History of Abundant Life Church, Cambodia

By Frank Muller

Asia Focus Australia (AFA) has played its small part in the establishment a Christian church in the Preah Sdach district of Prey Veng Province, Cambodia.

AFA has operated in Cambodia following a number of agreed principles:

· Help those who are already engaged in mission

· Give of your time first before just giving money, make personal connections

· Buildings should be substantially supported by the local users

· Teach believers the principles of giving

· Promote indigenous/cultural financial strategies

· Temporary, situation based and closed ended assistance preferred over long-term assistance

Overall, AFA sought to bring a holistic perspective on mission including evangelism, church planting, diakonia, interfaith dialogue, aid and relief when required.

The end of the civil war years in Cambodia

While the Vietnam War captured the world’s attention, a civil war was being conducted in neighbouring Cambodia with the North Vietnamese using Laos and eastern Cambodia as part of its Ho Chi Minh trail to bring supplies and troops the south. The communist party of Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge, supported by the North Vietnam regime and the Viet Cong eventually controlled the whole country by 17th April 1975.

The Cambodian government reported that more than 20 percent of all property in the country was destroyed during the war. In total, an estimated 275,000–310,000 people were killed before 1975 as a result of this civil war.

Huge areas of Laos and eastern Cambodia were bombed by the Americans, hundreds of thousands were killed, millions fled as refugees.

From 1975 to 1979 more than a million people were tortured, killed and buried in mass graves by the Khmer Rouge. Untold others died of malnutrition and disease.

The Khmer Rouge's formal control came to an end when Vietnam invaded the capital on Jan. 7, 1979. But even then, the Khmer Rouge struggled on, supported by many in the West as a counter to Vietnamese influence in Cambodia and maintained to some degree by financial support and even minor military assistance from the U.S. and other Western countries.

From 1979-1990, the Khmer Rouge even held onto its seat in the U.N. General Assembly and was recognized as the only legitimate representative of Cambodia.

Today, many former Khmer Rouge personnel remain in power, including Prime Minister Hun Sen. In power since 1985, the leader of the communist Cambodian People’s Party is now the longest‑serving prime minister in the world.

The Return of the Christian Church

The notorious Pol Pot had declared 1975 to be year zero and the Khmer Rouge proceeded to murder the Christians, the Buddhist monks, government workers, anyone with connections to the previous regime. Any Cambodian with the ability to speak French was automatically an enemy to be tortured and murdered. The number of Buddhist monks and novices plummeted from around 65,000 to fewer than 100 — most of whom had fled the country. Of the 10,000 estimated Protestant Christians before the war, only a few hundred were left.

Finally, in 1996, the war was over. The remaining guerrillas lay down their arms and in exchange, many of the top leaders were awarded amnesty for their past actions.

At last, Cambodia was safe enough for Christian missionaries to return.

An initial effort to send European missionaries from Denmark to Cambodia was disappointing. DanMission switched from a North/South model to what they called South/South model. Pastor Juanito Basalong and his wife Beatrice were called from the Philippines by the Abildgaard Church in Denmark in 2001. Juanito and Beatrice were able to live in similar conditions to the Cambodian people and learnt to speak Khmer. They were funded by DanMission, which is the mission arm of the Danish Lutheran Church.

Pastor Juanito, Beatrice Basalong and daughters. Older sons were back in the Philippines and the girls joined them later.

The Basalongs’ first task was to gather the remnant — the few remaining Christian survivors, farmers like Oeung and Moen and others like Chandara Ket who had fled with his parents from Kampong Cham. Chandara became a Christian in 1988 and for the next few years he could only worship in secret since the government banned all religion other than Buddhism. Chandara moved to Phnom Penh in 1993 to study at the newly opened Bible College.

An older Christian couple, Niem and Kaem Hock, poor farmers in Preah Sdach district, were engaged as local missionaries and financially supported by members of Immanuel Congregation Buderim.

During this time, Buddhist temples were rebuilt, and most Cambodians returned to their Buddhist heritage. Christians could only gather together in House Churches and little progress was made with the community distrustful of outsiders.

Pastor Basalong realized very early that a pool of young local Christians should be trained as Pastors and missionaries before further mission outreach could succeed.

Three generations missing

When AFA first engaged with the community at Krasang Tang, there were obvious tensions between the post war community leaders and the older generation of survivors. The 2020 age pyramid for Cambodia for the country shows there many fewer around 62-year-old than expected, especially males. These are the victims of the “killing fields”. Even more glaring, there is a missing generation of people around 42 years of age who would otherwise been born during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror.

Twenty years later there is another subsequent drop in the birth rate for those around 20 years of age today. The impact of the war is still visible in the second and third generations.

Building the church in the Cambodian context.

For the young churches to thrive in Cambodia, God needed to put several other steps in place. Arun Sok Nhep was an early and influential Christian leader. After fleeing the Khmer Rouge to Vietnam, he was imprisoned and deported to Laos, spent some time in prison before escaping to France in 1977. He went on to become an ordained pastor and translator of the Bible into Khmer. Later, he became the chief executive of the Bible Society of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, as well as a consultant for the United Bible Society.

The printing of this more accurate modern translation of the Bible in Khmer and particularly the English/Khmer parallel Bible became an important part of the story of ALC.

Another critical step was the establishment of the Phnom Penh Bible School (PPBS). After difficult negotiations with the Cambodian government, PPBS was officially recognized on the 16th of March 1992.

Founding of ICC

An NGO called International Cooperation for Cambodia (ICC) was established in Dec 1999 with the goals of serving Cambodia with skills in education, health, economic development and community development. ICC was to be led by and staffed predominately by mature committed Christians who went on to play an active role in the House Church, teaching, preaching and organizing activities at ALC but not taking any form of leadership role.

The partnership was constituted as an international body of three non-governmental agencies (World Concern, InterAct and DanMission) in Bangkok, Thailand on 27 November 1998. On 29 December 1999, registration as ICC was approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cambodia. In succeeding years, the following organisations have been Member Agencies (MAs) of ICC: World Concern, Cambodia Action (SAO), InterAct, DanMission, SIL International, Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission (FELM), NorMission.

Training Young Leaders

Beatrice (nurse educator) and Pastor Juanito Basalong began working at ICC during the week and the slow task of training young leaders was begun. Through the teaching of English classes using an English/Khmer parallel Bible, several young students learnt English but also came to know about Jesus. They were baptised as young adults and were sent to the Bible College in Phnom Penh.

By 2002, Basalong was able to meet regularly with 3 young leaders from Preah Sdach district as they were required, as part of the Bible College curriculum, to complete field studies in their home districts.

On weekends, Sao Am, Sarin and Sapoun went home to Preah Sdach to help build a church community based at Krasang Tang; Sarin led the Sunday School, Sao Am led adult Bible Studies and Sapoun taught the youth group.

I have included here in full, a letter that Pastor Juanito wrote in September 2002. This letter describes the pressures put on the young believers by their schoolteachers to walk away from their new faith in Jesus and the special difficulties that women faced in what is still a strongly patriarchal society.

“Sept 2002
Dear Friends,
A recent activity of the church here is the organization of the churchwomen’s group from five different cell groups in the villages. It was exciting to see these women come together and discuss how they can improve themselves and find ways in which they could be useful for the Lord. They invited us to do a workshop on gender sensitivity. They brought out lots of their traditions and gender biases that discourage progress. They agreed that women are not just for the house. They could also aspire for higher education, can be elected to private and public positions and could do the work of men and vice versa.

The annual youth camp was held on April 19-21. The theme was “Suffering yet rejoicing.”

It was a joy to watch the youth leaders taking the leading roles in all of the activities which include devotions, singing, Bible quiz, teaching, outdoor and indoor games. We were around when they needed support. They were also happy for the presence of their lay leaders giving them moral and spiritual support.

After the camp, three teachers of one of the high schools here where most of our young people go to study, asked all who attended the camp to report to the teacher of religion. There and then, they were warned not to attend any more Christian activities, for if they do so, they will be expelled from the school. Some of the youth now quit attending church activities and also in teaching Sunday schools. It is a pity that the teachers used their authority to stop the students from their freedom to worship God. One of our Bible school students volunteered to approach those teachers to allow the young Christians to exercise their freedom of religion.
The group of Christians here are registered with the Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia [EFC] a national church organization. Our youth is active in participating in her sports program. Last month, the youth went to the city to play soccer with other Christian youths. They were featured for 30 minutes on a national television. People in their village don’t believe this will ever happen. The groups’ leader Chenda was interviewed. He said they are a Christian youth group in Preah Sdach showing Christian values to their opponents and to the viewers. He also said, sport games are opportunities to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
On the side of the community development, the activities are now concentrated in teaching the villagers of owning the credit-loan project. There are follow-ups on capacity building for the Local Credit Association and Village Development Committee members on how to take care of the money that were given to them for their own villages. The villagers are also encouraged to monitor and evaluate the performance of their officers in handling the village money that is meant for the progress of everybody and their children. They are all challenged to participate in their association’s meetings and take part in decision-making for the improvement of their lives and village.

Please pray for wisdom, health and strength that we may be able to do our part in mission.
”

— Juanito/Beatrice

Chandara Ket mentioned earlier, established the Cambodia Sport Mission group and after 2000 he was working with ICC in Krasang Tang with Pastor Basalong. Chandara played an important role as Chairman and Treasurer in growing the church community at Krasang Tang which was formally organized in March 2003.

From 2004 to 2007 Chandara worked with Prison Fellowship in Phnom Penh where he contracted Tuberculosis of the bones which is often fatal without proper treatment. We met Chandara in Krasang Tang in 2007 when he had already completed 3 months of antibiotic treatment and another 5 months before he was finally cleared. Chandara is currently the national co-ordinator of Micah Foundation, Cambodia (Jan 2022).

Discussion began concerning the purchase of some land in Krasang Tang and eventually a rice paddy was selected 400 metres East of the town centre of Trea Market. The rice field was around 50m by 80m in size, about 4000 sq. or about one acre.

Until round 2005, Danmission which was working closely with ICC, was the primary support agency for the establishment of ALC. It was this wholistic model of overseas mission that attracted the attention of August Fricke who was very critical at that time of the disconnect between ALWS and its aid and development work in Cambodia and the efforts of the churches like the LCA in evangelism.

AFA had now become a significant supporter of ALC. A raised island was created in the centre of the rice paddy. Here a humble bamboo and thatch building was erected. After the final rice harvest, the land was fenced and an initial bamboo and thatch building erected. Eventually the local members would go on and raise the whole block by around a metre and above the yearly flood level.

In August 2005 Basalong reported that there were now five Bible students actively doing field work every weekend:

· Sarin ran a Bible studies series or the House Church in Sean Chey and Snao villages

· Sokha began a new Sunday School class in Chey a Khaol village,

· Am, Eam and Bal lead the youth group.

The community applied for government registration of the church in late 2005 as Abundant Life Church, Angkor Reach Commune, Preah Sdach District, Prey Veng Province.

In 2005, Abundant Life Church reached out to connect with other Christian Churches in Cambodia. While they joined the Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia, they ran into difficulties when they approached their fellow Lutheran churches.

Caught between two Lutheran traditions

Within ten years of the country opening to outsiders, sadly, there were now two separate and competing Lutheran groupings in Cambodia, reflecting the same divisions that occurred in Australia over 150 years ago.

Juanito Basalong, himself, was a Pastor of the Lutheran Church in the Philippines (LCP) which is a partner Church of LCMS. The leaders of ALC, were reluctant to sever their ties with the existing international partners:

· Danmission (Abildgard church)

· Asia Focus (Pastor August Fricke)

· ELC Hong Kong Group (Rev Anita Chan)

During a meeting in 2007 with Rev Chan, it became clear to Pastor Basalong that the city-based Hong Kong Lutherans were not interested in working with a rural community and that they would be putting their resources into a mission among university students in the capital Phnom Penh. Together with Singapore Lutheran Church and LCA, this was later realised when the Rainbow Hostel was built on prime real estate, the land alone cost $500,000.

Evangelical Lutheran Church Hong Kong remained only as an occasional supporter of ALC.

Abundant Life Church 2007 - A modest bamboo and thatch building in the centre of a rice paddy

The ALC Vision for their property

In 2007, and it is still the case today, ALC was the only Christian Community in the Preah Sdach district which has over 100,000 people made up of 11 communes and 145 villages, each village containing 500 to 1000 people.

Already in 2007, the ALC community had a long-term vision for how they would grow the church. This is what was explained to us at the time. In Buddhist culture, the pagoda is a central and highly visible building in the middle of a commune with a dozen surrounding villages. The people at ALC had a similar goal with a large church centre located in Krasang Tang which is the largest town centre in the district. The area high school, Promol High School, and the district hospital are located here.

Pastor Sarin explained that “it gives us assurance in our hearts if we have a church building.” He explained that it is culturally important for the Christians to be able to show to seekers, a church building which represents stability and commitment to the people in their community.

The members of ALC however, were very poor, the majority were young students and in 2007, they had no resources to construct and fund such a building.

Prey Veng Province with Preah Sdach District 1409 as one of the 11 districts.
The northern boundary of 1409 follows the National highway from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
The southern boundary is the border with Vietnam.
ALC operates over this entire district and remains the only Christian community.
The 11 Communes of Preah Sdach:
01 Angkor Reach
02 Banteay Chakrei
03 Boeng Daol
04 Chey Kampok
05 Kampong Soeng
06 Krang Svay
07 Lvea
08 Preah Sdach
09 Reathor
10 Rumchek
11 Sena Reach Otdam

A focus on Education

With the fencing of the property completed, it became necessary to secure the contents against theft so a high school student from a distant village slept each weeknight in the bamboo and thatch building. At this stage Asia Focus had funded a toilet block with a septic tank, a well and pump for clean water, two motor bikes for the Pastor and an evangelist.

ALC believed they were called to bring the Gospel to the whole district, and one means of achieving that was to accommodate, at ALC, high school age students some as far as 20km from Krasang Tang which is their nearest high school.

A proposal was made to the community that a preliminary step would be to construct a solid school building at Ruessei Chuk about 8km to the South-West of the church centre. With 6 villages within walking distance, and over 1,000 children in the area, the immediate aim was to raise the attendance well above the then 30% level. Once the building was completed, the responsibility for staffing, maintenance and equipment would be carried out by the Government education department. Many of these students would go on to high school in Krasang Tang as boarders at ALC and trainee Sunday School teachers and church leaders.

With support from the community of Immanuel Buderim, money was raised for the purchase building materials and plans were drawn up for a timber frame structure on concrete pillars standing on a broad concrete base in an existing rice field. The concrete was mixed on site and poured bucket by bucket into form work. At the same time the project was teaching the community a whole lot of new skills which they subsequently employed in their own building projects later on. The local farmers completed the construction, poured a concrete slab, erected brick walls and rendered the brickwork.

While this was not directly a church building project it achieved three goals:

1. Increased access to education for over 1000 village children

2. Generated goodwill with members of ALC working hand in hand with local villagers

3. Ultimately, the government took on the school and it is now three times larger than it was in 2008. Ruessei Chuk is now a primary school hub for the Banteay Chakrei commune.

Ten years later, this building project became the catalyst for the church community to build for themselves and largely by themselves, a two-story concrete and brick building just as they had imagined back in 2008.

Connecting with other Lutheran Churches

Although a core group of young people had the advantage of studying at the bible college, there was a large and growing need for additional training for the Sunday School teachers and lay leaders who were recent converts to the Christian faith.

The best Lutheran teaching was available through the work of the Lutheran Heritage Foundation (LHF) and seminars conducted by Pastor Vannarith of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cambodia. In addition to the Khmer-language Book of Concord, Vannarith has also been instrumental as a translator, editor, and project coordinator of several other LHF books for Cambodia, including Luther’s Small Catechism, The Augsburg Confession, a hymnal, and A Child’s Garden of Bible Stories.

Another important teacher is Pastor Phanna Bun (also known as Peter) from the Cambodian Lutheran Church. Peter is the Director of Education at Garuna Cambodia focused on training indigenous Church leaders, pastors, deacons, and lay leaders for the emerging Lutheran Churches in the region.

Peter completed the translation of Growing as God’s People into Khmer as a collaborative partnership between the two Lutheran Church bodies in Cambodia, bringing them closer in theology and friendship as they worked on making this resource alive for the people of the whole country.

Asia Focus supported attendance at numerous seminars run by Pastor Vannarith in Phnom Penh for young male and female teachers and leaders. This focus on training has continued right up to the present day.

AFA continued to support specific requests, apart from ongoing support for Ek Samean.

Continuing education of leaders and training of Sunday School teachers remains a challenge. Talented young leaders are drawn away to the cities while the Preah Sdach district is gradually transforming from a rural economy to one based more on manufacturing and services.

Developing the Church Site

Attention was now turned to replacing the bamboo and thatch building with second larger church building. This was a wooden framed structure on a concrete slab with a corrugated iron roof and sides.

In 2013, an investigation was carried out with the goal of installing solar panels for lighting and much needed fans. The town centre had a few hours of unreliable access to electricity from a diesel generator, but this network did not extend to the church block.

Before the solar panels were purchased, we received word that the Preah Sdach district could connect to a new power line running north from Vietnam right up to the National Highway. Within eight years, this created a fundamental shift in the economy of Krasang Tang; further growth of the government high school and the hospital, development of numerous small industries followed.

We funded a power line to the church centre which now provided power to illuminate the boarding house and church at night, run fans, add computers for English classes and bible studies and a PA system for worship.

Students boarding at ALC were now able to study at night while their own family at home remained without electricity in their traditional bamboo and thatch buildings.

The first boarding house was built by the ALC members using concrete and brick construction and 12 boarders from outlying areas had the opportunity to continue with secondary education.

First boarding house accommodates 12 students

Ek Samean who was supported by AFA as an Evangelist, continued for 7 years in charge of boarding but also in training these young people as Sunday School teachers and developing leaders.

The two‑story worship centre and boarding facility completes the vision that was developed 10 years earlier.

As the church grew in strength, AFA was not called on for any major projects but continued to support Ek Samean until the end of 2021.

Activities of ALC today.

The last two years, 2020-2021, were very difficult for the people of Cambodia. Schools were mostly shut, tourism stopped, small businesses struggled. The church community was only able to meet in house churches which extend from the National highway in the north down to the Vietnam border.

Finally, at the end of 2021, the community resumed weekly worship services, Sunday School classes, youth activities and best of all, a large gathering for Christmas and New Year.

Division from within

The young independent churches in Cambodia are at risk of losing the true Gospel to “a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all.” (See Galatians 1).

In Cambodian society, there is pressure on the members of the Christian Church to show a high degree of compliance with social mores and customs. The teaching and sermons can easily lapse into exhortations on law keeping and moral example at the expense of the preaching of the Gospel. The young churches need to revisit regularly the foundations of the reformation.

Galatians 6: 13 and 22 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love … the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Another challenge to the young Cambodian churches is division from within: Prosperity Theology; the writings of authors like Joyce Myer and the American tele-evangelists, recent conspiracy theories and mixing the Gospel with traditional religions.

Sao Eam had been the Pastor for several years and together with Ek Samean they brought the Gospel to Pou Riyum village near the Vietnam border. A young mother there, had lost her husband in a terrible accident at the Stung Meanchey tip in Phnom Penh. A new church was registered there, and Pastor Eam resigned for ALC to in order to start his own congregation in this area.

With the onset of the Covid19 lockdowns it has been difficult to get details on how this fledging church in Pou Riyum has fared. Sarin Meas, who had been working with Micah foundation in the Prey Veng capital is now the Chairman of the congregation and spiritual leader.

Where to Next for ALC?

Growth toward maturity and financial independence should always be the long-term goal of the AFA missions. At the same time, we would like to maintain our connection and support for this church community which is in relative isolation from their fellow Christians in the distant Provinces of Cambodia. AFA will continue in a small way to support a replacement for Ek Samean as we recognise and give thanks for the key role that she has play for over a decade as teacher, evangelist, bookkeeper and house‑mother.

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