New Horizons Ministries International

Borneo (Malaysia & Indonesia) Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is a land of contrasts. Both the richest and some of the poorest people in the world live there. Spiritually, the land is in great need. Although it has a 40 to 50 year history in missions, many people groups still do not have a church amongst them. The main reason for this is the concentration of Christian work in areas that are most accessible, leaving the bulk of the people who live in the rural areas without any hope of ever hearing about Christ unless the church takes active steps to redress this imbalance.

The Island of Borneo is situated in the heart of South East Asia, about 350 miles to the east of Singapore. Borneo is a physical name and applies to the island which is owned by countries, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. It is rich in natural resources, like timber, coal, minerals and of course oil and gas.

No one knows for sure what the exact population of Borneo is. However, a conservative estimate would put the population of this island at about 14 million people. Many of the people here migrated from places as far away as China and the other outlying islands. The native people were described by the colonialists as "Dayaks", meaning "people". We estimate that there are at least 400 different people groups in Borneo, many of them unreached. These people groups tend to live in the villages up the many river systems that are found on the island. This makes it extremely difficult to get to them to share the gospel and to plant churches. The challenge is to bring the gospel to them before the "advantages" of civilisation reach them and they become resistant to the message of God.

Because there are so many different people groups, there is also a profusion of languages that are spoken and written in Borneo. Almost every people group still has a living language or dialect. However, because of commerce and social intercourse between these peoples, most people in Borneo are multi-lingual. Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia and Malay are really the same language and is the official government language of the three countries that make up Borneo. The majority of the people would have a working knowledge of this language. However, literacy is still very low, especially amongst the older generation, so this presents another obstacle to be crossed in working in Borneo.

MyanmarMyanmar is the 6th poorest nation in the world, and has many needs, most of them spiritual, but compounded by the poverty that is in the nation. There are a total of 45 million people, nearly 90% of which are Buddhists. Missionary work in Myanmar began almost 200 years ago and the most successful of all missionaries was Adoniram Judson. His work opened a foothold for Christianity in this Buddhist nation and gave the church a Bible in the Myanmese language. Christian work has basically been amongst the tribal peoples, and the 5% who call themselves Christian are mostly from the Chin, Kachin and the Karen tribes. There is a growing concern in the church for the unreached Buddhists.

Our involvement in Myanmar began when our International Director visited the nation in January 1995. While there the Lord led him to two men who had the same burden of planting churches amongst the unreached peoples of that nation. Since this was the very burden and vision of New Horizons Ministries we felt that it was good if we could work together. These two men, Dr. Aung Mang and Rev. Van Oke, gathered five other men with similar vision and formed the board of New Horizons Ministries in Myanmar.

To date we have set up the basic infrastructure for the ministry in this nation. We have a very capable and experienced board made up of men who have had many years of ministry. We have run seminars which have been well received. Our last seminar was in Mandalay, and because the theme was church planting, only leaders and pastors who were engaged or interested in church planting were invited. There was a good representation across a number of denominations. A total of 187 pastors and leaders came from a total of 9 different denominations. Most of them were interested in church planting, but did not know how to go about doing it. There were many encouraging testimonies. Many said that they had never seen the need to actively target people groups that had no Christian works and that they were now challenged to do so. Many others said that they cannot go back to just pastoring their own churches the way they did - they had to do church planting and duplicate their churches and ministries.

We have successfully completed our first Church Planter's Bible School in Yangon and 8 graduates are now out church planting amongst the unreached Buddhists. We are currently running another school with 17 students.

Our plans for ministry in Myanmar are along the lines of the burden of ministry that we feel that the Lord has called New Horizons to. Our major thrust is the planting of churches in unreached areas and amongst unreached people groups. Along with actual church planting, will also be the support ministries that are necessary to ensure that the planting of churches progresses smoothly, and that the churches that are planted will in turn go on to plant others. Here is what we have planned for the next 5 years.

We want to plant churches amongst the unreached people groups in Myanmar. A total of six areas have been identified as good places to start work in. All these are Buddhist areas where there is extremely few works.

It is presently still extremely cheap to support church planters in Myanmar. It costs an average of US$50.00 per month to support a church planter. This amount includes all his living and ministry expenses as well as rental of a place for him to stay and hold meetings in. These church planters will be involved in planting churches and raising leaders to be responsible for these new works. The church planter may be looking after several new churches at any one time. When these churches are able to stand on their own, the church planter will leave them to start the process over again. Because Myanmar is so poor, the church there lacks the resources to enable the work of God to proceed at a far greater pace than the harvest is ready for.

This school is vital for the long term development of our ministry in Myanmar. If we are desirous of planting many churches amongst unreached peoples, then we must have the labourers. While it is easy to pray for the Lord of the harvest to send labourers, we must also do our part and train men and women who have been called so that they can be released to church plant. We hope to duplicate this school across denominational lines so that all the denominations will have a church planting program of their own.