Teaching the Gospel to Those Who Have Never Heard
by Shirley Wu
Singapore Methodist Church missionary Li Diang Tan met us at the airport in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. For months, Joy Carr of the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship and I had worked via email and fax on Sunday-school materials for the 100-plus churches of the growing Methodist Church in Cambodia.
Now we were in the country for teacher training and to distribute the manual, Sunday School Material for Children, Book One. The manual will help teachers share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with Cambodian children in their language and in light of their life experiences, histories, fears and hopes.
The manual is designed to help Cambodian church-school teachers learn teaching skills. Many of the teachers have no training in teaching and many of the Cambodian church-school materials include no general information on the Christian faith. High illiteracy rates and limited resources also impacted our decision to focus the materials on helping people teach the Gospel story.
The manual provides background information, lesson plans and explanations of how children of various ages learn. It offers detailed instructions how to teach the lessons and suggests activities, such as having children pantomime Bible stories.
The lessons, based on a United Methodist series for new Christians, it introduce Christianity, explore the origins of the Bible, share the parables of Jesus, and offer ideas for responding to Jesus’ message and worship.
Visiting the church schools
Our first visit was to a small village just outside Phnom Penh, where Pastor Sun Sophy leads a small house-church. Children packed the house to greet us. They performed action Bible songs, which are a way they learn the Gospel story. Only 10 percent of rural children and 50 percent of urban children attend school, so Pastor Sophy gathers children several times a week for basic reading classes.
Next we went to the Prek Tual Church where Pastor Phrak Sophol and a group of children met us. This was a much larger room, and the children’s song and dance reflected hours of practice.
Dance is am important part of Cambodian life. The holy stories of Hinduism are told through dance. Pastor Sophol had taught the children how to dance some of the Bible stories. With bags of rice that were to be distributed the next day as a backdrop, the children danced, each flick of a finger or movement of their eyes telling part of a story.
Later, Pastor Sophol announced it was test time. The day before she had taught them the story of Jesus and the blind men, using a picture from a coloring book. One by one the children recalled what was in the picture:
The children continued, recalling every detail. We were impressed with their memory skills, and hoped they next would learn to relate the story to events in their lives.
Our final stop was the home of several of the children. Their mother is a widow with four or five children who lost a larger home when her husband died. Friends built the new home -- a platform extending over a river -- which costs her nothing because it is not on land. The roof and walls made of slats of wood, cardboard, canvas and paper, leaks during the rainy season.
Another platform in a corner serves as a bed for the whole family, and a few nails on the wall as a closet. The kitchen consists of two tin cans with several utensils in each, a huge water jar and a pile of wood for a fire. The mother spoke of how happy her children are to go to church.
Hope in Cambodia
From my prospective, life in Cambodia appeared colorful, simple, difficult but hopeful. Smiles, laughter and gracious hospitality dim memories of the Killing-Fields era -- 1975_1979 -- when 1.7 million Cambodians were killed or died of starvation, medical neglect or overwork. Half of the 11 million people in Cambodia today were born after the fall of Phnom Penh so did not live through this genocide. Some segments of the government and population are searching for ways to remember this painful past while moving on to a brighter future.
The church is growing rapidly because people are finding the church a place for hope and a place to learn forgiveness and to work toward healing. With growth comes challenge as the church in Cambodia addresses organizational and structural questions those in The United Methodist Church in the United States take for granted. Questions like:
Witnessing the growth and challenges of the Cambodian church brings the Acts of the New Testament and the life of the early Christian church to life.
Shirley Wu is executive secretary for resourcing emerging churches for the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries.