BUFFALO, N.Y. (ABP) — Two Baptist missionaries, after serving 15 years in Thailand, have been reassigned to work with thousands of Karen refugees in the United States and Thailand.
The move is noteworthy because the United States recently changed a policy to allow more than 60,000 Karen ethnic people from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, to leave refugee camps in Thailand and resettle in the states.
Duane and Marcia Binkley, sponsored jointly by the American Baptist Churches USA and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, will work both with refugees coming to the United States and refugees still in camps along the Thai-Myanmar border. American Baptist missionaries have not served directly in Myanmar since 1967, due to the military government there.
Starting July 1, the Binkleys will collaborate with regional leaders and ABC and CBF local churches. Stan Murray, an ABC area director for Southeast Asia and Japan, said the Binkleys' “historic connection” with the Karen will prove one of their strongest assets.
Numbering about 400,000 people in Thailand and an estimated 7 million in Myanmar, the Karen people live mostly in the hilly area along the eastern border of Myanmar.
The Baptist mission in Myanmar began in 1814, thanks to the efforts of Adoniram and Ann Judson. The Judsons worked for nearly 40 years to plant Baptist missions there, and the Karen were some of the most receptive people in the country. Today, the Myanmar Baptist Convention claims over 1.2 million baptized converts, many of them Karen believers.
The Binkleys started in Thailand in 1982 and worked there until 1993. They then returned in 1998 and were relocated to the United States in 2006.
“We often hear the world is at our doorstep,” Duane Binkley said. “But the Karen coming to the U.S. for resettlement illustrates the point, especially for us in the Baptist churches.”
The point is highlighted by the dozens of Karen refugees who are attending Kenmore Baptist Church in Buffalo, NY. They started showing up during the winter of 2006 with little more than the clothes on their backs.
Kenmore Baptist is pastored by Ray Schooler, the president of the American Baptist International Ministries board. He took a mission trip to Myanmar last fall to learn more about the people there.
“Our church at first did not know what to do,” Schooler said. “Could we be the church and welcome these persons so different from us culturally and ethnically, but yet our Baptist brothers and sisters? We decided yes — it was our calling to receive them.”
In their own ministry, the Binkleys said, they plan to equip churches in the region to help the Karen — who often know early Baptist mission history in Burma better than most American Baptists — feel welcome.
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