Glimpses of God’s work through the Asia Pacific Baptist Federation
(Sharing at the Canberra Baptist Church. 20 November 2011.)

Greetings from my family and from Dr. Chu Wood Ping, the President of the Asia Pacific Baptist Federation and the leadership team, as well as Baptists in the Asia Pacific region.
I come here to thank the Canberra Baptist Church for your consistent and faithful support to the APBF over the years, for which we are grateful to your leadership and all of you.

The APBF was formed in 1973 with 19 member Unions to provide a platform for Baptists to come together for fellowship, cooperation in mission and ministry in general and to serve one another. Today we have 57 member Unions in 20 countries worshipping in 26,000 local churches, with a community of about 8 million. The APBF is also one of the 6 regional organisations of the Baptist World Alliance. So, we are not a para-church organisation but one formed by the Baptist Union of the region.

We have a fairly small staff of 7 full time working mostly out of Shillong in north-east India, except for one who is based at Iloilo, Philippines.

The following are some of the major activities of the APBF:

1. Promoting mission: Our deepest gratitude to God for the early missionaries, including those from Australia who in obedience to God’s call went to many parts of Asia and planted the seed of the gospel which today has borne fruit and we now have Baptists in almost all the countries of our region. However, the task remains great with over 92 % of the region yet to claim allegiance to Christ. To fulfil this great task of evangelism we need to join hands, old and new, the rich and the poor, the experienced and the not-so-experienced.
i) APBF encourages Baptists to evangelise: At our gatherings we highlight areas that are unreached and motivate mission to them. E.g. at the 1992 APBF Congress in Singapore, we focused on Cambodia and Nepal. In 1994, the first Baptist church was established in Cambodia and the Nepal Baptist Church Council was established.

ii) Motivate Baptists to work together: We work to match needs with resources and facilitate partnership. Some have financial resources and others have human resource. One good example could be that of APBF bringing a church in New Zealand to partner with a Baptist group in Nagaland, India to partner where the latter send a missionary family to Nepal supported by the former. We have seen this work beautifully even between GiA and Mizoram Baptists.

iii) Encourage and strengthen newer mission agencies: We find that while the mission zeal and potential is large amongst newer Baptist mission agencies/ unions, they lack experience. This where we get the older mission agencies like GiA to come and share their skills. This has happened at Singapore 2009 Mission Consultation (attended by 90 leaders from 35 mission / Baptist Unions) and also at Kohima, India 2011 Mission Consultation (135 delegates from 13 Baptist mission agencies) where issues of mobilization, recruitment, training and member–care are discussed. At both these we invited Rev. Chris Barnden, Director of Ministries of GiA was invited a key resource person.

The APBF Mission Committee is currently led by Dr. Tim Lee of Korea as its Chairperson.

2. Leadership Development :
The need for training leaders to provide leadership to the churches is an ever growing challenge. In some places where churches are growing at a rapid pace this is even more acute viz. Cambodia, Nepal, Vietnam etc. APBF has tried to organise training programmes for pastors once every year, and introduced Baptist trainers who have been coming in every year.
Then there is the need for developing leadership in society. This has taken the shape of student hostels for boys, named as Tyrannus Hall and for girls, called Lydia Hall. We raise the funds for rent and utilities (annual US$5400). We provide a Christian environment where discipleship is done while they attend secular courses. Last year, the first lawyer graduate from among the 200 plus Baptist churches came from the Tyrannus Hall. In his sharing Ratana (his name) credited the Hall for being responsible for shaping his life and also enabling his studies. He is now a practicing lawyer and a member of the local governing board. The same story is true for the girls who saw their first women lawyer this year - Ms. Cheang Muyteang !

We also have tried to bring together Baptist theological educators from the 60 plus seminaries together. We have organised several of these over the years. The latest being that of the one held at Daejeon city of South Korea from January 25 – 27, which resulted in a declaration being issued calling among other things, education with emphasis on the Christian stewardship of the environment ! There are other issues where seminaries are struggling to survive financially or because of lack of books or teachers – where exchange of faculty and faculty development, or contributing books or sharing resources (chairs, tables, beds, shelves, computers etc) would be a great boost.
We also have established scholarships for training younger leaders nominated by conventions. This scholarship also requires to be funded.
The Theological Committee of the APBF is currently led by its Chairperson Dr. Ms. Miyon Chung of Korea.

3. Asia Pacific Baptist Aid: This department has been one of the most dynamic and fast growing ones. Considering that 700 million people in our region live with incomes less then US$1 per day and the increasing number of natural calamities. We are excited to see the efforts of the past many years to encourage our members to become more involved in relief and development bearing fruit. Lately the response of ‘poorer’ member bodies contribution to the various calamities has been most encouraging. The APBAid is led by Dr. Les Fussell of Australia as Chairperson and Rev. Kabi Gangmei of India as Director.

4. Asia Pacific Baptist Peace Network (APBFN): The region is often struck by conflicts of varipus nature – political, social, racial & ethnic, religious etc. Our committee led by its chairperson Dr. Alan Marr has been actively involved in trying to foster peace and encourage member conventions to become more engaged in peace making (waging peace). One of the members of the APBPN, Dr. Wati Aier was recently awarded the BWA Denton and Janice Lotz Award for Peace for 2011 for his work in bringing peace amongst feuding insurgent factions of north-east India.

5. The Youth and Women Organisations are doing a great job in bringing youth and women leaders together for fellowship and training. The Men’s department is in need of being revived.

6. The organisation of the 5 yearly Congress – the next one, the 8^th Asia Pacific Baptist Congress is coming up next year – September 4 – 8, 2011 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We are planning a very exciting programme for everyone. I invite all of you to be there !

In conclusion, let me say that that now is the time to look at the fields and join hands

- To share the good news

- To build the church of Christ by building godly and responsible leadership

- To show God’s love to the poor and to lift them to a life of dignity and hope

- To wage peace with all likeminded human beings

- To empower youth and women to fulfil their God-given call

For we are God’s fellow workers, playing our various roles (planting, watering, harvesting) for the kingdom of God ! (1 Corinthian 3: 5 – 11)

Thank you again Canberra Baptist Church for your partnership with APBF in God’s kingdom work.

(Rev. Bonny Resu, General Secretary, Asia Pacific Baptist Federation.
Canberra Baptist Church, November 20, 2011. )