wfn.org | Church faces challenges in Cambodia

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Jan. 29, 2002  News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-33-71BP{028}

NOTE: A sidebar, UMNS story #029, and photographs are available with this
report. The Rev. S T Kimbrough's name is spelled correctly - no periods
after the initials.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Linda Worthington visited Cambodia in early January on
vacation and spent time at local churches. She is on the communications
staff of the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference and writes for the
UMConnection newspaper.

By Linda Worthington

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (UMNS) -- Bouncing over dusty roads in his
four-wheel-drive truck, Pastor Joseph Chan arrived at church in Siem Reap.
Most of the 30 parishioners walked from the nearby fields, dodging the dust
that flew in their faces, to attend the Sunday worship. 

Chan and his wife, Marilyn Sovann Chan, are Cambodian Christians serving the
fast- growing United Methodist Church of Cambodia as missionaries with the
denomination's Board of Global Ministries. The Chans are often at the
Methodist Center in Phnom Penh, but on the second Sunday of the new year,
they were in Siem Reap, the town closest to the legendary Hindu-Buddhist
archaeological ruins of Angkor. As the denomination's director of
congregational development in Cambodia, Mr. Chan was checking on the
agriculture-community development project that the church operates.

Some 80 children had finished Sunday school classes just before worship at
Khnar Thmei United Methodist Church. They filled the classrooms in the annex
and the two rooms next to the sanctuary. At Christmas, two weeks earlier,
more than 200 mostly poor children from the surrounding area came to the
courtyard for the food and festivities, said Mrs. Chan, who works on
Christian education. 

Thom Sinath, one of three Sunday school teachers in Siem Reap, led singing
at the worship service, accompanied by a drum and guitar. Local pastor Sem
Sokha delivered a message on Jesus as the light of the world, expounding
briefly on Bible passages that refer to light. A highlight of the service
was the premiere by Sinath and four others of a graceful, classical-style
Cambodian dance set to a hymn that church members had written to welcome
visitors. 

Sinath has a 10th-grade education but had to stop school to help support her
family, which is among the nearly 40 percent of the population living below
the poverty line of $11 monthly per person. She dreams of attending the
Methodist Bible School in Phnom Penh.

The United Methodist Church in Cambodia, working with other autonomous
Methodist churches, is trying to spread the Gospel and help the country
continue its recovery from years of war and oppression. From 1975 to 1979,
when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ran the country, about 2 million Cambodians
died because of deprivation, brutality or execution.

An education challenge

The church faces a major challenge of finding and training teachers for the
eager children attending Sunday schools throughout the country. Half of
Cambodia's 11 million people were born since the fall of Pol Pot in 1979,
and a quarter are under age 16.

Education is a major task of the United Methodist Mission in Phnom Penh.
There, Ariel D. Collins, a missionary from the Board of Global Ministries,
is developing Sunday school teacher training materials. As she directs the
curriculum program, she keeps in mind that most teachers have no training
and Cambodia has a high illiteracy rate. Working with her is artist Then
Yeth, whose paintings illustrate the series of booklets the church is
producing. 

Mrs. Chan focuses on the distribution of the materials to the churches. Most
churches and Sunday schools also teach basic reading classes since only 10
percent of rural children and 50 percent of urban children attend school,
she said. An open-sided, tin-roofed structure, or "sala," at the community
development project in Siem Reap provides the space for a Sunday afternoon
literacy class, as well as an afternoon worship service led by Pastor Sokha.
It will be the schoolroom for vocational training classes in the future, Mr.
Chan said.  

The 4-year-old Cambodia Methodist Bible School has 45 students, men and
women, ages 20 to 55. The school accepts 25 students a year into its
three-year program. The students are expected to have high school diplomas,
but some who do especially well in the pre-testing or interviews may have
less, said the Rev. Michael W. Collins, with the Cambodia Christian
Methodist Association and country director of the United Methodist Mission.
The association supports two full-time instructors.

Cambodia's 90 Methodist churches have no ordained pastors, the Rev. Collins
said. All are local pastors, most without high school diplomas. Quarterly,
they come in from their parishes across the country for training in parish
ministry, preaching, theology, Bible and evangelism. The United Methodist
Church subsidizes the pastors for the training, and provides transportation,
housing and meals at the center while they are in Phnom Penh. The pastors
receive whatever salaries their local churches can provide. 

Though Mr. Chan is not ordained, he has a college degree and Bible school
training in the United States. He hopes to be ordained some day.

International partners

Cambodia has 47 United Methodist churches under American, Swiss and French
auspices, according to the Rev. David Wu, with the churchwide Board of
Global Ministries in New York. In addition, there are 78 Korean Methodist
churches; six or seven Singaporean churches; and four or five operated by
the World Federation of Chinese Speaking Churches. 

Collectively, there are 150 Methodist churches, "but it is changing every
month," Wu said.

"The spirit of God is moving so wonderfully in Cambodia," he said. Eleven
United Methodist missionaries are working there.

Only 16 of the United Methodist churches have their own buildings, such as
the one in Siem Reap. Most congregations meet in homes, under trees or in
public gathering places, the Rev. Collins said.

A few minutes away from the United Methodist center, over rough, unpaved
roads, is the Singapore Methodist center, a two-story concrete building that
not only houses a place of worship but provides space for social services to
the poor. A school for children from kindergarten through third grade
occupies a section of the building. In another is a vocational school for
women at risk, some of whom have been rescued from prostitution and the high
likelihood of contracting HIV-AIDS. In one class, a half-dozen young women
learn the skills of dressmaking and tailoring. When they graduate, they will
be given a sewing machine with which they can start a business. 

The Singaporean Methodists also operate an orphanage outside town, Collins
said. The Dec. 25 Cambodia Daily, an English-language newspaper, featured
children from the orphanage performing traditional Khmer classical and folk
dance at a riverfront restaurant. It was the first time since the end of the
Khmer Rouge years in 1979 that the art has been performed in Phnom Penh, the
report said. The performers are some of the nearly 100 children receiving
shelter and education at the orphanage. The orphanage receives a monthly
retainer from the restaurant as well as a percentage of ticket sales.

Korean Methodists provide a strong Christian presence in Cambodia, with 78
churches in various parts of the country, Collins said. That's many more
than the Americans or Singaporeans have. The Korean mission is to make new
Christians and to plant churches. 

The Korean Methodists, along with the Singapore mission, participate in the
monthly coordinating meetings with Collins and the Cambodian head of the
World Federation of Chinese Speaking Churches. Collins carries the portfolio
to the meetings for the Methodists in France and Switzerland, as well as his
own United Methodist Church.

Deciding how to ordain Cambodian clergy is a key discussion topic for the
country directors from Korea, Singapore, France, Switzerland and the World
Federation of Chinese Speaking Churches, who make up the association of
Methodist churches.

An even higher priority for the Cambodian United Methodist Church, according
to both Mr. Chan and the Rev. Collins, is to form a provisional annual
conference, incorporating all the Methodist churches of the association. 

The formation of an annual conference with so many autonomous churches has
not been done before, said the Rev. S T Kimbrough Jr., with the Board of
Global Ministries. Many of the churches cooperate with one another, but they
have no common leadership or administration. 

In early February, the issues of ordination, annual conference development
and writing a Book of Discipline will be high on the agenda when a
delegation from the Board of Global Ministries spends a week in Cambodia. 

'Landmark in mission'

The agenda will also include a dedication of the new Christian Hymn and
Worship Book, the first ever hymnal written in Khmer, the Cambodian
language, Collins said. The United Methodist Church published the hymnal in
cooperation with the Korean Methodist Church, the Methodist Church in
Singapore, the Methodist Church in Malaysia and the Wesleyan Church
(Switzerland and France). 

Mr. Chan picked up 20 hymnals for the Siem Reap church on his trip to Phnom
Penh. The books were among 4,782 hymnals stacked in a room at the mission
center, enough for every church to have 20 copies at a nominal cost.

Kimbrough, who chaired the Board of Global Ministries' hymnal committee,
calls the songbook "a landmark in mission." The 194 selections include hymns
and songs from around the world as well as new Cambodian compositions. More
than half of the songs are from the indigenous people, Kimbrough said. 

"It's exciting," he said. "It's a new venture in mission for us all." 
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United Methodist News Service
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