August 14, 2000
Texan returns to Vietnam, finds rare chance to preach
___By Ferrell Foster
___Texas Baptist Communications
___NhaTRANG, Vietnam--Twenty-five years to the day after communists gained full control of South Vietnam, Texan Jim Klassen preached from a Vietnamese pulpit--an activity that still is prohibited for foreigners.
___Klassen was in Vietnam April 30, 1975, when the war ended, the day the final loads of American evacuees lifted off in helicopters. Klassen, a "Christian pacifist," worked in Vietnam at the time as a Mennonite missionary. He voluntarily stayed through the change in governments and returned to the United States in 1976.
JIM & TRAN KLASSEN
___This year, on April 30, Klassen preached to more than 500 people at Vinh Phuoc Church in NhaTrang, a coastal city in central Vietnam with a population of about 200,000 people. And he spoke the people's language.
___Klassen is a member of Vietnamese Faith Baptist Church in Dallas, and he is a Vietnamese specialist in the Church Starting Center of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The Garland resident works with about 20 Vietnamese churches and missions in the state.
___He was in Vietnam this spring for a double wedding involving a niece and nephew. Klassen knew the wedding ceremony would follow the regular Sunday worship service and thought he would be giving a "short sermonette" during the wedding. One day before the ceremony, however, the pastor asked Klassen to give a "full-blown, full-length sermon."
___After he preached, a short, stocky Vietnamese man shook his head and smiled when he met Klassen. "It's impossible for any American to preach in Vietnam, but you did," the man said.
___Klassen preached on love, using 1 Corinthians 13 as a text.
___"Formal evangelism, like a Billy Graham crusade, in Vietnam is illegal, so all the evangelism is low key," Klassen said. Yet since the April 30 worship service and wedding ceremony went together, more non-Christians than normal probably heard the Sunday sermon.
___"My preaching was an opportunity to witness, specifically to our niece's new husband's parents, who are not Christians yet," he explained.
___Klassen grew up on a farm in Kansas, but through the years his life became intertwined with the people of Vietnam.
___It began during the Vietnam War as he prayed for peace. But when God began "tapping me on the shoulder" about going there, Klassen said, "I didn't want to go." He eventually gave in to God's call, however.
___When he finished seminary, Klassen had a "very high" draft lottery number, making it unlikely he would be drafted into military service. He explained to his draft board that he was "voluntarily going to Vietnam to share the Jesus way of peace and love" as a Mennonite missionary. "I think it was a little bit hard for them to understand."
___At the war's end, Klassen stayed since he hadn't gone to Vietnam "because of any government requirement," he said. "I felt that call was still valid. ... I felt like God wasn't leaving.
___"The transition in Saigon was amazingly smooth," Klassen recalled. "There had been rumors about the terrible things that were going to happen, ... that the communists were going to come in and skin everybody alive who had worked for the Americans."
___"Many people felt a lot of panic during those days," he said. "I never felt any panic because my decision to stay was very clear, and I was at peace with it and at peace with God."
___He returned to the United States a year later.
___In 1982, he married Tran Thi Ly, an ethnic Vietnamese whom he had met in Vietnam 10 years earlier. She had left the Southeast Asia nation in 1974 through a cultural exchange program.
___Klassen returned to Vietnam in 1990, and authorities "very specifically" told him not to preach. He has gone back for other visits since then, and "no one has told me specifically I shouldn't preach," he said. "But the government is still very cautious about foreigners."
___While in Vietnam this year, Klassen heard several reports of how God has been at work in churches. One church in NhaTrang baptized 40 people on Easter Sunday.
___Churches are growing, particularly in the mountainous areas, he reported. "It's like a revival sweeping across those areas. ... Whole villages are giving their lives to the Lord."
___Spiritual movement is especially evident among ethnic minorities, which include more than 50 tribes. "Those tribal groups, during the war, tended to be rebellious; and now the current government is suspicious of them because of that history. So when people are from a tribal group and then become Christians, there are two strikes against them."
___Klassen said he heard of one church where authorities confiscated Bibles and hymn books and levied a fine against the congregation. One man promptly paid the fine so the church could continue to meet.
___From another location, an evangelist reported that Rocky Mountain Chapel, in a compound for lepers near NhaTrang, has grown to the point of needing a larger building. In 1990, when Klassen's father died, the family donated the memorial fund to help finish the building that has served Rocky Mountain Chapel.
___"In 10 years now, the chapel had become too small for even two Sunday morning services," Klassen said. "Praise the Lord. Who would have thought that would be possible in an area where every family is touched by leprosy?"
___Although the Klassens' stay in Vietnam lasted just one week, the couple saw "God work in such amazing ways," he said. "What had looked impossible wasn't."
___
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