Esther Interview: Encouraging Young Pastors in East Asia

Esther is a house church leader in East Asia. She recently visited the ANM offices, where our communications staff interviewed her. 

Along with her husband, Esther has been training and encouraging young pastors in her home through weekly meetings for the past two years. They also conduct a larger monthly meeting, held in different places for security reasons. Their goal is to raise spiritually healthy leaders who can build up their churches as well as their own families. 

Esther shared her husband’s belief that, “If the leader is not [spiritually] healthy, their church will have more problems.” Many of these young pastors are married with children and have few resources to help them raise and educate their children in the Christian faith. 

Assessing the Needs of Young Pastors

I asked Esther how they determine what the individual pastors need to become spiritually healthy. She told me that they examine the everyday pressures that these pastors face, such as raising children and finding the resources to fulfill their callings. But first, they pray and read the Bible together, and then share about their lives. 

Esther says they listen carefully and then openly discuss the pastor’s current challenges, their children, and the health of their marriages. I was encouraged by Esther’s description of such honest and open sharing. My past experience in her region of the world taught me that such transparency was difficult in her culture.

Encouragement Through Concern for the Whole Person

Often, young pastors will express a specific need for training, such as how to disciple their people. Esther told me that sometimes they can find a teacher or books that will help. At other times, she and her husband will discuss the pastor’s children, sharing their thoughts on how to raise them well, always accompanied by a generous amount of prayer. 

Their concern is for the whole person and all of their relationships. These meetings with young pastors take place within the context of cross-pollinating, networked house churches.

Reaching Out to Minority Unreached People Groups

Esther and her husband also have a vision for helping young house church pastors engage with minority unreached people groups in their region of East Asia. So, how do they do that? 

Esther’s answer was profoundly simple; they take the pastors to the mountains, to the areas where the minority groups live. They also provide intercultural training to acquaint young pastors with the cultures of different people groups. This helps pastors avoid common cultural mistakes. Esther told us: 

 

The minority areas are different than the big city. So before we go, we’re training them. How to know what you need to take. How to be careful with what you do and say, and what you cannot say. We train them to understand what a missionary is and how to do it. 

So, we train them and then take them in. We really want to do ministry there, so we do these missionary trips. [This helps the pastors to see] what real life is like in different minority groups. Then, after we come back, we will continue to communicate and pray together.

 

Later, the pastors exposed to life in a minority group may want to support a co-worker to be sent to the group as a missionary. These mission trips help to mobilize house church pastors to expand their vision for ministry beyond their own churches and ethnicities. 

Encountering Resistance to Missionary Work Among Minority Groups

I asked Esther if she encountered much resistance to the missionary work among minority groups. “Yes,” she said, “we have some churches that say, ‘We need to take care of our church. We have a lot of people [here] who still need to hear the Gospel.’ But we do not give up.” 

Esther said that the resistance sometimes makes her sad, but she and her husband continue to engage with young pastors and encourage them to reach out to minority, unreached people groups. 

There is Good Reason to Be Encouraged 

Nevertheless, Esther is encouraged because she senses the Holy Spirit at work in the hearts of the pastors they take to minority villages. She and her husband continue to pray for the pastors after each visit. They do debrief the pastors, but first, they pray together, and often, something happens as God touches the pastors’ hearts and minds. 

Reaching the great diversity of unreached people groups is close to Esther’s heart, but this great mission is also close to God’s heart, as evidenced by passages throughout the Bible. Here are just a few:

 

[The LORD] says:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant

to raise up the tribes of Jacob

and to bring back the preserved of Israel;

I will make you as a light for the nations,

that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6

 

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, 

and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, 

and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8

 

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, 

from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing 

before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, 

with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, 

“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Revelation 7:9-10

If you’re ready to join with Esther in praying for unreached people groups in East Asia, download our free How To Pray for East Asia guide.