'Church planting' can be contentious work

Wesley International School was opened by the U.S.- based Oriental Missionary Society, now known as OMS International.

John Wesley (1703-1791) was an English theologian who started the evangelical Methodist movement. He spent two years in the U.S. as a missionary.

The OMS began in 1901 with missionaries going to Japan with the ambition of putting a Bible in every household. That meant 10 million, but the effort had minimal impact. Today, only one per cent of Japanese are Christian.

A few years later Korea, China and India were targeted by the OMS. Indonesia was included in 1971.

OMS International says its missionaries "are urged to work toward the goal of making themselves dispensable by training and encouraging national coworkers who can take their places of responsibility in the work.

"It is not the aim of OMS to establish a foreign church, but to assist in the establishment of the indigenous church." This is widely known as `church planting.'"

In the 1980s foreign missionaries started complaining that the Indonesian government was tightening visa regulations to restrict their activities.

The Department of Religious Affairs said only about 20 foreigners were legally working as missionaries in East Java.

Five mainstream religions are allowed to openly practice in Indonesia: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism and Hinduism. According to the department, Protestants and Catholics form less than 10 per cent of the population and Muslims almost 90 per cent.

Occasional news items of foreign teachers being deported for allegedly working as missionaries, and claims that some aid workers in Aceh were missionaries in disguise seeking to "Christianize" tsunami victims, keep the issue alive. (Duncan Graham)