For Amartuvshin Namnandorj, the impact of the Langham Scholars program and the Langham Preaching Workshops has transformed how he preaches the Word of God.
“Langham training helps pastors to first of all correctly understand the message and then correctly transfer and teach the idea to the congregation,” Amar explains. Particularly through the impact of a Langham Scholar, Bayar Garamtseren, the church in Mongolia is being transformed to preach the Bible clearly and faithfully.
A growing church
Amar’s church, New Light Church in the Bayankhoshuu district of Ulaanbaatar, a city in Mongolia, is in a Ger community. A Ger community is a way to describe a suburban area of a city where people live in Yurts or Gers rather than apartment blocks or buildings. These areas are often a lower socioeconomic area compared to downtown areas.
The congregation is made up of a mix of seniors and middle-aged people, as well as children who live in the vicinity. Often they can have up to 100 children attending, as well as 30 or so teenagers. An American Korean pastor named David Sunki Choi established New Life church in the city of Ulaanbaatar, in the downtown area, in 1998, and this New Light church is a sister church of that original congregation.
“They found lots of people from this area were going to that church (New Life in the city), so they created groups here, and then the groups got more support and missionaries came,” Amar says.
Amar used to live in the city near the New Life church, where his mother and sister attended regularly, and he went to the children’s program. When New Light started, he and his brother began attending activities at the new congregation, and this is how, in 2001, Amar became a believer in Jesus for himself.
A call to leadership
Amar’s mother had always prayed a lot, and particularly had prayed that Amar might become a pastor someday. Amar felt reluctant about that idea. But around 2005, their pastor moved away. The church was left with a gap to fill, and though they looked, could not find anyone to fill it.
Eventually, Amar, along with his friends Tala and Bodo, felt God’s call on their lives to serve his church. Together, they stepped up into an informal leadership role. The other two needed to continue their day jobs, but Amar, as a construction worker, was able to work part-time and begin studying at Bible school as well. But after a year, Amar stepped away, discouraged. He felt called to serve God’s church, but wasn’t sure of his path forward. He worked for a year as the manager of a construction company.
The words of Matthew 9:36 stayed with Amar, though: “When he (Jesus) saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
So Amar went back to Bible school. This time around, he met Pastor Bayar, who became a mentor and inspiration to Amar. He was the one who suggested Amar attend Langham training, in the form of the Langham Preaching Workshop.
A new world of learning
Bayar Garamtseren was just eighteen years old in 1990 when Mongolia first started to open up to the wider world. Bayar wanted to learn English, and a friend directed him to the church as a place where he would find lots of foreigners willing to teach him English. At church, Bayar also found Jesus.
Bayar went on to become the first Mongolian to receive a PhD in biblical studies, from Cambridge University, with support from Langham Scholars. His main ministry is working in Bible translation – he is working on the Mongolian Standard Version (MSV) to bring the Word of God to Mongolians in their own language.
For Amar, going to the Langham Preaching Workshop, taught by Bayar, was a revelation. “Looking back at my past preaching, I can see where there were shortcomings or things I got wrong. But this training from Langham improved my preaching. It provided a specific methodology that was easier for Mongolians to learn and take on. And after attending the course, I started training other pastors in this area.”
The impact of a mentor and teacher like Bayar made a huge difference for Amar’s ministry. More than the training in preaching he provided, his personal example of a faithful Christian teacher was hugely encouraging. “Even though he has all the academic degrees and is very official, he has a very open, simple relationship with people. He’s very humble,” Amar explains.
A Bible translation for Mongolia
Amar sees the project of the MSV as very important to the Mongolian church. “We have several versions of translations of the Bible here. But many of them are heavily based on English translations, or start with Asian languages and then go back to the English. So in other words, it’s going through a long road. But just going from the source language directly to Mongolian language with all its features and peculiarities, that’s far better.”
Amar explains how this will bring clarity and understanding to the people of Mongolia as they interact with the Word of God. “When the translation goes through several languages before coming to Mongolia, we see that some word choices are not so, especially word choices related to poems or political sections of the Bible. Now with the MSV, we see that the Mongolian poetic side is already there. We see a glimpse of that. So when we see the specifics of Mongolia coming alive there, I see that this is a main benefit in the Mongolian language.”
Through Langham’s support, Bayar is working to provide the Mongolian church with the tools it needs to teach and equip all believers. And through Amar, Langham is impacting not just preachers, but everyday Christians as well. “I’m going to run a training program for the children and teenagers’ groups,” Amar shares. “I’m going to use the method and model I learnt from Langham in a Bible study meeting to teach them how to read God’s word.”