Ministers, Teachers And Doctors Wanted In Papua

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30129, 13 May 1963, Page 17

Ministers, Teachers And Doctors Wanted In Papua

Although great strides had been made in the establishment of the church in Papua there was still a great need for ordained ministers, doctors and teachers to help in its further development, said the Rev. W. G. Bache in Christchurch yesterday. Mr Bache and his wife are in New Zealand on a six-week lecture tour explaining the work of the Papua Ekalesia to Presbyterian and Congregational Churches. The Papua Ekalesia is the indigenous church of Papua which came into being on November 21. 1962, at Port Moresby. Mr Bache and his wife have been missionaries in Papua for the last 10 years. He said the area embraced by the church covered the •whole of the southern coast of Papua, from the West Irian border in the west to Samarai in the east, and inland to the Owen Stanley Range. There were about 500.800 persons in Papua, of whom 72.000 were attached to the Papua Ekalesia. Of these, he said, some 20.000 had been baptised.

The aim of the church had been, and was today, that of training native leaders. The church now had 150 ordained Papuans. 50 trained teachers, and about 15 trained nurses, and medical orderlies. More ' persons in each of these categories were needed, said Mr Bache. Mr Bache said the church had set about its task with a three-fold approach: preaching the gospel: teaching the gospel, and teaching the natives to read and write: and medical work. He said language had been one of the greatest difficulties confronting the missionary. As an example he said many tongues were spoken by the natives and in one area it had taken him nine years to master a particular language sufficiently well to be able to preach in it. Although the church now had the 150 ordained ministers, their standard of education was not high enough. Nowadays tremendous progress had been made in education so that no longer were the missionaries dealing with

a primitive people, as about 50 per cent, of the population was now literate.

The church in Papua had been established for about 88 years, ever since the London Missionary Society first sent its men and women out there, said Mr Bache. The New Zealand Congregational church had, through the London society, been involved in this religious development. Now the Dominion was becoming even more involved through the Presbyterian church, which was sending to Papua initially two ordained ministers, a teached and a nurse, with more to follow.

In July Mr and Mrs Bache will return to Papua and their missionary work. They now have their headquarters at Port Moresby, where they moved to about 12 months ago after completing nine vears in the isolated Mailu district in Eastern Papua where the natives still live in the most primitive conditions.