Planting tent churches in Mongolia
Dea Davidson
International Mission Board
A self-described Mongol country boy, “Ganaa’s” life changed when he was 18 -- the year his father died. Fears about his future plagued him. Religious studies dissatisfied him. His mother struggled, asking, “Hey, God, are You there? Why is my life this difficult?”
Ganaa found the answer to his family’s pleas one night in 1992 when believers showed the JESUS film in his community. Buying a New Testament the next day, he trusted in the Lord after reading the Book cover to cover. He felt God was telling him, “I can stand in place of your daddy.”
In the mid ’90s, Ganaa began attending a church started by Southern Baptists. Church involvement helped him understand the Mongolian saying of togetherness, “one person is not family, one wood does not make a good fire.”
A year later, Ganaa surprised his mother by leaving his lucrative career as a train mechanic to attend Bible school and become a pastor. After ministering for 10 years, he suddenly knew it wasn’t enough.
God’s call deeper, wider
“I’m not just pastoring one church,” he recounts. “God’s calling me to the whole nation. My personal goal is to plant churches.”
While absorbing material about starting churches, Ganaa discovered a book by David Garrison called Getting Started. Staring at the cover of a man nailing a steeple to a house, the image registered with the Mongolian. Instead of houses, he saw gers (tents).
But an initial attempt to teach his congregation about starting churches in homes was met with resistance. The membership liked things the way they were and didn’t want to get involved with starting churches from scratch.
So Ganaa decided he needed to start fresh, with a group of believers who would know only the fellowship of a home church.
Full circle
Ganaa organizes Sunday worship for a group of doctors, nurses and medical personnel —some still in white lab coats, on a break from their rounds at the hospital.
The church group began two years earlier as an English Bible study in the apartment of Dr. Buck Rusher and his wife, Pam, who served as Southern Baptist workers there at the time.
Now the church meets at one of the city’s hospitals. Ganaa and his wife, “Naraa,” shepherd the group in their native Mongolian language. For their Easter 2008 service at a cancer hospital, the newly christened Shine Alxam (New Steppes) church had a high attendance of almost 50.
On Sunday afternoons, Ganaa trains two other families in how to start churches. One family will soon move to a Kazak area. The other will serve among the northern Reindeer People, named after their livelihood of herding reindeer.
Multiplying churches family to family
Ganaa says his strategy is to build relationships with non-Christians, drawing on the communal nature of the Mongolian people. Combating their deep-rooted beliefs in Buddhism and shamanism — including the concept of more than one god — he is striving to multiply Mongolian churches by going family to family.
Starting church groups in Mongolia’s cities and countryside is vastly different from when Ganaa accepted Christ. In the 1990s, believers could pass out tracts and get a reaction. Now, Ganaa says, it’s not so easy.
Against these obstacles, he presses on, serving alongside Southern Baptists. As he builds new bridges to his own people, he is driven by an eternal question: How can we reach Mongolia?
Names in quotation marks have been changed.
Possible photos
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GIVING THANKS -- Pam and Buck Rusher share dinner with “Naraa” and “Ganaa” and their family to talk about the future of their small church start. IMB PHOTO by Dea Davidson
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REFUGE -- Each Sunday, a group of doctors, nurses and medical personnel gather for worship at a hospital in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
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LOCAL LEADER -- New Steppes, a church started in Buck and Pam Rusher’s apartment, now gathers in a hospital meeting room. “Ganaa” leads worship in their native Mongolian language. IMB PHOTO by Dea Davidson