During COVID, a simple church was started in Khlong Kao, Thailand, among a group of Myanmar migrant workers. The new church met in a small room on the floor where they studied the Bible and worshipped Jesus together.
It was the second church planted by a young pastoral couple who had also started a church thirty minutes down the road. Although the pandemic eventually pushed the new church into hibernation, the group was resilient and not only survived but grew to about forty people. As the pandemic lightened, the pastoral couple identified another couple as apprentices and passed on the leadership of the new church in their hands.
“These leaders recognize the power of empowering others,” said Jeremy Penner, Multiply long-term worker in Thailand who works closely with this network of churches. “They are very good at giving away responsibilities and encouraging new leaders. Yet it seems that the biggest bottleneck in this process is the lack of training. They are asking us for help.”
Jeremy and his wife, Adrienne, have been serving among the Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand for several years and they have seen amazing church multiplication among this marginalized people group. They celebrate what God is doing among these people and they see the resilience of their leaders in the face of opposition and suffering. The Penners are also aware of the needs among these churches.
Naing Lin is a Myanmar pastor and church planter within this network. He serves in the province of Samut Prakan where there are an estimated 500,000 Myanmar migrant workers. “We want to reach this province with the Gospel,” said Pastor Naing Lin, “so we have a vision to start one hundred churches in this area. That means we need at least one hundred humble and passionate leaders.”
“Pastors like Naing Lin have so much faith and energy,” said Jeremy, “but he can only do so much on his own. They are asking us to help them multiply leaders for these churches.”
With a strong desire to serve these pastors and to support the ongoing multiplication of their churches, the Penners invited Doug Heidebrecht, Director of Global Training, to come to Thailand to facilitate Missional Leadership Training (MLT).
The Penners were familiar with this unique training curriculum which has been developed through a partnership between Multiply and MB Seminary (Canada) on behalf of the International Community of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB). In fact, when MLT was first being shaped in 2018, this fledgling group of Myanmar leaders was one of the very first to receive the training. However, with recent exponential growth and the emergence of many new leaders, the Penners felt it was time again.
“We have a vision to start one hundred churches in this area. That means we need at least one hundred humble and passionate leaders.”
So, in March 2023, about twenty-five Myanmar church leaders gathered for training in Chachoengsao, Thailand. According to Doug, who has been involved with MLT from the beginning, the group of leaders that gathered reminded him exactly of why this training has been developed. “Our goal is to provide sustainable, biblical, and missional training for global leaders who do not have access to formal ministry training in their contexts,” he said, “while at the same time providing the relational support for local trainers to provide on-the-ground training themselves.”
In this case, both the training itself and the teaching model had a strong impact on the Myanmar leaders. One of the participants explained how their culture in Myanmar is extremely hierarchical in its approach to leadership. He said that, even in their churches, it often felt like the teaching of the Bible was unattainable for common people, because only professionals were allowed to teach.
“Many of us have sat in Bible studies where the teacher would never allow us to even open the book he was teaching from,” the church leader explained. “But in MLT, we were not only given the teaching manual into our own hands, but we were invited to teach others. We have never experienced this before. What an amazing gift!”
The vision of MLT, from its beginning, has been to provide each participant with the trainer’s manual in their own language so that they have the necessary resources to train others. At the very outset of the sessions, the focus is on multiplication and empowerment. In order to facilitate this, there needs to be strong relational support and accountability between the facilitators and the cohort of leaders.
The high level of trust and personal engagement that was communicated through the recent training in Thailand gave the Myanmar pastors and leaders renewed courage and confidence to continue multiplying disciples and training new leaders.
According to Jeremy Penner, the impact of the training sessions was obvious on the faces of those who participated. “As we sat together and learned how to teach the material,” he recalled, “the team of pastors was filled with joy!”
It was more than fourteen years ago that Multiply workers, Dave and Louise Sinclair-Peters, first came into contact with Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand and began preaching the Gospel among them. “We never could have imagined that those first Myanmar believers would become the gifted leaders of a dynamic, disciple-making movement,” said Louise, who now serves as the Regional Team Leader in Thailand. “I am honored to work with this passionate team of disciple makers in Multiply who work together to serve our Myanmar sisters and brothers.”
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