BY RALINDA B. GREGOR, EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Mention Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) mission partnerships and most people think about the Southern Cone and African provinces which offered oversight to parishes and dioceses departing the Episcopal Church. In addition to those important relationships, ACNA parishes are also partnering with churches in the provinces of Myanmar and Southeast Asia to help bring the Good News of Christ to areas that are predominantly Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu.

In March, representatives from several ACNA partner churches travelled to Singapore for a strategy meeting of the missionary deaneries. The Diocese of Singapore, which is one of four dioceses in the Church of the Province of Southeast Asia, has missionary deaneries in six countries—Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam. The deaneries are essentially “diocese plants” as opposed to individual “church plants.” ACNA parishes and dioceses are partnering with the Diocese of Singapore and each of these deaneries to establish and support churches and develop new dioceses in these countries which have a very small Christian presence.

Parishoners from St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, TX along with native Cambodians made up this church planting mission team. (ACNA photo)

Fenton visited the Yangon clinic in March and was impressed with its progress. The 2009 grant from ARDF equipped and renovated part of a large building for a primary care clinic for both medical and dental care. Since then, the province has expanded the clinic, and Christian specialists are donating time to see patients. Some rooms have been renovated to provide accommodation for families that come from the provinces for specialist care. Regular services in the clinic chapel draw people from the neighborhood and a nearby community for the blind also established by the diocese.

An ACNA team crossing a river in Cambodia.

A newly built parish in Myanmar.

The ACNA sent a mission team to this village in Myanmar. (ACNA photo)

The Anglican Province of Southeast Asia.

St Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas is partnered with the Cambodian deanery, led by the Rev. Wong Tak Meng. The cathedral is working with St. Andrew’s Community Chapel in Singapore and together they raised funds to purchase property for a church plant in the village of Leach. The two parishes are reaching out to Cambodian people to meet many physical and spiritual needs. (See www.AmericanAnglican.org/acna-parish-plants-church-in-cambodia.)

The large cathedral parish is definitely making an impact in the area, but smaller parishes have also found ways to serve in Southeast Asia. St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Uniontown, Penn., is the sole ACNA partner in Thailand working with the dean, the Rev. Yee Ching Wah, from Singapore. The rector of St Peter’s, the Rev. John Cruikshank, is the former director of missions for ACNA, who became acquainted with Yee during the New Wineskins Global Missions conference held in 2010. Both Yee and the coordinator for Karin refugee ministries, the Rev. Tang Wai Lung, have made extended visits to St. Peter’s, giving the parish a chance to get to know them and learn about a culture that is vastly different from their own.

Buddhism pervades the culture in Thailand, making it difficult to share the Gospel, explained Cruikshank. Many Thais think Christianity is rigid compared to Buddhism which is free-flowing and focuses on seeking beauty. The body means nothing in Buddhism, and only the soul goes to Nirvana, but there are dark consequences to this belief. “So what if you sell your body to prostitution? It doesn’t mean anything according to Buddhist belief,” Cruikshank said. Those who have lived in the brokenness and abuse of prostitution and drug use are often more open to Christianity and the transformation offered by the Holy Spirit, he said.

But even those who feel their lives are “good without God” are very open to interacting with Western Christians who teach English as a second language. In Thailand, as well as the other five deaneries, there is a growing demand for English language instruction, and this has presented an incredible opportunity for ACNA partners. However, the $2,000 cost to travel to Thailand makes the journey too expensive for many of St. Peter’s parishioners.

As the parish was discerning how to meet that need for language instruction, Cruikshank’s wife, Mary Beth, saw a Hallmark commercial for recordable story books and came up with the idea of videotaping parishioners of various ages reading to children. In the Thai culture, there is no tradition of parents reading to their children, and the videos model the practice which not only improves literacy but strengthens family bonds. St Peter’s recorded 10 different books, and the DVDs were so well received that they have been asked to record 30 more books to distribute to each of the 10 ministry locations in Thailand.

A team from St. Peter’s plans to visit each of the 10 ministry sites next year to assess their needs and determine how the parish can best help. “It’s about developing relationships with the people and forming a true partnership,” Cruikshank said. “We want to learn and grow from each other. One of the things we’ll be trying to figure out is what can the Thai Anglicans do to nourish our families in Southwest Pennsylvania.”

In Myanmar, or Burma, the Rev. Canon Daryl Fenton, ACNA’s Canon for Provincial and Global Mission, is coordinating efforts to match each of the six Myanmar dioceses with ACNA partner churches and dioceses. Prior to the meeting in Singapore, Fenton travelled to Myanmar to begin some of the mission planning and meet with church officials.

As early as 2005, before ACNA was formed, the Anglican Relief and Development Fund (ARDF) reached out to ease suffering in the Church of the Province of Myanmar. ARDF provided $38,000 to train 110 healthcare workers and provide basic health care treatment and prevention for 55,000 people in the remote dioceses of Sittwe and Toungoo.  In 2009, following Cyclone Nargis, ARDF sent $25,000 to the province to rebuild the provincial health care clinic serving the densely populated city of Rangoon, where the provincial offices are located. Last year, ARDF collected a special famine relief offering to purchase rice for families in the Diocese of Sittwe.

Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, and the Church of the Province of Myanmar, headed by The Most Rev. Stephen Than Myint Oo, is dependent on outside funding and is not a self-supporting province, Canon Fenton explained. Archbishop Than’s vision for the church is focused on evangelism and seeks to increase the number of Anglican Christians from 70,000 to 100,000 by 2020. He is also very serious about making the church self-sufficient by helping its members start small businesses and improving agricultural production. Fenton has worked closely with the province’s Economic Empowerment Task Force and will take part in economic training for church leadership and the provincial standing committee when he returns to Myanmar later this month.

Although Fenton will be leaving his position with the ACNA to become the director of CMJ-USA (the Church’s Ministry among Jewish People) this year, he will continue his work in Myanmar as he takes on his new duties. “This is a long term project,” he said, “and we’re looking for parishes, deaneries and dioceses that can help with business and agricultural training as well as evangelism.”

Forward in Faith North America has volunteered to partner with the Hpa-an Diocese, and the ACNA Diocese of Cascadia is matched with Yangon Diocese, but Fenton needs more volunteers to partner with the remaining four dioceses in Myanmar.

Fenton is also looking for additional partners for the six missionary deaneries. Currently, St. Andrew’s, Fort Worth, Texas is paired with Laos; The Falls Church, Falls Church, Va., is paired with Vietnam; CANA (Convocation of Anglicans in North America) is paired with Indonesia; and the Reformed Episcopal Church is paired with Nepal. “This is what mission is all about,” said Fenton. “It’s an opportunity to take the Gospel to the ‘ends of the earth’ and to support our Christian brothers and sisters in Southeast Asia.”

Contact Canon Fenton at daryl.fenton@anglicanchurch.net if you’re interested in becoming a mission partner. †