Already the Province of Southeast Asia that incorporates Singapore, Sabah, Kuching and West Malaysia (the latter is an Anglo-Catholic stronghold) with churches in Indonesia, Thailand and Brunei, has swept passed the American Episcopal Church in terms of actual practicing Anglicans.

This province has more than one million Anglicans made up of Chinese, Malay, Indian, the natives and Indonesian who weekly attend services in cathedrals, churches, shop lots, and structures built on stilts. The Episcopal Church, by contrast, has dropped below 800,000 and is rapidly approaching 700,000 because it has no clear understanding of mission and its revisionist bishops are ravaging the ranks of its orthodox clergy - the very people who have the ability to make churches grow.

Here in Southeast Asia young and old are coming to Christ, and worship centers, as they call them, are formed almost weekly. In fact the growth is so strong there are not enough priests to fill parish pulpits. I met an Australian priest and his wife in Kota Kinabalu who had flown in from Melbourne to fill a pulpit for a few months while the priest was on sabbatical.

Unordained pastors, evangelists both men and women preach and teach and once a month Archdeacon Lidis Singkung comes through to administer the sacraments from his base in Kuala Sapi. I met him in Lahad Datu one of the areas he occasionally visits. Lahad Datu has its own priest, the Rev. Melter Tais and Rev. Albert Taining.

The 46-year old Archdeacon is on the road 52 weeks a year racing across the northern sections of Sabah in a beaten up 18-year old Toyota to pastor his priests and perform eucharistically.

I met Archdeacon Lidis in Beluran, an interior rural town, and for two days he showed me around this lush beautiful countryside. We visited a church called Holy Cross in Kuala Sapi deep in the jungle on what is an agricultural estate. These are not housing estates as we know them, but Palm Oil farm centers where villages are born, the people stay fairly permanently to farm the palm oil, and where one can find several hundred Anglicans meeting weekly in wooden structures that can be thrown up in a week.

"Because the country is young and agricultural there is a great potential for agricultural estates. These are centers people flock too. We open up a ministry and church develops inside the estate. People are not free to come out so we bring the church to them," he says.

Holy Cross, he tells me, was founded in 1958 by Australian missionaries and became the first Anglican Church in the area of Lapuk in the broader geographic area of Kuala Sapi. Today it is totally native Dusun and Kadazan and the church is run by a Kadazan pastor with some 200 worshipping Anglicans. "We expect the church to grow to 350 in the next 3-5 years," says the Archdeacon.

Holy Cross has grown so rapidly that it is itself a major center and looks after 32 other worship centers deep in the jungle with average weekly combined attendances of over 1,000. "They have non-ordained lay church leaders, but I visit them monthly to administer Holy Communion," said the archdeacon.

You can see the simple church structures from the road. A roughly hewn cross hammered together with nails hangs over a simple sign like St. Petrus or St. Luke. A lady evangelist I met in a village called Santikah preaches, teaches and is preparing people for baptism and confirmation on a Saturday for when the bishop comes through next month. She is single, but when she marries her ministry in the area will likely come to an end. She must follow her husband. Sometimes things can be worked out and she can stay if her husband finds work locally. Women, though not ordained, play a big part in the life and ministry of the Diocese of Sabah. Without them I wonder if the diocese would be half what it has become.

I asked the archdeacon about the people who live on this rim of the world, a corner of which was recently hit by the Tsunami and where 78 died; their ethnic make up, religious beliefs and more. He tells me they are a gentle people, not easy to read immediately, hard working and deeply religious. When I ask about evangelizing them this is what he says: "I think growth is possible but as in any century there is a lot of work to do. One is always dealing with a population that is religious and spiritual but not necessarily Christian. The majority of the people are Muslim, Buddhists, Hindus and pagans. They are hard to penetrate, but we aggressively, in our own way, are making progress. Nearly all the churches we have built in the last ten years are expanding their walls, sometimes building new structures to accommodate the new growth - and it is nearly all young people under 30."

The Diocese of Sabah has 30 full time evangelists not including priests - they are a separate category, he says. I leave the good archdeacon after two days with him knowing that we will meet again a few days later in Sandakan where a memorial window will be opened remembering ANZACS who died in the great Death March of World War II.

TELUPID. I arrive at the Diocesan School of Ministry and Mission late in the afternoon a 100-mile journey deep into the interior of Borneo over a road where the jungle of palm oil trees and ferns touch the road, and meet the Rev. James Ming, a cheerful and smiling priest who has been expecting me.

We pull into a compound titled The Valley of Blessings, a vast Christian Education compound complete with its own church - St. David's - that is receiving a new front to keep the rain from blowing into the church proper.

The church is part of St. Luke's mission which covers a wide geographic area with some 14 worship centers that includes St. David's over which a 1,000 people will gather each week.

The Rev. Ming, 54 is the vicar of the mission together with the Rev. Juny Lutahir who assists him in the ministry. They go out weekly to churches run by non-ordained pastors to administer the Sacraments. Both men also teach full time at the training center.

The 26 students I see as I get out of the car begin to disperse for an afternoon siesta. They are all studying for the Certificate in Ministry and Mission and once they graduate they will be absorbed into the diocesan workforce. "A few will go into the priesthood," says the Rev. Ming, "but they are primarily evangelists and they are being trained to lead all of Southeast Asia to Christ. They must be multi-lingual and read the Scriptures and preach in several languages."

"These young people are drawn from many ethnic groups. They have made a firm commitment to Christ usually in high school and now they want to evangelize their own people. They are young, dedicated, earnest and evangelical in their lifestyles and ministry," says Rev. Ming. We emphasize holy living and right doctrine, he says.

On my way to my room in the compound, I meet one very bright, articulate, multi-lingual young lady, Margaret Chong from Kudat on the northern tip of Borneo. She has been working in the church for 21 years and now heads the children's ministry for the whole diocese. She is based here in Telupid. "The vision for this ministry is to raise up a generation of teachers who will teach the Word of God and raise up a generation of children who both fear and love the Lord and who will evangelize their own people," she tells me.

Her job is to travel around Sabah giving training to Sunday School teachers. "We take youth seriously. Some 65 percent of the population of Sabah is under 20, so ministry to children is very important, she says. "If we capture the youth for Christ we will assure ourselves of the next generation for the church."

I can’t help thinking about the parlous state of the Episcopal Church where the average age of Episcopalians is now 60 plus and the average size of a parish is less than 80. Where will the Episcopal Church be in 10 years? Its youth have long since fled, and today no self-respecting mother with children would dare cross the threshold of a revisionist parish that preaches sexual inclusion from the pulpit. With the ravaging of orthodox parishes by revisionist bishops there are fewer and fewer safe parishes to raise and expose children in. Sodomites don't produce grandchildren.

The youth evangelists being trained here must take courses in Old Testament, New Testament, doctrines of the faith, Christian Education courses, the history of Anglicanism and anything else that help them to be good evangelists. In truth I discover there is more biblical theology being taught here than one would get in an Episcopal Seminary in America with two exceptions.

The next morning the priest takes me in his 15-year old Toyota deep in the jungle on roads that will never see black top. It is still not ragingly hot, but by midday it will be.
We finally pull up to a small wooden church that has volunteer builders crawling all over it. A painter is hard at work. We go inside. A woman evangelist Veronica Mustin greets us warmly and explains that the church of 150 has already outgrown itself and they are adding a new section behind the pulpit. Her church is called St. Thomas of Melapi. The workers stop and shake our hands. We watch their work for a while and then we take our leave. On the way back we visit another church St. Petrus of Wonod which has about 200 members and is growing faster with each week. A woman evangelist, Ekklesia is teaching a group of young people for confirmation. They are happy to see Fr. Ming. I take a photo and we leave. We head back to Telupid in time for lunch and siesta.

Tomorrow I head for Sanderkan and a unique unveiling of a sad event occurred more than 60 years, the lost stop before I head home.

Here in the Valley of Blessings I have been blessed.

END