Myanmar Pastors Conference a Huge Success!

Two hundred pastors in northwest Myanmar (formerly Burma) enjoyed a week-long pastors’ conference from March 28 through April 6, 2011. Fresch Ministries guaranteed support for the conference last November, thereby allowing the Tedim Baptist Convention to move forward with planning the conference.

In September 2010, Rev. Dr. Simon P. K. En, senior pastor of Tedim Baptist Church in Yangon, visited Stavanger Norway. Norway has granted refugee status several thousand Chin people from northern Myanmar. Most of these people are Baptist Christians. While there, Dr. Simon told Pastor David of the desire to hold a pastors’ conference. The Tedim convention, which consists of three associations with about 200 pastors, had held conferences from 2004 to 2007 with financial help from a church in the USA. The cost of a week-long conference for 200 participants, including meals, materials, honoraria, etc, was estimated to be about $6000, of which the local churches could provide about $1300. In November, Fresch Ministries confirmed that we would support a conference for spring 2011. In December, North Sea Baptist Church voted to include this conference in their Christmas mission offering, and subsequently contributed $5000 toward the conference.

The conference had three areas of focus: Equipping the Ministers, Peace Building through Conflict Transformation, and Doing Contextual Theology for the Churches in a Changing Situation. Speakers included: Dr. Simon; Rev Smith Ngul Za Thawng, former General Secretary of the Myanmar Council of Churches; Rev. Dr. Maung Maung Yin, Vice President of Myanmar Institute of Theology; and Rev. Dr. Pum Suan Pau, President of Tedim Theological College.

 Dr. Simon has informed us that the conference was very successful and remarkable. The 200 participants really enjoyed and deeply felt benefited by the conference, and desire to have it become an annual program.