A Life Changing Trip to Myanmar… 

It was an amazing couple of weeks that our Pastoral Mission team enjoyed in Burma.  I and four of our ABC Pastors (James Conley - FBC of Delta, Charlie Clark - Aurora Hills Baptist, Mary Beth Mankin - FBC of Laramie, and Dan Schweissing - ABCRM Missionary to Immigrant peoples) joined seven others (Reid Trulson - Exec. Director of International Ministries, Stan Murray - SE Asia Area Director for IM, Robin Stoops - Executive Minister of ABC of Nebraska and four other pastors from Nebraska) for a ten day visit with the churches and conventions there and had the opportunity to see the work that IM continues to support  in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). 

The work there is truly inspirational and “incarnational”.  I hope most of you understand what I mean by “incarnational” by now – that the local church IS the Body of Christ in its community!  For example, one association of churches, recognizing the need for better education and preparation of the children, has set the aggressive goal of having a pre-school in every single congregation of the association.  In addition to this, this same association has set up an agricultural farm where they practice the best techniques to make the land more productive using green technology.  Because many of the families there need to find better ways to provide food for themselves and for market, this farm is used to educate and train people from the churches and in the communities on these techniques.  They produce their own organic fertilizer and capture methane gas to run generators to pump water.  They have planted fruit trees and other crops that give a continuous supply of nutritious foods throughout the year.  And they have worked with Samaritan's Purse to produce water filtration units that can be provided to homes and communities so that they can have clean, purified water.  The churches in Myanmar truly are being the "hands and feet of Christ" in their communities to bring about much needed change in how the people live!  And it is not just this one association that is doing this type of work.  This was the rule for the groups we visited, not the exception. 

While seeing the social ministry that is taking place there was inspiring, so too was the opportunity to worship with the churches and the leadership there.  The churches in Myanmar have set some aggressive evangelism goals and are actively pursuing them.  An example of this is that one of the smaller conventions there (about the size of our region –  just under 100 churches) has a goal of having 213 active congregations by the time of the Judson celebration in 2013.  Now that might seem unrealistic, but they already have evangelists working in over 150 mission fields.  These folks are already working in these 150 communities, but their work will not be constituted or recognized as a church by the convention until they have 50 members worshiping regularly in their fellowship.  And with the zeal that they are addressing the work, it won’t be long.  The evangelists doing the work are not paid – salaries there are very low anyway – but this work is voluntary and done out of sense of Calling.  It seems the Myanmar Baptists have prayed for "workers in the field" and God has answered.

One reason that Myanmar is able to send these workers out is that the churches are also taking seriously the need to train and prepare people for the work of the church.  Almost every single association and convention has a seminary that is offering both a liberal arts education and some sort of bachelor's degree in Christian Ministry.  The Baptist churches in Myanmar are providing to students that the gov't system would bypass a means to get an education and to make life on this earth a bit easier.  At the same time, they are also preparing them for work in the church and helping them to better understand the grace and promises they have through Christ.  This is huge in the predominantly Buddhist country.  In many cases, it is the local church that identifies those who have potential and then sends and supports those students to an appropriate school.  At one of the schools, the local churches give two bags of rice and some other commodities as tuition for the students they send.  What a fantastic vision of the church.  To me it is a picture of the church in Acts 2. 

As we traveled and met with the many groups, we were received graciously, warmly and generously.  Their warm attention to the needs of their guests would be a powerful example for many of us.  Not only did they go out of their way to provide us with wonderful meals and snacks, but they also prepared special programs and would sing or provide some other form of cultural enlightenment at almost every stop.  The Sgaw Karen Association put on a fantastic “cultural” show that helped us understand the Karen culture better and blew our minds with the quality and excellence of the performance.  And the Myanmar Baptist Convention made sure we had time to visit a local cultural museum as well as providing us with a tour of Judson sights.

But perhaps most important on this trip, God was at work in our own lives.  Every member of the team invested time and energy into learning from the people we met and the experiences we were having.  We spent lots of time talking about how the things we were learning there would make a difference here at home.  Pastor James has for many years invested himself in the lives of the people of Delta, and I saw him engage the leaders we met in the same manner.  He kept asking probing questions to understand the people and ministry there.  This in turn will help him in his ministry and leadership at Delta.  Mary Beth kept a journal that detailed the many lessons we learned and that helped her (and ultimately all of us) to sort out the myriad of experiences that came at us so fast we felt like we were drinking water out of a fire-hose.  Pastor Clark, who was labeled as "Grandpa Charlie" by one school (this was somewhat prophetic in that he was anxiously awaiting news about the birth of a new grandchild), demonstrated his amazing ability to connect to others through music.  Charlie led both children and seminarians in songs that were fun and a quite a bit different than those to which they were accustomed.  He utilized “rap” at the Seminary and then improvised a “puppet” with his hand who refused to play the guitar at the orphanage.  And Dan continued to dig into the roots of what it means to be a Burmese in scholarly ways, both through reading and probing questions.  I am confident he discovered a greater understanding of the people with whom his and Estela's ministry primarily consist.

And of course, in all of this, we were immersed in a totally different culture – eating rice at every meal, riding in vans where the driver sat on the "wrong" side of the vehicle and seeing men dressed in "longies" (basically a long strip of cloth sewn into a cylinder that the man steps into and ties around the waist) as naturally as a cowboy wears jeans.  We felt very blessed that we were free of any major distractions on the trip.  None of us got ill and we all seemed to get along really well.  Of course much of this was due to the incredible hospitality we experienced.  Our hosts did everything they could to make us feel welcomed, loved and valued – even to the point of going out of their way to help us find some bamboo hats we wanted to purchase and bring home as souvenirs.  And, at every stop, we were reminded that in 2013 the churches in Myanmar will celebrate 200 years of the Gospel being brought to their country by Adoniram Judson.  It is their great desire that all of us come back and celebrate with them on this occasion and bring friends.  Those who are able plan to reciprocate by coming to be with us in 2014 as we celebrate our 200 years of ministry by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society – the organization that along three other societies led to the formation of the Triennial Convention and later the Northern Baptist Convention.  That group is now known as ABC-USA. 

So the question some of you may still have is, was this trip worth it?  The Region, the pastors and IM all invested a lot of time, money and energy to participate in this event.  So was it worth all of that?  Was it a good investment? 

Well, on one of the final nights as we were debriefing the day and beginning the process of debriefing the entire trip, one of our pastors shared something like "you know, I've never been around a group of other pastors like this in this kind of setting.  I found something I needed, but that I didn't know I needed.  It was like "iron sharpening iron".  This experience will encourage me to continue to find ways to better my education and continue to become a better instrument for God to use." 

So, in short, yes, this experience was worth every dollar and every ounce of energy invested if only for this one pastor: because this pastor will go out and invest in the  lives of others, who will go out and invest in the lives of others and so on... In other words, he and the rest have been inspired to “Go ye into all the world!”

 Steve Van O 

ABCRM Executive Minister