ABC General Secretary to visit Chin State

16 September 2013: Rev. Dr. A. Roy Medley, General Secretary of the American Baptist Churches, is set to make his first trip to Chin State in December 2013.

His schedules include a visit to Falam, Hakha, Thantlang, Khuasak and Kalay Myo of Sagaing Region from 9 to 13 December, sources said.

The Siyin Region Baptist Association (SRBA) in Khuasak has formed a committee for organizing a welcome reception for Rev. A. Roy Medley, according to the meeting record last Friday.

Medley’s visit to Chin State, with the highest percentage of Christian population in the country, is part of his programme to participate in the Judson’s bicentennial celebration in Burma.

Baptists in Burma are preparing to celebrate the 200-year anniversary of the arrival of American missionaries, Adoniram Judson and wife Ann H. Judson, in Rangoon on 13 July 1813.

Adoniram and Ann, at the age of 25 and 24, were the first Protestant missionaries from America to preach in Burma.

In America, the Judson’s Bicentennial Celebration service was held at the First Baptist Church in Newton, Massachusetts on 11-14 July this year with representatives from the Myanmar Baptist Convention and the Myanmar Council of Churches.

Rev. A. Roy Medley met with leaders of Chin refugee communities in Malaysia in 2011 while he was attending the Baptist World Alliance conference.

According to judson200.org, it was in 1856 that Baptist work began among the Chin peoples in Burma.

Arthur and Laura Carson arrived in Chin State in 1899 as the first Baptist missionaries to the Chin and found the first Chin converts from Khuasak in 1905.

Today, Burma is home to about 1.6 million Christians of Baptist denomination in more than 4,700 churches, according to the Baptist Standard.#