South Asia: theological students

“Praise God for the 90 theological students from all around the country who attended the Equipping Emerging Leaders as Agents of Transformation (EELAT) Conference this week,” writes F, who supports theological education in South Asia. Please pray for the theological students as they return to their regular studies, that they may be inspired and equipped to make a difference to their churches and communities as they prepare to begin pastoral and other ministries. 

The post South Asia: theological students appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

South Asia: fuel and gas shortage

Pray for people across South Asia who are in the midst of a serious gas shortage due to the Iran conflict and knock-on disruption to the supply chain. Across the region, people are dependent on gas for cooking, meaning many people are now forced to go hungry. Pray for supplies to arrive faster than anticipated and for the government to make wise decisions when it comes to distributing the limited supplies they do have.  

The post South Asia: fuel and gas shortage appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

South Asia: new home

Please pray for mission partners E and R as they look for a new place to live. As they have had to move many times over the past few years, pray for somewhere they can call home for at least the next five years. Pray for the right place to become available at the right price, which will allow them to continue to offer hospitality to their church family as well as visitors from near and far.

The post South Asia: new home appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

South Asia: successful trip to visit schools

Give thanks for a recent trip by mission associates who train teachers to schools in South Asia. They visited six different schools – some of which they hadn’t visited for several years – and found that facilities had been improved and that students were thriving in their faith and studies. Pray for God to continue to work through these schools in the lives of teachers, students and their families.

The post South Asia: successful trip to visit schools appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

For someone like K, at one point the odds of becoming a leader in theological education would have seemed slim. As a Christian and a woman in Pakistan, you might say she is doubly marginalised.

Only 2 per cent of the population in Pakistan are Christian. And it’s traditionally been considered a male-dominated, patriarchal society.

Yet, in recent decades more and more women have taken up leadership roles in theological training, thanks in part to the work of CMS mission partner F, who has retired after 38 years of service.

F provided vital theological education for the minority Christian community in Pakistan, helping them stand strong in their faith.

Limited opportunities

For the first 14 years of that time F taught at the United Bible Training Centre (UBTC) for women in the city of Gujranwala.

This interdenominational training centre, founded in 1939, was for many years the only residential training centre in Pakistan where women could receive theological education, apart from the Salvation Army Training College. Otherwise, there was only the option of Theological Education by Extension (TEE) offered by the Open Theological Seminary (OTS).

Although UBTC was originally founded to train young women as Bible teachers and hospital evangelists, by the time F joined it in 1986, it mainly offered short Bible courses and retreats to various groups of Christian women: adult literate village women, secondary school students, school-leavers, college students, nurses, teachers, Sunday School teachers and hospital evangelists. Additionally, there was a three-year part-time pastors’ wives training course for wives of the students at the nearby Gujranwala Theological Seminary (GTS).

A generation gap

As the previous generation of workers came up to retirement age or died, the Christian hospitals in particular saw the need to train the next generation of evangelists and Bible teachers, so UBTC started a new three-month intensive course for college graduates, called the Foundations for Bible Ministry Course (FBMC). A few years later, it started a new programme, the one-year Discipleship Course for young women with only matriculation (school leaving certificate).

Many graduates of these two programmes are now working as hospital evangelists, Sunday School teachers and in various roles with Christian NGOs and para-church organisations. Several went on to do further formal theological education after the mainline seminaries opened their doors to female students.

One of these is K. Having completed her BA degree from Sargodha University, she enrolled in the FBMC in September 2006. After graduation she joined UBTC as junior staff, receiving on-the-job training in teaching and preaching.

In 2009 she completed her training and was awarded the Diploma in Christian Education, and became senior teaching staff.

After a few years, as well as teaching various Bible subjects, Christian doctrine and discipleship, she became programme coordinator for UBTC.

In 2016, K gained her bachelor of theology degree from OTS followed by a Master of Divinity degree from GTS in 2018, at which point she moved to Lahore to work with the OTS in the youth department, and soon became department coordinator.

From student to colleague

By that time CMS mission partner F had been working for the OTS for several years, while still giving some time each year to teaching at UBTC, so she had known K as a student and then as a colleague there, and again as a student at GTS, where F taught Pakistan Church History.

During her time at OTS, F had been advising on the development of a new Christian education curriculum for teenagers. Nine courses had been prepared and the final course was in preparation, called Me and My Faith. The task of writing this course was given to K and another colleague, which was completed by December 2020.

K continued teaching and preaching alongside writing and administration, and in 2023 she had the opportunity to travel to the US to study at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, from where she graduated with a Master of Theology degree in 2024.

Returning to Pakistan, she was invited to join the staff of her alma mater, GTS as a teacher, and started her ministry there in August 2024.

Founded in 1877, by the United Presbyterian Mission, GTS has been a union institution since 1954, with CMS mission partners serving there from time to time.

The first female student, the wife of one of the male students, graduated from there with a BTh degree in 1992, and the first single women students were admitted in 1996.

In 2016, the GTS demonstrated its appreciation for women’s contribution in theological education by appointing a female principal. At that time 50 per cent of the full-time faculty was female. Now K has joined in this key role of training the next generation of Christian workers.

Related posts

Get our email updates:

SIGN UP

The post Educators from the edges appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Find out more about the stories mentioned in this month’s Hope from the Edges:

Be sure to receive Hope from the Edges every time!

GET OUR EMAIL UPDATES

More stories you may like:

Video transcript

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Hope from the Edges. I’m Andy Roberts, mission director for CMS.

In the next few minutes, we’ll bring you inspiring news from three edges in our world. Stories that you are making possible through your gifts and prayers.

Our first focus is in Asia, where we’re celebrating a mission partner’s 40 years of faithful service. Then we meet a young man in Ecuador who has found faith and a brighter future than people could’ve ever thought possible. Finally, we spend a bit of time with CMS’s youngest donor and hear about his heart for work in South Sudan.

We begin in Asia, where a CMS mission partner has been serving for 40 years.

Due to security concerns, I can’t share our partner’s name or the exact location of this story, but I can tell you that in this country, about 2% of the population are Christians. The majority of the rest are Muslim. So in many ways, choosing to follow Jesus makes someone an outsider.

Our mission partner, we’ll call her “F”, first went to this country in 1981 as a volunteer. She worked in the library of a college with a Christian ethos. At this time, the country was living under a military dictatorship. It was a difficult time for women and minorities, as discriminatory laws were put in place.

Despite the challenges, F longed to keep serving in this country. So she returned in the mid 1980s. F had come to realise that there was a great need for Bible teachers in the country, because many Christians were growing up without knowing much about their faith. F served as a Bible teacher, Bible college lecturer, and she wrote courses on church history.

In her four decades in South Asia, F directly taught more than 2,000 students. Many of them were women. Thousands more have studied on the courses that she’s written. In a context where following Jesus can be risky, F has helped strengthen the faith of thousands of people, and many of those have gone on to share their faith with others.

Now, as she approaches the age of 70, F is returning here to the UK where, among lots of other things, she’s praying about using her language and teaching skills to serve in the UK churches in areas with large Asian populations.

Join us in giving thanks for F’s remarkable time as a mission partner and pray for her as she decides her next steps.

From Asia, we zip across the globe to Ecuador to meet a young man called Jonathan. As a child, Jonathan was diagnosed with learning difficulties.

In Ecuador it’s often assumed that people with learning difficulties are not capable of much. So they are frequently written off or cast aside.

Many years ago, a CMS mission partner called Jill Ball founded an organisation called Life in Abundance Trust to give children like Jonathan a chance to show just how much they can do. Jonathan started taking classes there when he was 11 years old, and this is where he met another CMS mission partner, Sharon Wilcox.

They met on Sharon’s very first day of work, and for the next 10 years, Sharon journeyed alongside Jonathan, sharing the love of Jesus and helping him learn life skills.

Realising that children like Jonathan needed further support as they got older, Sharon launched the Orchid Project and Jonathan became part of that too.

Thanks to the skills he learned Jonathan was recently offered his first paid job at a nearby hotel. He has grown in his faith as well. Jonathan’s mother says he’s helpful at home, generous, and is happy to lead prayers.

CMS Latin America mission manager Paul Tester recently visited the Orchid Project and said, “As I spoke to the mums and dads of the young people, they told me of their surprise at what their children were now achieving. It has challenged preconceptions and enabled young people to do far more than they might have imagined. The word I heard them use most about Sharon was that she was an angel sent by God!”

It just shows that Jesus never gives up on young people like Jonathan, and neither should we.

And speaking of being impressed with young people, staff in the CMS office in Oxford were delighted recently to receive a letter from a young man called Harry, who has to be one of our youngest donors ever.

At just five years old, Harry already has a heart for mission and saved up his pocket money to give to CMS mission partner, Nicci Maxwell [in white] in South Sudan. Harry was inspired by the idea of helping children who are sick and don’t have access to medicines and healthcare.

In his letter to CMS, Harry mentioned they would like to give his gift in person. So CMS happily welcomed Harry and his family to our offices and showed him around.

No word yet as to whether he has filled out a job application but thank you so much, Harry, for your generosity and for being a small boy with a big heart.

So today we’re seeing God at work among people at the edges through the longstanding faithfulness of CMS people in mission.

Thank you all for watching these reports from the edges, from across the globe, and for your prayerful support, which makes them all possible.

Please share this video with your church, small group, or anyone you think could use some fuel for their faith.

Until next time, whether you’re as young as Harry or simply young at heart, we’re grateful for your gifts and prayers as together we go with Jesus, with each other, to the edges.

ENDS

Be sure to receive Hope from the Edges every time!

GET OUR EMAIL UPDATES

The post Hope from the Edges January 2025 appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

We go with a CMS mission partner in Asia to a steadily growing church within a marginalised community.

So much rice-snack was prepared that all the space in the small kitchen and the next room was taken up – all chopped on boards, arranged in pots, and served onto plates, along with other snacks and drinks.

An hour later, it had all gone. The rice-snack ran out – and that was a good thing.

In these cramped back streets, the flat roof terrace is normally quiet. Amy (name changed) hangs out washing in the mornings; the clothes are dry before noon, and the roof is again empty and quiet – except for the noise of horns and engines from the main road into the city, only a couple of blocks away, and the sound of children playing in the street.

Tutorials on the terrace

Yet, on some afternoons Amy’s house is suddenly noisy. Recently, Amy started inviting children for tuitions and other activities. There is huge demand for after-school tuitions, to help children do better in their exams. In this community, many of the parents never went through school themselves. So, there is no way they can help their children with homework. And tuitions are not something the families in these streets could afford.

But Amy did get an education. And, since she began to follow Jesus, she has been wanting to make a difference. So, with her husband’s agreement, she started offering free tuitions. In the afternoons, many of the parents are still working, but with their parents’ permission these local children happily come on their own, or with siblings and friends.

Christmas for the community

Last Christmas, Amy wanted to do something special for the season, so she mentioned this to her fellowship. She is part of a new local-language fellowship, made up of people who have only recently begun to follow Jesus; and their fellowship is connected with an English-speaking fellowship which has been running for several years.

So, one special afternoon, people from both of these fellowships turned up with all the ingredients for enough rice-snack for dozens of people. They prepared rice-snack, cold drinks and tea, sitting on the floor to chop vegetables.

Soon, there were two dozen excited children on the terrace, enjoying stories, games, singing, dancing and, of course, the food. Adults joined too; some lingered to chat over tea. Unexpectedly, that vast quantity of rice-snack actually ran out – and that was a good thing.

Church at the edges

After Christmas, Amy carried on with tuitions at her home. Week by week, friends from her fellowship have helped provide snacks – on a smaller scale! In this region, some small churches and groups of new believers have experienced hostility, aggression and claims that it is illegal for them to meet (unless they are properly registered). But it is a blessing that this small, new fellowship has started out with some good relationships with the wider communities around them.

Local Christians have been supportive. The English-speaking sister fellowship provides prayer, encouragement, volunteers – and the helpful status of being part of an officially-registered organisation. The local-language fellowship has been able to meet early on Sunday mornings because another local church – believers who have migrated here from another region – has let them use their building for a very low rent. That church had been praying about outreach to local people, but were not sure how to make connections. This collaboration has been an encouraging answer to prayer for both the local-language fellowship and the migrant church.

And yet traditional Sunday services are not necessarily the most important meetings. More people are comfortable coming to people’s homes on weekday evenings for Bible study and prayer. So “house-church” meetings may well be the way forward for this growing fellowship – including meetings in Amy’s house. Being part of this movement has given Amy a new confidence to take initiative, both within the local-language fellowship and in making her home a centre for community connection.

CMS partners making it possible

These healthy connections between Christians of different communities cannot be taken for granted. Behind this fellowship, there is a background of prayer, outreach and collaboration over many years.

The fellowship started through the initiative of local CMS partners Philip and Lyla (names changed). I got to know Philip when I was teaching him five years ago – before they started this local-language fellowship. He is from a small town in a neighbouring region, born into a Roman Catholic family. Lyla is from the local community, born into a family of another faith; and her family became followers of Jesus when she was a teenager. By the time they married, he had studied theology, become involved in various ministries and moved to this city. She had worked for a Christian NGO in various locations. Together, they felt called to train and encourage young people, especially young pastors. Through this training and support, they have played an important part in planting 20 new churches – including Amy’s fellowship.

What I find encouraging about this fellowship is the infectious enthusiasm of those who have chosen to follow Jesus. Amy is used to running her home; but now, supported and encouraged by others around her, she is using her gifts in new ways and having an impact on many people – especially the local children and their families.

It helps that this fellowship does not depend on one authority figure; rather, they are encouraging people to get involved and developing a team of leaders with different gifts and roles.

As the fellowship grows in numbers, it is a challenge to work out how best to organise themselves. They could try to copy existing churches, with their kinds of services and meetings and structures, but moves in that direction have not been comfortable for them. At least for now, what seems to work best is small meetings in people’s houses. Jesus used to do a lot of ministry that way. It seems like he still does.

More stories

Get our email updates:

SIGN UP

The post The fellowship on the roof appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

“God is always faithful,” say our partners at Asia-CMS, who share this story of the gospel breaking through caste barriers.

By AsiaCMS (names have been changed to protect privacy.)

Our co-mission partner Brother T and his team in South Asia, work to develop leaders within unreached people groups, establish house churches, disciple new believers with Bible Studies and strengthen local believers through house visits and community support in remote communities.

With the caste system still prevalent in most villages in South Asia, high castes will never marry a lower caste. However, recently, the team, alongside the local leader in a village, conducted a small wedding for two new believers – who were from different castes – all by the grace of God alone!

Anita accepted Christ through this local ministry and her question always was, “who will marry me as I can’t go back to the Hindu belief nor can I marry a non-believer?” The team encouraged her to pray, and last October she became engaged to Krish, a high-caste Brahmin, who became the only believer from his entire family.

They decided to marry but as expected, the groom’s parents and relatives were totally against it. Nevertheless, Krish decided to go ahead and marry Anita. They set the date for the wedding and sent out invitation cards and soon they heard that the groom’s entire village people were coming to stop the marriage. All the while, the church community began to pray for a peaceful ceremony.

Brother T and his whole team made plans to attend the wedding but they were warned to be prepared, as anything could happen. It was quite a risk for everyone but by faith, the team drove to the village for the ceremony. When they arrived, preparations were still underway in the bride’s village, as they all waited for the groom to arrive.

After an hour or so, the groom arrived with his pastor and other believers but none from the groom’s family came. God was faithful in providing for all the needs for this wedding and they were able to conduct the wedding ceremony peacefully in the village – becoming the first Christian wedding conducted in the village.

The ceremony was contextualised for their culture and according to their custom, and everyone celebrated joyfully, praising God for the peaceful union.

A few months after the wedding, the church team received the wonderful news that Anita had been received with honour by Krish’s family, who were once against this union. God is so good. All praise to him alone.

Pray together

Please pray for Krish and Anita, as they start their family life – that they may remain strong in their faith and grow spiritually. They have also recently decided to step into the mission field to evangelise and share their faith.  

Related posts

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post Married against the odds appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Mission partners B and K have spent the last decade working to prevent human trafficking in South Asia. K shares some of that journey, and reflects on the challenges the pandemic has brought.

I came to South Asia after university, doing work in the slums for a year. After a few months I went to a conference and someone spoke about children in the red light area and human trafficking. That talk hit me like nothing else before. I remember weeping as I left the seminar. Later that night, I was struck that I get to go to sleep in a safe, warm bed with all I need – yet all around there are children who have the opposite. They don’t have safety, they have fear, things being forced on them repeatedly.

I prayed: “God, is this your way of telling me that you want me to be involved in stopping this?” and asked for an opportunity to experience anti-trafficking work in that year if it was what God wanted me to do. And that is what happened – I spent a month each in two projects, working to rescue girls and caring for those who had been rescued.

I came back to the UK and was a social worker for a number of years, working with children and families to widen my experience. I contacted mission agencies and God opened the doors through Church Mission Society for me to return to South Asia.

Community connections

B and I met early in my time in South Asia, and share a passion to empower communities and churches to recognise and prevent trafficking. While my background is in social work, B has theological training, so we can approach the issue from different angles.

We started working in a rural mountain area, building a project from scratch alongside a local church network. Our first job was to convince people that trafficking was a problem. Even though it was being reported in the newspapers, people thought, “This doesn’t happen here. It happens in the cities.” But in the cities, they say, “No, it doesn’t happen here. It happens somewhere else.” This is a really common problem with trafficking: everybody believes it happens elsewhere.

It took us two years to earn the trust of the local people and enable local leadership to see this was a problem that they needed to do something about. We formed a small team and did some analysis to see how big the problem was and what other issues there were.

We ran training for church leaders, school leaders, wherever we could get an inroad, with anywhere from five to 500 people. We ran programmes with all ages, because both adults and children are trafficked. In schools, we focused on how to keep safe, to recognise the methods of a trafficker. Then with parents, how to prevent these things from happening in the first place, and with leaders the responsibility to look out for the whole community.

Not just strangers

Most people are trafficked by people they know: a neighbour, somebody they grew up with, people they don’t suspect. And that’s why it works. It’s not just a stranger coming in and it’s not about kidnapping. It’s people willingly going.

We trained our team in issues of domestic violence, sexual abuse, physical abuse and child protection, which are very much related to human trafficking. The team and community needed to become comfortable talking about delicate issues – relationships, sex and so on – which took a while.

New context, same goal

A couple of years ago we moved to a new area, in a city. We still work to prevent trafficking, through a network including schools and different health organisations. Our goal was to train these organisations in how they can prevent trafficking. I don’t necessarily think we need to have a separate anti-trafficking programme – awareness should be embedded within all professions.

Human trafficking is not something you can just address head on – it needs approaching from different angles, which is why we did training on domestic violence and sexual abuse. All these issues are connected. I would really love to see churches getting involved in the needs of their own communities, helping the vulnerable without needing to call it an anti-trafficking programme.

COVID-19 – an unknown impact

Generally, where there is economic hardship, trafficking thrives. Even with COVID-related travel restrictions, it will happen. I heard that traffickers were dressing girls to look older, to make them look as if they were going to work as nurses.

There were fewer people visiting the red light areas, but this will change. I think as soon as travel opens up, there will be explosions of people being taken here and there. And traffickers will have an easy way in, because so many people will be desperate and they prey on that desperation.

The more tangible impact of the pandemic is that many NGOs, schools and health networks became more focused on relief work, while others have had to reduce travel and react to reduced funds. Organisations’ desire to be involved in anti-trafficking went way down. As schools return, there is so much to catch up on.

We hope to be able to re-establish connections with organisations and to work with them on how they can prevent trafficking in their own fields.

Passion for prevention

In anti-trafficking work, the rescue part is where there is drama and clear stories, but we need to stop people ending up there in the first place. By the time people are rescued, huge harm has been done.

And rescue alone will never stop the issue. Prevention is harder to quantify, and complicated – but in issues of domestic violence, child protection and trafficking, prevention is crucial.

B and K’s work is only possible because of generous supporters like you. To help them financially, donate online or call 01865 787489. If your church would like to connect with mission partners like B and K, contact churchrelations@churchmissionsociety.org

Related stories

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post Stopping trafficking before it starts appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).