History of Shan Churches in Burma 1861-2001 - Khamkoo

Twenty-first century Shan mission project 157
We also need to develop methods of gospel presentation easily understandable and acceptable to
Buddhist Shan. Contextualization is very much important subject to develop in Shan situation. Many of
our evangelists do not know how to present gospel to Buddhists. Some western methods of gospel
presentation may not be very appropriate in Shan culture. In the year 2001, only 0.4% of five million
Shan becomes Christians.
Goal # 3 Church Planting
There are five million Shan in Myanmar adopted Buddhism as their religion since AD 71.
99% of Shan are Buddhists who follow Buddha’s teaching, idol and spirit worship. Their cultures are
based on Buddhist practices. Shan use to claim, ‘Shan are Buddhists and Buddhism is Shan religion.”
A new Shan Church in Eastern Shan State
How can we plant Churches among the Shan? Planting Churches is not just building church
buildings. A Church is a group of believers with regular fellowship, worshiping and praising God
together as the beginning of a Church in Antioch. The number of believers could be varied from 5 to
500. But Shan Baptists do not agree with this definition. Most of the Shan Baptist’s understanding of
“Church Planting” is confined to “building the church building.” The Shan Baptists do not consider the
fellowship of a group of believers as a Church without church building. If the church building is big
they call it a big Church regardless of the number of believers, members, attendances and spiritual
maturity of believers. A senior pastor of Judson Church said to me, “Yangon Shan Baptist Church is not
a Church because they don’t have ordained pastor, they don’t have youth association, they don’t have
women association, they don’t have Sunday school, they don’t have a church building and they are not
a member of any Baptist Association,” Is this a true definition of the Church? Yangon Shan Baptist
Church has more than one hundred members attending regular worship service every week and having
fellowship in communion every month at rented hall for more than one year. The first Shan-Burmese
Church was planted in Toungoo in 1862 by Rev. Bixby with nine members within one year of mission
among the Shan refugees in Toungoo.