Through the So That the World May Know Jesus grant from the H. Eddie and Mary Nell Fox Endowment for Evangelism, The Foundation for Evangelism has been working with church leaders in The Methodist Church (Lower Myanmar) to develop an evangelism curriculum specific to their culture and context – The Indigenous Evangelism Project.
Christians are a minority in Myanmar, making up only 6.2% of the population. The majority of Myanmar’s population is Buddhist. The country has had a Methodist presence since the late 1800s when missionaries arrived, and there are now 34 churches in the Methodist Church (Lower Myanmar) (MC-LM) with about 4,581 members. These congregations are diverse, like the population of Myanmar, with Burmese, Chinese, Indian and English-speaking congregations. The Indigenous Evangelism project has encouraged them to indigenize the Gospel in their respective ethnic groups.
Only 6.2% of Myanmar’s population is Christian
Congregations in The Methodist Church (Lower Myanmar) consist of Burmese, Chinese, Indian and English-speaking congregations.
Over the summer, evangelism leaders in the Methodist Church (Lower Myanmar) conducted a needs assessment with their congregations. The results and feedback are helping to inform and refine the training material to meet the indigenous needs of the people. Rev. Dr. Mark Teasdale, E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and the Foundation’s V.P. for grants, Rev. Dr. Heather Lear, have been working closely with the church’s leadership to support their work of developing this training material.
Dr. Carolina Hla Hla Aye, the Project Coordinator for The Methodist Church (Lower Myanmar) shared this,
“… we recognize that we do not have a good framework for developing a new approach to evangelism. Currently, we have a variety of programs that have been adopted uncritically from the West that we know are ineffective. Our desire is to survey our congregations, determine what they are already doing and what help they need to be more effective evangelistically. Then, we want to use a new framework that allows us to take what we have learned and develop an indigenous approach to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Based on this, we want to develop a curriculum that we can place in a training manual that will be used across the denomination.”
In a country that has struggled with serious political instability, an ongoing civil war, high inflation, joblessness, and repeated severe natural disasters, it is difficult for Christians to evangelize openly. Yet, these same difficulties have caused many people to hunger for the meaning, assurance, and abundant life offered by relationship with Jesus Christ in Christian community.
Despite the hardships faced by Christians in Myanmar, the MC-LM’s leadership reports steady growth, in part due to the church’s effort to indigenize the gospel in ways that demonstrate unity in diversity among the people of Myanmar.
