2 February 2009

Evangelism and field workers the focus
Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
Melody Tan

Pr Tony Kemo, the first president of the newly formed Central Papua conference, says that field workers and local church evangelism will be its main focus over the next five years.

"Our aims include improving the working conditions of our workers living in the towns and cities and lifting the standard of the local churches - giving them support to have a buildings to worship in and enjoy the blessings of God," says Pr Kemo. "We also want to focus on local church-based training and encourage churches to take hold of their spiritual gifts and enhance the mission of the church."

Pr Kemo added that evangelism, "telling the Central Papua people the good news," remains the conference's first priority.

The Central Papua conference is the first Pacific island mission to be recognised as a conference in the Adventist Church organisational structure. As a conference, church leadership has greater autonomy and responsibility for self-management.

It held its inaugural constituency meeting in Port Moresby on 6 August 2008 where it elected officers, including Pr Kemo, to be leaders of the conference.

As a conference, Pr Kemo says that the executive committee is now able to make certain decisions autonomously and has more power to administer within the region. "But we will always liaise with the union administrators and the South Pacific Division," he says.

The gained autonomy means that the Central Papua conference is now making decisions to support local churches in their evangelism plans and improve the working conditions of their workers.

According to Pr Kemo, the conference faces a few major challenges, including the need for accommodation for its teachers and ministers, not having enough workers to support the spiritual growth of the church, and taking the gospel message to the remote areas.

"Our biggest challenge is that we have one pastor to four or five churches. We need more workers," he says. "There are a lot of people in the Central Papua area who have not received the Adventist message. There are people living in outlying areas that cannot be reached by road and so we need air transport too."

A meeting of lay members and church workers will be held in March, with the aim of getting "laity and ministers to work together to achieve the goals, aims and objectives for our conference."

There are 27,000 church members worshipping in over 200 churches and home churches, pastured by just 38 pastors in the Central Papua region.