Taiwan Church News
3398 Edition
10 – 16 April, 2017
Church Ministry
A First-Ever Ecumenical Ministry Meeting Held By Central Bunun Presbytery For Sarawak’s Iban People And Northern Thailand’s Akkah People
Reported by Umav
In the morning on April 4, the Ecumenical Committee of Central Bunun Presbytery held the first ever Ecumenical Ministry Workshop at Jiou-mei Presbyterian Church in Nan-tou County. About 40 people attended this meeting.
Rev Chuan Wei-chin, director of the Ecumenical Committee of Central Bunun Presbytery, expressed the significance of opening this first-ever meeting in Central Bunun Presbytery was to integrate the resources for overseas missionary ministries, communicate ecumenical information, and deliver concrete missionary proposals for the future overseas missions.
In the past decades, several local churches within Central Bunun Presbytery had independently devoted themselves in the evangelical missions in the Iban area of Sarawak and the Akkah area of northern Thailand. As a demand of an integrated ecumenical mission increasingly felt strong within these local churches within Central Bunun Presbytery, leaders of local churches started to organize an Ecumenical Committee in order to support overseas missionary service with more resources and information.
To carry on the evangelical mission at Sarawak, initiated forty years ago by Rev Biaz Takihunang and supported by PCT’s local churches of central Bunun Presbytery, PCT had set up a Sarawak missionary center with the help from local Methodist Church. Some parts of this missionary center was still in construction, though, the Evangelist Hunan Diban had already been sent by PCT to serve local Sarawak churches now.
According to Mr Chuan Wen-ho, an elder sent by Central Bunun Presbytery to serve at Sarawak missionary center, raising fund for Sarawak missionary center is never listed the most difficult tasks in their ministry. The extreme tropical weather in high temperatures and the xenophobic Islam local government are the toughest counterparts that the missionaries have to face, Mr Chuan said with a call of prayer and care for the PCT’s mission in Sarawak.
Rev Ispalakan Banitul, pastor of Jiou-mei Presbyterian Church, shared his missionary experiences for the Akkah people in northern Thailand. To waste no precious missionary resources, a solid understanding about the situations and demands of local Akkah churches and a concrete missionary proposal are absolutely necessary for a sustainable ecumenical mission, Rev Ispalakan Banitul remarked.
Translated by Peter Wolfe
