u/HolyTian

I am a Christian in Asia, a country in SEA.

I was a Buddhist before but converted to Christianity for nearly 9 years now. I was first a Pentecostal for 2 years then got lost in the faith due to the way members treat some other people they consider sinful. I seek truth from Buddhism (Theravada and Mahayana), Hinduism, Taoism or even Islam but did not find anything to comfort me except Jesus. I love this man so much and truly believe he is the Son of God. I devote myself to Christianity again after those seeking time and became a Lutheran.

I am in this church for 3 years. First year it was full of joy, I saw a loving congregation, people love each other and accepting everyone's flaw but not affirm. I saw it as a true church which will lead me to God once again after all those years. I felt so happy and want to come to church every week. I want to start my bible reading which I finished a year later. I look forward to becoming a Lutheran pastor, but things slightly changed during the second year of mine.

I need to state first that my church does not have a pastor for all these years. Never have a permanent one, the pastor will only come for once a month and a missionary pastor also. So only 2 of 4 weeks that we will have a pastor and that would be different people. The members started to treat me as a preacher as I understand the bible more than anyone and I tried my best to learn by myself through Dr. Jordan B Cooper. I learned to use exegesis way of preaching and recently started to teach the Bible class. My church does not have many adults, only 5 people who are very weak at their faith. Two of them are Christian for decades yet never finished their bible, they are couple who live together in the church but do not marry each other. Another two also never finish, one of them do not even want to read the bible. I am the only person who encourages them and tried to make them understand what is meant by the scripture. Other than adults are 5-10 children who elder brought them to 'evangelize' though she cannot teach them any bible class. She put everything on my back; preaching, church keeping, bible study and many more things according to her will.

Although the church situation is not quite good, the church body cannot do anything much. The bishop might come to our church and praise our work, but it's just that. He won't take anything further action, and I cannot ask for anyone's assistant. The church body is heavily lacking the pastor. We have 5 districts throughout the country, yet they cannot make anyone a pastor. The Luther Seminary was closed last year, and I am the last generation. The church body was full of corrupted news from the past two years, financial corruption and previous bishop's adultery. Although the missionary from Norway and Finland still give the support, they won't take any further action as they want the local people to deal with their problems.

After taking everything on my back too much, I cannot handle my mental condition anymore. I got angry easily and it affects the work at the church on Sat and Sun as the children in my church are from slums and their behaviors are beyond imagination sometimes. I cannot blame them but as the elder wants to bring them all to church, she does not have the capability to take care of them, yet she asked everyone to take responsibility, and she will drive her car to somewhere else every time with her boyfriend when the children got out of hand. The adults are very irresponsible here even though I talked with them through.

We have less and less people and the church is super chaotic as we cannot control the kids anymore. They took over the church, and it is not a safe place for everyone anymore. They are from slums which they took their culture; cursing, fighting, stealing and many more. The elder brought them without thinking about the consequences. Now she cried but never saw that she is the only person who took them in due to her savior complex. I won't say anything about how she brought her bf into the church, but they sleep in the same room without marrying. They could do that outside, rent an apartment or something, but she chose to do that in the church. Moreover, it is the way that she hurts her boyfriend both physical and mental. There is violence when there is nobody in the church though sometimes, she confessed to me, but she will do it again when time passed.

This is very chaotic and I really want to go back to temple sometimes. I will be a M.Div. student next year, still on my path to be a pastor. Yet I am so hurtful with the thing that happen to the church according to some people's decision and irresponsibility.

I just want to put it down somewhere and want to be heard for my uneasiness. Thank you for reading and listening. At this time, I do not have Christian friend to share my feeling. This is the only space for me. I want to leave the church for years, but I still care for the teens in the church so that's why. Gladly, next year all of them will graduate and will leave the church. One of them cannot stand the elder anymore. I know it might be a sin that I talk about her like this, but I do not know what to do anymore.

I was reading some canon books and found it quite dull. I bought the Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void and did not like it much. (It's not bad, but the pace is slow and I need something good to read as I just ditched the High Republic.)

I want to have A New Hope as a core and take a good dive from their until the Return of the Jedi and then go back to Republic Era. I think these two points are the most confusing as they have a lot of novel and comics in-between. Quite hard for a new reader like me.

For the Old Republic, I planned to read it by the publishing order and will go back again to the Dawn of the Jedi as the last. If there is any reading order, that would be super useful. The universe is so big, and I want to have some believes in Star Wars again.

I would like to say that I am very influenced by the idea of Redeemed Zoomer on mainline Christianity that the religion should be institutional and link itself to the nation. He has a very clear idea on the jurisdiction and of being a national church. Like if you are in England, you should join the mainline which is the Church of England and if you are Scots, you should join the Church of Scotland. That makes sense to contribute to the church of your country, but is that really biblical to follow?

I am not an European nor America. I am an Asian which the idea of Mainline is not as appliable as the western countries. However, my country does have a church body which built very competent schools and hospitals. So it would be great to be a part of that body but I somehow also has an interest in the evangelical churches. I just need a place which I can see believers which dedicate themselves to the work of God. I need God, like, very much. Right now I am in a Lutheran church which is spiritually dying and I tried my best to revive it but does not work. I attend Lutheran church because I think of it as a traditional church but it turns out very lukewarm and behave things that I consider harmful for members' faith which is the reason I decided leaving.

I tried to research about the early churches and I do not see the requirement of being an institution, so that could open the choice of joining some evangelical church which is not a member of institution, like free church or something like that. I know that Christianity was institutionalized by the Roman Empire. I would love to see some of the ideas from fellow Christians. Thank you in advance.

Right now I have a very small list of musicians that I can listen to. Mainly it’s Sondae and Madison Ryann Ward. I really like Madison’s style and I wish to listen more of this kind of music. Sondae is good but I’m more into slow vibe one. It would be great if I could find more like 90s Black R&B. I tried Bebe&Cece but only one of their album is my preference.

Please recommend me some, thank you in advance.

Sorry to bring this up, nobody wants to leave a church they're in for many years.

I am a member of a Lutheran congregation in Thailand. I served in this church for 3 years. Its state was not good since the day I came in. After I attended the service for only 3 weeks, many of the members left for the charismatic megachurch that was very popular in my city. Things did not seem wrong at first, people are nice and I felt like this is my place after I left a Pentecostal church due to the discrimination toward LGBT people. (I am not liberal nor progressive, but I think all of us are sinners and need a chance to seek God's guidance.) At this place I felt like home, even though not so many people attended it except the young adults which was quite promising for the future of it.

However, things started to change in 2024. People started to leave the church again due to their jobs, they attended less and less. We did not have our own pastor, and the council had to send the bishop to be our pastor when it came to the eucharist. But that Bishop got caught as he had an affair with the seminary teacher. After we changed the bishop, we hoped that things might get better, but the council still could not send any permanent pastor for us. So, I, a layman who did not gradutate from any seminary, needed to start preaching to the members by myself. And I have to do that until today.

In 2024, things changed constantly as many people come and some went away. The person who came sometimes stole and lent money in the church and he went away in the end. We tried so hard to baptize people but every time they got baptized, they started to leave and never came back. Our pastors did not know what to do or how to do because they're not here all the time. I had to act as a pastor (impostor tbh) for many times when the church has the problems and my church 'always' has problems.

Starting of 2025, our church leader, she is vice president of the church of not so many people, started to bring some kids around the church area for them to have a space to play. At first, it looked nice, as we had the opportunity to help the kids from slums. But you might need to know that to take care of mistreated kids are not an easy job. We tended to start the ministry, but nobody was serious about this enough. I had my own job and did not have much time to take care of the project. But she insisted to do this thing even though she did not have much of the proper experience or certification according to this. (She wanted to have kids but her boyfriend never agreed) People who left never wanted to come back, and some saw the children in the church as problems because they were really problematic and we did not have any kind of proper solution to offer.

Middle of 2025, the leader broke up with her boyfriend who she had premarital relationship for 18 years. The turmoil began as her boyfriend was the main finance provider in the church who facilitated most of things. Now as he was gone, I had to be that person. From that time, the leader started to lose her own track. She dived into grief and things in the church started to get worse and worse because of her grief and I am the person who received most of the impact. Her boyfriend and herself started to push away responsibility to me before, but not much. But after they broke up, many of the responsibilities started to move from their shoulders to mine. She could not do anything properly and her ineffectiveness started to show up. And I, who's not the pastor, had to take all of that for the church to go on. I have to support both physically and financially. The council did not even care about this because they had problems for themselves. (They cannot even take care of themselves and have to rely on missionaries' funding for most of the time.)

My church leader started to rely on something else which is not God. She started to use horoscope and numerology. She wanted to transfer the leadership of the church to me. A 28-year-old guy who didn't even attend the seminary but has to preach. Didn't finish any proper ministry course but have to take care of the whole church with mistreated kids. There's nobody to help me. It's only me, a disabled guy, a church leader, one young adult who didn't want to participate on anything much, an intern from a seminary, some teenagers and many mistreated kids.

I am facing disaster right now, and the church leader did not end her love life story just yet. She had a new boyfriend and now she moved to live in the church already with her new guy. It's the same premarital relationship and she always has domestic violence with her boyfriend which she is the person who does the violence.

Man, I love Lutheran tradition, but I never live in this kind of disaster before. It has been 3 years that I tried to push something useful for them, but they never changed. I said one time and they changed for me for 1 week. The things that I pushed for are punctuality, bible study and how to properly take care of the kids. But they are never serious about that and never have any discipline. I'm so done. Devasted and hopeless. I even questioned God about why he sent me to this place. Why did he let me face all of these things. I'm so tired and full of sorrow as I cannot do anything I wanted to do.

If anyone could give me advice, please, tell me.

Greetings, I am a Lutheran from Thailand. At first, I considered buying Lutheran Study Bible from Concordia (LCMS) but after I read it from the application, I think many of their notes are too fundamentalist for me. I want historical that could go side by side with biblical aspect. Moreover, it’s very hard to buy on Amazon and I could not find it anywhere else. So that’s why I changed my mind and want to try the Mainline’s Augsburg Fortress’ study bible instead.

I planned to buy the Book of Concord from the same publisher, if anyone has any further recommendations, please tell me. I also want to but SBL Study Bible but it is out of stock, unfortunately.

Hello, I'm a Lutheran from Thailand. In my country we don't have much of a study bible, the one we have is very charismatic and I am a person who wants to dive deep into Lutheran and Reformed theology. I started looking for Lutheran Study Bible from the Augsburg Fortress press because it is the only study bible that I could buy from Amazon. I want to buy it with the Book of Concord from the same publisher also.

Next year I will start my seminary course with the Reformed theology seminary (There is no Lutheran seminary in my country anymore, it is closed due to our financial status. But the head of the seminary is Lutheran, it's quite complicated) So I want to be sure that my theology knowledge is sufficient for my degree.

Anyone can recommend me anything you want. Thank you in advance.

Hi, everyone. I'm a Star Wars mild-fan who did not follow this universe for a long time. However, I recently into the storyline of this era and would love to know where to start. I studied about the phase and the wave in the fandom website for a bit.

I would like to know if I could start on the only Adult novel? Is it necessary for me to read the Young Adult novels and the comics also? Thanks for the answer in advance.