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In 1987, God graciously opened the door for me to a Creative Access Nation (CAN). It was my maiden mission trip to a country where Christian workers needed to be creative in order to access the unreached peoples because proselytisation of one’s faith was prohibited. I was excited to meet Christians who had suffered severe persecution. When I got there, I was amazed at what God was doing and I felt the first stirring of a desire to be part of God’s work in this CAN. I started praying for an opportunity to serve as a missionary there.
I was all ready to quit my pastoral duty and be a full-time missionary. To my dismay, God refused to open the door. My friends who shared the same burden were, however, able to take up secular jobs and used their free time to spread the Gospel and make disciples. Meanwhile, I could only make one or two trips per year to this CAN. To say I was envious of what my friends could do for God was an understatement. I continued to pray fervently for God’s opening so that I could, like my friends, serve on a regular basis. Years passed but the door remained shut.
In frustration, I uttered an unreasonable prayer – that I would, on my one or two trips a year, yield similar if not more impact than my friends who were stationed all year round in this CAN. Naturally, I did not expect God to ever answer it. After all, I did sound like a sour grape. But strangely and unbelievably, He did. Just not the way I expected. I came to find that my friends who were tentmakers landed with jobs that were so demanding that they had little time for the ministry. In fact, one had absolutely no time. His wife was the one reaching out to the community. I realised then that their initial vision of the marketplace as opportunities for evangelism somehow got buried in the midst of their work commitments. I resolved to stop moaning about how my two trips a year presented limited opportunities for sharing the Gospel. Instead, I turned my attention to seeing how I could maximise opportunities that arose.
But God led me on a path I never would have envisaged for myself. The idea to train Bible College students in the CAN popped into my head. I gathered a small band of teachers to secretly conduct training for these students. My team-mates taught them a creative teaching approach for Sunday School and an effective layman’s interpretation of the Bible. Another sister taught them “How to Follow-up a New Believer”. I taught them Inductive Bible Study using a New Testament Bible character. They enthusiastically copied our notes late into the wee hours of the night. We spent only five days with this group and were encouraged to hear them say at the end that what they had learnt in five days surpassed what they had gleaned in their two years of training in Bible College.
Four of my team members subsequently decided to serve full-time in this CAN, while one pastor was so driven that he decided to make the annual trip alone to conduct the training by himself for about ten days.
One advantage I had over my friends who were stationed in the CAN was that we could sneak in a full load of resources because of the regularity of our trips. Miraculously, we always got through the customs. I felt blessed to witness the participants’ exuberant joy when they got hold of the Study Bibles and the much-needed commentaries.
Hooray, God answered my first prayer, albeit in an unexpected way.
While training the leaders and Bible College Students, I realised they all lacked resources. Over 90% did not have a high level of education, were poor and therefore unable to afford any theological books. Photocopying machines in the CAN were also considered as luxury items in the 1980s. Many participants sacrificed their sleep just to copy our notes. I said in my heart, “I don’t have the money to buy them a mini library.” So, I prayed that God would enable me to develop an effective Bible Study method that would require no resources. It seemed an unrealistic prayer because how could anyone possibly study the Bible seriously without consulting resource materials? Like my first prayer, I didn’t expect God to answer. Surprisingly, He did, some years later. But in the interim, I had forgotten the prayer.
Ten years after I began my mission teaching in the CAN, God opened the door for me to pursue my Master’s in Divinity in USA, Tennessee, Chattanooga. It was perfect timing as my participants were increasing in their knowledge of the Bible. Chattanooga is where the Precept Ministry has its headquarters. It was there that I learnt the world’s best Bible colouring approach. I learnt how to use different colours and letters of the English alphabet for Bible characters, and different symbols for keywords. It makes gleaning the background information of the characters so effective and easy. Repeated reading is no longer a chore, but interesting. At the Seminary, I learnt from Professor Dr James D. Price how to do a detailed outline for the books of the Bible and then transpose it into an expository outline. When I combined the Precept colouring approach and Dr Price’s detailed outlining, I discovered it worked wonders. The two combined made it easier to identify the main theme.
I tested this new approach with the city preachers and the university graduates. They were able to identify the main theme with confidence. Not so, however, with the village preachers who loved to spiritualise the text. They became angry when I prodded them to think and meditate harder. Their stormy reaction, however, did not deter me. I became even more determined to help them. They formed my target audience, the ones I wanted to help the most. While I was pondering on how to develop an easy and yet dynamic approach that would help them identify the main theme of the text, God prompted me to use common sense as a tool. He showed me six common-sense ways of determining the main theme. The ideas just popped up, shedding light in the dark corners of my mind. These six ways eventually doubled as God helped me map out another six ways over the years.
One idea evolved while I was helping out as a parent volunteer in my daughter’s school. I was introduced to Mind Mapping. I was intrigued and experimented with it to see if it could be used to outline the Bible. To my surprise, I found it to be extremely effective when I tested it in a Chinese Reformed Bible College in the mountainous city of Pyin Oo Lwin in Northern Myanmar. From it sprang an in-depth Inductive Bible Study approach that uses the left and the right brain without the need for any resources other than a set of colour pencils. It took me 15 years of trial and error to produce the finished product which formed the basis of my Doctor of Ministry dissertation in the Singapore Bible College. My dissertation supervisor said, “You are filling a gap.” According to my professors at the college, this is an innovative and in-depth approach to studying the Bible. Nobody expects a Bible Study method that would be exciting, effective, in-depth and accurate, yet simple.
It was then that I recalled my prayer in 1988 asking God for an effective Bible Study approach without resources. God had helped me to formulate an effective Bible Study method to grow and groom His people. He had answered my prayer. I realised that God in His own time had been leading me each step of the way to this.
I call the method, Creative Bible Exposition (CBE), Using the Left and the Right Brain. It has four steps: (1) Gleaning the background using colours; (2) Identifying the main theme using common sense; (3) Designing a detailed, textual and thematic outline using mind maps; and (4) Transforming the thematic outline into an expository outline.
Participants were thrilled. Preachers who had difficulty identifying the main theme of a text were overjoyed. Bible College students were so excited that they were prepared to forego sleep just so they could mind map the Book of Philippians. After using different colours for different biblical characters, followed by different symbols for repeated keywords, they realised that while they were studying the text, the text was also staring at them. Village and tribal preachers could now identify the main theme with ease. Leading Bible Study became more interesting and engaging. Preachers could now easily spot the text while preaching.
One lady preacher in Myanmar said, “We used to have the Bible only, now we have the Bible and this method.” She had attended numerous seminars before and could confidently vouch for it. Pastors in South Asia informed me that their congregations noticed an improvement in their preaching. A Chinese preacher who had several commentaries said that he often got lost in the abundant information. Now with the main theme and the thematic outline, everything fell into place for him. A senior pastor from Imphal, Manipur who has a Master’s in Theology testified that he took the background, the main theme and the outline he had gleaned using the CBE training and counter-checked it against the commentaries. He found that his answers were all accurate. A few Bible colleges and one seminary included the CBE approach into their curriculum.
I was also invited to teach in three schools on how to use the right and the left brain. Students were thrilled to discover that they could memorise 30 words in two minutes and more easily recall numbers.
God not only answered my second prayer, but also led me out of my pastoral ministry in 2014 to be a travelling missionary, training church leaders on how to study the Bible using the left and the right brain. In 2019, my main supporter requested that I join SIM. I am now actively and passionately involved in training leaders in the developing world. When I first prayed for an open door to CAN as a full-time missionary, I did not think that God would have another plan for me.
I have learnt that God in His own time does great things through our prayers even if they appear crazy, unreasonable or unrealistic. He placed me in the right environment, prompted me to pray for a method using the Bible alone, then led me to places where I could hone my skills. The whole process stretched over 20 years. But through the years, He gave me wisdom on how to synthesise Dr James D. Price’s detailed outlining, the Precept Ministry’s colouring method and Tony Buzan’s Mind Mapping to develop a Bible study approach to groom and grow His people. It had taken me 15 years of trial and error to devise a simple method to equip ordinary preachers. I never imagined that I could come up with such an effective right and left brain, in-depth Inductive Bible Study approach. God initiated and worked out the whole process. All glory be to God!
So go ahead and make big dreams and pray your unreasonable prayers. Ask God for the impossible. He loves that.