An old woman, left crippled by the war, watched Seventh-day Adventist Global Mission pioneers teach English and Khmer to illiterate children.
An old woman, left crippled by the war, watched Seventh-day Adventist Global Mission pioneers teach English and Khmer to illiterate children. She had been impressed with them and offered the new group to worship under her porch—a piece of plastic. Her tiny house, crowded with eight children and grandchildren, served as a church for weeks. Last Saturday she was carried into a baptismal tank and joined the church.
The first-ever public evangelistic series to be held by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Cambodia ended Jan. 24. Over the two weekends of the series, nearly 800 people were baptized, increasing the number of Adventist believers in the city of Phnom Penh by 400 percent.
Pastor Jan Paulsen, president of the Adventist world church, and Pastor Michael Ryan, director of the church’s Global Mission operation, an initiative to reach unentered areas of the world with the gospel, were the main speakers for the 11-day event. Paulsen spoke of the years of suffering that the Cambodian people have endured, and told the 1,800 people present that peace, forgiveness, and hope for the future can be found only in Jesus Christ.
On Friday morning Paulsen also addressed the more than 100 lay Bible workers who were assisting with the series, many of whom had traveled long distances to help out with the effort. All the volunteers are full-time workers, supported by Global Mission, Gospel Outreach and SALT lay ministries. They are responsible for planting new groups of believers around the country. “Amidst the indescribable suffering of recent Cambodian history, and current hardships, you stand out as beacons of hope,” said Paulsen. “You tell of the One who offers the people of this country a future. You have done this faithfully, and I honor you for it.”
During the past three decades this southeastern Asian country has experienced the horror of wars, genocide and famine. Beginning in 1975, communist dictator Pol Pot instituted a four-year regime of terror under which between 2 million and 3 million Cambodians were executed—almost one-third of the population. In the notorious “killing fields” of Cambodia, thousands of intellectuals, professionals and working men and women were slaughtered and buried in mass graves. Many were denounced, tortured and killed for the smallest of “crimes,” such as owning a pair of reading glasses.
The handful of Adventist believers in Cambodia scattered during these years of terror and subsequent famine. According to Garth Anthony, president of the church’s Cambodia Mission, or administrative region, the modern Adventist Church in Cambodia dates only from 1992. Since that time, a Global Mission initiative has seen a community of just over 3,000 church members established in congregations around the country. Anthony believes that the recent series in Phnom Penh will produce a momentum for evangelism, generating enthusiasm, and providing much-needed training and experience in conducting public events such as these.
Nightly attendance at the evangelistic meetings varied between 1,700 and 2,000 people; figures that surprised local church leaders. In this predominantly Buddhist country of more than 12 million people, there are only a small number of Christians. According to Adventist pastor Lim Pheng, a Cambodian national, it is difficult to attract people to Christianity. While many are not devout in their practice of Buddhism, he explains, most feel that Buddhism is adequate and part of being Cambodian, and they have no real desire to explore other religious options.
“None of these people had ever seen an evangelistic series before,” says Denzil McNeilus, president of Adventist-Laymen’s Services and Industries, which joined with Global Mission to sponsor the event. “The atmosphere was phenomenal; people are thrilled with the message,” he says.
Thirty Adventist pioneers, all Cambodian nationals, worked in Phnom Penh during the six months leading up to the series, making contacts, giving Bible studies, and preparing people for baptism. These lay workers plan to stay on at least six months more, helping to establish people in their new-found faith, and to provide leadership for the new congregations.
Ryan was the speaker for the first nine evenings of the series, and one of the main organizers of the event. He says a number of factors motivated him to move outside his usual administrative role and become involved in frontline evangelism. “My involvement with evangelism, like any other pastor’s, has its foundation in a desire to see Christ’s name go all around the world,” he says. He was also prompted by a call from the church’s Council on Evangelism and Witness for more Adventist Church World Headquarters employees to run evangelistic series in the lead-up to 2004, which has been named “Year of World Evangelism.”
Ryan chose Cambodia because it is in the heart of the 10/40 window; an imaginary rectangle on the world map taking in much of Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa, where Christians make up just 1 percent of the population. It is in this region, says Ryan, that the church must catch a “vision for mission.”
Jean Ryan, a nurse practitioner from Maryland, United States, gave short health presentations each evening of the series, covering basic topics such as hygiene and the importance of clean water. “I have been very impressed with the pastors and workers here; the way they work together as a team,” she says. “The series has been marked by a wonderful spirit of cooperation between all those involved—church leaders and workers in Cambodia, Global Mission pioneers, and lay organizations such as SALT and Gospel Outreach.” Global Mission pioneers are volunteers who dedicate one year of their lives to move to a country in the 10/40 window and witness and begin churches.
While in Phnom Penh, Paulsen also visited recently established congregations around the city, welcoming new church members into the worldwide family of believers. He emphasized that they should never feel alone or abandoned. “To be a Seventh-day Adventist believer means that you are very clear in your own mind who you are: that you belong to the family of God’s children, destined for the kingdom.”
The fledging church in Cambodia operates a school in Phnom Penh, with some 270 students. It is consistently named among the top three schools in the country. The school currently occupies rented buildings, which according to school principal Sharon Rogers, just aren’t large enough. She often has to turn children away. “It’s always painful,” she says. “I always ask myself, ‘What could this child grow up to be?’”
The school’s 30 boarding students currently push aside the desks and sleep on classroom floors at night. A new dormitory is under construction not far from the current rented facilities, funded mainly by donations from Adventist Laymen’s-Services and Industries and the Collegedale Adventist Church in Tennessee, United States.