American missionaries Rev. & Mrs. Jennings-Teats were burdened to serve the Ibans in Sarawak. Their applications were rejected by the Sarawak government. In spite of that, they worked hard to cross the hurdles and served in Sabah and North Sumatra for more than 5 years.
Following their initial aspiration, the couple visited Sarawak after their retirement. Their heart for the Iban church never subsided.
“The main purpose of our visit is to train the Iban pastors and church leaders. We are most happy to see that they can work independently to expand the kingdom of God. Now what they need is more exposure as well as affirmation and encouragement.”
Rev. Dr. Robert Jennings-Teats is from Washington State while his wife Dixie Jennings-Teats is from Missouri. Both of them are members of the Methodist Church. They graduated from the San Francisco Theological Seminary, California in 1977. They were married that year and were later commissioned as overseas missionaries. They were actively involved in the Human Development Project of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
This project aims to lead the indigenous people from different countries into modern day civilization and to help the developing countries to better use their natural resources, improve productivity, improve the richness of human life, so that these countries will in turn contribute to the world economy. This project is still on-going and the South Korea ORP Institute (http://en.orpiglobal.com/) is one of the working partners.
In this project, the workers go where the indigenous people are and work closely with them through training and imparting knowledge so that they are closer to modern civilization. “While doing so our main aim is to spread the gospel and to bring the indigenous people to God.”
After being commissioned as missionaries and through Rev. Yap Kim Hao, Bishop of the Methodist Church of Singapore, they were able to get in touch with SIAC and were preparing to serve in Sg. Aup, Sibu. However the Sarawak government turned down their visa application and they were unable to serve in Sg. Aup.
Catch bigger fish
Despite this they did not give up but changed their course to serve in Sabah for more than one year and in North Sumatra for over 3 years. After that they worked in Brussels to share with the outside world about their experience and what they saw in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Later they returned to the United States and pastored the Carson City Methodist Church which is under the California-Nevada Annual Conference for 18 years until their retirement.
At the invitation of Rev. Steward Damat, the President of Sarawak Iban Annual Conference (SIAC), they visited Sibu in July 2015 and promised to return to provide training and assistance to the Iban churches. They came back this year.
“We conducted training in Sibu, Kapit, and Kuching. We were so pleased to see that the Pastors and leaders of the Iban churches were mature and independent. However they still need to further expand their horizons and be aware of more practical situations. As the saying goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” What they need now is not just how to fish but how to catch bigger fish.”
Christianity Today
Talking about the decline in worshippers in the American Methodist Church, they said that it is not only happening in the Methodist Church; all churches in the Western World are facing the problem of declining number of worshippers. The phenomenon is especially obvious in the Catholic Church. According to their understanding, this is because believers of the “baby boomer” age are getting old while the younger generations are no longer believers. This is a matter of failing to pass on their faith to the next generation.
“So the church nowadays can only work with the community, connecting people and building relationships through community activities so as to further spread the gospel.”
Another reason that young people no longer go to church is that they think that the church adopts a clear stance on right and wrong and do not compromise on grey areas. “They think that the church always defends the traditional moral principles and clearly defines black and white. To them that is ruthless. In fact Christianity is all about love. So what makes today’s church to appear “too ruthless”? The church needs to re-examine itself.”
Rev. & Mrs. Jennings-Teats exemplified the topic of homosexuality and same sex marriage. They said that the church should not be judgmental upon this issue to decide who is right or wrong and should leave the judging to God. Furthermore same sex marriage is just one of the international issues out of many other issues like religious persecution, IS and etc.
“We need to know that the nature of Christianity is God loves the world. So people should not be categorized. John Wesley heeded those who were in need of grace and not categorizing people.”
When asked about their impression of Sibu, Rev. & Mrs. Jennings-Teats thanked God for the Methodist Church in Sibu for the very strong presence of the church here and called Sibu “the Methodist City”.