Page 22 - 信義宗神學院（第四十二屆畢業特刊）

B. The Network Implementation Committee is the arm of the MMF designated to oversee the application,
approval and reporting of such Small Project Grants. LTS, as a coordinator of this committee, is
responsible for all administrative matters relating to these grants and the receipt of the financial support
provided by the MMF members in the form of pledges. This year, we handled 14 grants, mostly in the
nature of biblical and leadership training provided to clergy and lay leaders, tribal evangelists, as well as
children and young people. Moreoves, we also have a grant which is given for the translation of biblical
commentaries from English to the native language.

As time goes by, these churches and mission societies may go into partnership directly with the local
churches as well as funding their projects without an intermediary; thus, they have less need for shared
information from the MMF. Furthermore, their interest in providing funds for training projects of local
churches (who are not their partners) has also declined over time. As a result of this, at the conference in
November 2018, the MMF resolved to carry out a self-evaluation of its role and future direction for the
Region.

In addition to the work relating to the grants, LTS is designated to organize a joint seminar for theological
consultation every year. Last year, the seminar was held in Yangon and the theme was “Peace: Theology and
Practice in the Mekong Area”. The seminar was well received and so this year, we are following up on the
discussions of peace with the theme of “Dialogue” as a means to achieve peace: dialogues between religions,
denominations, in politics and between tribes and nations.
Last year, we also held a reunion of our alumni in Myanmar before the Joint Theological Consultation.
Since we have more than 80 alumni in this country, we hope to do the same this year. Indeed, it is our plan
to have such a reunion every year. By doing so, we hope to instill into our alumni the desire to participate in
theological consultations as a means of continuing education on their theological capabilities.
As regards the provision of theological education in the Region, we used to have about 20 students from the
Mekong every year. However, this year, we only have 15 with 10 from Myanmar, 3 from Laos and 1 from
Thailand and 1 from Nepal. Of these students, 6 are in the D. Th. program, 4 in M. Th., 3 in DTS, 1 in M. A.
and 1 in M. Div. With the departure of 1 for health reasons and 2 graduating in June, we will be left with 12
students from the Mekong. We have been dissatisfied with the decrease in this number and so, this year, we
carried out a large-scale recruitment campaign with a view to bringing the number back to 20 or above.
For this purpose, as we visited the site of an MMF grant, we also took the opportunity to pay a visit to a
partner church in Vietnam to persuade them to send students to LTS. We also did the same at our dinner with
about 8 alumni and their spouses who are leaders in Vietnamese churches and seminaries.
During the MMF conference in November 2018, we also talked to church leaders in the various countries in
the Mekong, asking them to send students.
As a result, the recruitment has been very successful in that we should be able to have 9 to 10 students
starting in the 2019-20 year.
Finally, since Mekong students are usually from a resource poor background and we being aware of our own
limited financial resources, we used to rely on our MMF partners, mainly in Europe and in the US, to provide
scholarships for these students. In recent years, the economic challenges in those countries have caused a
decline in the number of scholarships from these partners. To maintain the number of such students, we have
to do more donation appeals to churches and Christian friends in Hong Kong and, hopefully, get sufficient
scholarships from them to fill the gap. The two photos below are gifts from the Vietnamese Evangelical
Church given to LTS and The Mekong Mission Forum as a token of their thanks to us.

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