Being a full-time pastor seems to fill most days with the variety of duties associated with the office, which has meant that I have little time or energy for Thai church historical work at this point. And that, in turn, means that my translation of A History of Pastoral Care in the Church of Christ in Thailand is proceeding at an almost tortuously slow pace. Yet, the pace does continue, and this morning I reached page 95 (out of 130 total pages). As histories go, it is rather sparse, no citations, no bibliography, and the translation is not the best English I've ever written, but I am convinced that it is an important "contribution" to the historiographical literature on Thai church history. First, its focus is the churches rather than the missionaries, although they obviously figure prominently in the story it tells. Second, it explores territory that was new for me when it was written nearly 20 years ago, namely the history of the churches outside of the North and of other denominations. It thus has the virtue of including, however briefly, something of the history of the Karen Baptist churches in northern Thailand.I only mention this here to remind the extremely modest readership of this blog that the translation of the History of Pastoral Care is proceeding and, since it is nearly three-fourths complete does already include a goodly portion of the history of Protestant pastoral care up to the year 1960. [Update: as of June 18th, I have reached page 108 of the 130 pages - still slow, but a little steadier than previously!]
