirts of town. God
answered prayer dramatically. One lame person, one deaf person, one mute
person, and one blind person were all healed. These healings provided a seal of
authenticity recognized by the older Mongols. The news spread like wildfire and
the fellowship was flooded with growth from every age group and segment of the
city. The urbanized youth were especially surprised that "real
Mongols" were coming to faith. Soon two older men who were heads of
households joined the ranks of our provisional elders.
Breakthrough of understanding
The second factor for the sudden acceptability
of the good news by the older traditional Mongols was the decision by our team
and the "elders-in-training" to begin using the Mongolian term Burhan
to refer to the God of the Bible. Many centuries before, when the Buddhists
arrived in Mongolia, they adopted the term "Burhan," the
generic Mongolian term for "god," for their purposes. In the early
90's, nearly all the believers in Mongolia used another term for God, Yertontsiin
Ezen, which was a brand new term composed by a translator in an attempt to
avoid any potential confusion or syncretism with the erroneous beliefs of
Buddhism. But the new term, which can be translated "Master of the
Universe," sounded unfamiliar and unreal to the Mongol's ears. It had no
intrinsic meaning and was essentially a foreign word made up of Mongolian elements.
Although the Erdenet elders-in-training were used to using the term Yertontsiin
Ezen, they decided the traditional term Burhan would be more
appropriate and acceptable and was capable of being filled with biblical
meaning.
Developing Indigenous Leadership
During
this period of explosive growth our team deliberately stayed in "behind
the scenes" roles, giving on-the-job training for the emerging leaders.
Care was taken to do everything in imitable fashion-baptisms were in bathtubs,
worship songs were not imported, but written by church members, etc.
The
team recalled what we had learned from veteran missionary George Patterson
before coming to Mongolia. He got to the heart of discipleship saying,
"People are saved to obey the Lord Jesus Christ in love." So in the new
church, Jesus' basic commands were taught in practical ways. The cells provided
the atmosphere of loving support and accountability. Believers helped one
another to "be doers of the word, not hearers only."
Yet
there were serious problems from our point of view where the cultural norms of
Mongolian society conflicted with some of the moral teaching of the scriptures.
The elders-in-training were encouraged to search the scriptures to find
solutions for sin problems in the emerging church. Cultural blind spots in the
areas of sexual purity and courtship were dealt with by defining principles,
then teaching and enforcing them. The solutions that these Mongol leaders
crafted were both biblical and culturally correct - much better than any we
missionaries could have crafted.
The emerging Mongolian church looked far different
from any of the team's home churches in Sweden, Russia or America. Dramas and
testimonies quickly became prominent features of the large celebration meetings
(which went from once to twice a month; and eventually weekly). The "drama
team" wrote and produced their own skits, plays, and dramatic dances from
Bible stories and everyday Mongolian life. This became a powerful teaching and
evangelistic tool. Time was always set aside for testimonies from "real
Mongols" - often new believers in their 60s just in off the steppes. These
long and, to Western ears, rambling stories of salvation gripped the fellowship
in a state of rapt wonder and awe. God was on the move among their people dressed
in the most traditional of Mongolian clothing. Worship rose from their hearts
as they sang new songs that had been written by their own people in their own
language and unique musical style. This was no foreign fad or import!
About
a year and a half into the church's "life," the Mongol
"provisional elders" decided to politely decline further funds from
supporting churches abroad. The funds had been used to provide some of the
Mongol church worker's salaries for about a year. Their own people were now
giving and that would suffice. When the foreign church insisted on sending the
funds, they were passed along to the daughter churches for their church
workers, with the under-standing that this too was only temporary.
The
expatriate team concentrated our efforts upon discipling, equipping and
releasing Mongols to take the lead in building up the church and reaching the
lost. A school of discipleship was formed and by its third class was entirely
Mongol led.
With
the emphasis upon "learning by doing," new leaders were trained
locally in the ministry rather than being sent away. The leadership of the
cells had been placed into their hands almost immediately, and soon the local
believers also carried the majority of the responsibility for the weekly
services.