UMC
accepts three new
mission churches
STAMFORD (Connecticut)
- Churches in Cambodia, Honduras and the Cote d'Ivoire have been
formally approved as "mission churches" by the United
Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
A welcoming service concluded the presentation at the board's
Oct 21-24, 2002 annual meeting, marking the initial entrance of
the three church bodies into the United Methodist Church.
The fledgling congregations in Cambodia and Honduras have sprung
from the mission agency's work in those countries. But the Protestant
Methodist Church of Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is an autonomous,
1.4 million-member Methodist communion that grew out of the British
Methodist tradition.
The General Board of Global Ministries first became involved in
Cambodia in the 1980s, through refugee assistance and rehabilitation
and reconstruction work with the help of international and ecumenical
organisations. In 1983, the agency established the United Methodist
Church Indochina Caucus to help nurture expatriate Christian faith
communities and to explore mission outreach in Cambodia and other
parts of Indochina. By the end of that decade, Cambodian United
Methodists living outside their country began returning to share
their faith.
In 1990, the first United Methodist congregation within Cambodia,
at Tek Thia, was started with assistance from the Central United
Methodist Church in Stockton, California, a Cambodian congregation.
By then, proposals were being shaped for launching a mission
in Cambodia that would encompass community rehabilitation, education,
health care, evangelism and building faith communities. During
the same period, Cambodian United Methodists living in Switzerland
and France began their own mission outreach to Cambodia.
In the mid-1990s, United Methodists began discussing collaboration
in Cambodia and Vietnam with The Methodist Church in Singapore
and the Korean Methodist Church.
A coordination board of the Cambodia Methodist Mission was formed
in 1997. The first United Methodist missionaries were dispatched
in 1998, the same year that land and a building were purchased
in Phnom Penh for a United Methodist Mission Centre. A Bible
school, founded by the Korean Methodist Church, and supported
by all partners, opened in 2000.
The United Methodist Mission Initiative in Honduras began planting
new congregations in 1998. Currently, 11 churches and two communities
of faith are in operation, with an average worship attendance
of more than 1,250 people. The Initiative works collaboratively
with the Methodist Church of the Caribbean and the Americas and
has received support from the Latin American Council of Evangelical
Methodist Churches (CIEMAL) and the Christian Commission on Development.
Methodists in the French-speaking West African country of Cote
d'Ivoire are divided into three districts - Grand Bassam, Dabou
and Abidjan - and the two missionary districts of Bouake and Daloa.
The denomination has 853 local churches, with 89 active pastors,
including four women, and 38 evangelists. It runs a number of
schools as well as an orphanage and the Protestant Methodist Hospital
in Dabou. - United Methodist News Service.
Cambodian children from the COSI Children's
Village, outside Phnom Penh, are taught to grow
vegetables. The Village is a project of the
Methodist Missions Society of The Methodist
Church in Singapore. -- MMS picture.