Maybe, in my next life, I’ll become a Christian.”
The Thai man was serious. A Buddhist, he believed in reincarnation but also claimed to believe what Southern Baptist representative Jack Kinnison told him about Jesus.
“The gospel is such a different concept to Thais,” Kinnison said.
For more than 30 years, he and his wife, Lynn, labored in the Southeast Asian country of Thailand to share Jesus with a people steeped in Buddhism.
The Kinnisons were appointed as representatives with the International Mission Board (IMB) in 1972, after which they began working in Laos, a country bordering Thailand. But the Communist takeover of Laos in 1975 caused problems for their ministry; the Communists despised Americans, making it dangerous for Laotian Christians associated with them.
So the couple moved to Thailand later that year. After two years of language study, they began work as church planters in rural areas, sharing the gospel in places Thai Christians had friends and relatives.
“The Thai people are very relationship-oriented,” Jack Kinnison said. “If you go into an area or a home and you don’t know anybody there, they’re much less likely to take seriously what you’re saying.”
The Kinnisons shared the gospel through a variety of methods, including small group discussions, handing out Christian literature and sharing chronological Bible stories.
He said Thais don’t respond quickly to the gospel and there is significant resistance from the deep roots Buddhism has grown in the country. More than 90 percent of Thais are Buddhist, and the religion has become a source of cultural identity.
“In Thailand, to be Thai is to be Buddhist,” Jack Kinnison said.
In addition, Thais face family pressure to remain Buddhist. Thais greatly respect their parents and grandparents, who are often fiercely opposed to their children and grandchildren embracing Christianity and, as they see it, abandoning their culture.
“They do anything to avoid offending their parents or grandparents,” Jack Kinnison said. “If they go home and say, ‘I’ve found the one true God and I’m becoming a Christian,’ that would be a great affront to people they dearly love.”
He said such concerns have caused Thais on the brink of accepting Christ to reconsider and many who do make that decision suffer from being cut off from their families.
“Their families say, ‘Why have you decided to become a traitor to your family and nation, to turn your back on these traditions we’ve had for 700 years?’” he said.
It is a difficult reality for the Kinnisons that many Thais they spoke with will never accept Christ, but they accepted that all they could do was present the gospel as clearly as possible. The rest was up to the Holy Spirit, they said.
But the couple did see the gospel make great inroads into areas of Thailand. He said one particularly effective area of ministry was Bangkla Baptist Hospital (now Bangkla Baptist Clinic) in rural Thailand.
He said when he and his wife first arrived in the country, public hospitals were widely loathed for their poor quality of care; Thais called them “butcher houses.” But Bangkla Baptist developed a reputation for caring about its patients and providing good medical care, which helped its efforts to share Jesus with the community where the Kinnisons served.
“There were a good number of churches in eastern Thailand that got started through the ministry of the hospital,” Jack Kinnison said.
Lynn Kinnison, who has a heart for ministering to women, directed a ministry called Thai Country Trim from 1996 to 2008. It started as a way for Thai pastors’ wives to gain an income by making Christmas ornaments; many churches in rural Thailand cannot afford to support their pastors financially, so the pastors’ wives help make ends meet.
“Often the pastors spent a good deal of time visiting and helping church members, so they didn’t have as much time to spend making a living,” Lynn Kinnison said.
Over time, Thai Country Trim has branched into an outreach that helps poor Thai women — Christian and non-Christian — support their families by handcrafting items for the nonprofit organization. Not only do they make ornaments that are sold as far away as England but they also hear about the saving grace of Jesus.
“Every week, they have a Bible study and evangelism program, and we pray with them and for them,” Lynn Kinnison said.
During their more than three decades in Thailand, the Kinnisons worked in different areas of the country, including the capital city of Bangkok.
They returned to the United States in 2008, formally retiring from the IMB in December 2009. They now live in the Birmingham metro area and are members of First Baptist Church, Springville. The couple carry with them a love for the Thai people, whom they labored to show the way from darkness to light.
Jack Kinnison knows that no matter where life takes him and his wife, their service to Jesus will go on.
“You never retire from being God’s child.”
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