ST PAUL’S ANGLICAN SUPPORTS
Restore Mission: a ministry that strengthens the Anglican, United and Congregation churches in Milne Bay, a province on the east coast of Papua New Guinea.
THE NEED
Currently, the Bishops in this area run 600 churches, 256 schools and 29 hospitals and health centres. Their mission is to deliver the gospel to the poorest, most remote people in the province. They only have 45 diploma trained ministers, and are in desperate need of formal theological training. The remote bush minister does not get paid and has to grow all his own food on top of running the church, medical clinic and school. The church lacks in administration and project management skills, providing great difficulty in fulfilling all these responsibilities.
These local churches have also been providing 97% of all government services in the province for the past 130 years, including vast infrastructure over many mission stations. They are proud of what they have been able to preserve from early missionary teaching and systems. Through years of hard work, the quality of the year 12 school completions has been raised in remote mission schools. The big challenge is discipling the gospel with the next generation. The current generation of school leavers are better educated than their parents and the local bush minster, and he cannot answer many of their questions.
THE MISSION
Angus and Christina Skeoch are missionaries with Restore Mission. Restore Mission PNG is an evangelical association run by retired Anglican, United Methodist and Congregational Bishops in Milne Bay PNG. Its goal is to strengthen the Evangelical tradition in Milne Bay through theological education and support the church run mission stations by providing medical remote store resupply to island mission station hospitals.
With the help of Anglican Aid, Anglican Relief and Development Fund Australia and Mobile Mission Maintenance (MMM), Angus and Christina adapt often to the needs of the growing college, currently this looks like a lot of training of staff, formal document writing and refitting Endurance, the 20m sailing ship in Brisbane.
Restore collaborates with Word Partners biannually on a variety of face to face training programs with 35 clergy and their wives.
With the help of St Paul’s Anglican, Angus and Christina studied at St Andrew’s Hall in Melbourne in 2021 as independent missionaries. Following this they travelled with CMS to open Milne Bay as a mission field to slowly attract more workers.
Angus and Christina regularly host partners from Papua New Guinea in Australia to foster collaboration between the Anglican Church of Australia and the Anglican church of PNG. Bishops and Church Leaders attend conferences like GAFCON and meetings at various institutions within the Sydney Diocese, gaining valuable insights into practices that can be adapted to the PNG context.
This is the 8th year of this mission and from its early beginnings we have worked hard to train up local people with education and management skills, a large part of our work is to connect Restore PNG with a growing network of external funders and Australian expertise. Each time the local team is strengthened, Angus and Christina adjust how they support to cover missing skills or foster growing skill sets.
Currently, Angus is focused on learning a new educational program to run ministry apprenticeships in PNG and restoring the medical resupply ship Endurance. Christina’s attention is on trialing and enhancing the PTC offline app with Moore College which will be delivered on solar powered tablets and will alleviate the issues with internet and power access. Christina continues to run the online Restore Christian College and encourage students.
