The European Baptist Federation (EBF) celebrated 400 years of the Baptist denomination at the Rai Center, Amsterdam, from July 23 - 26, 2009. I was officially invited as the guest of the EBF, and came away with a deeper sense of respect and pride for Baptist traditions. What began as a gathering of a handful of persecuted Christians from England who fleed to Amsterdam, with John Smyth and Thomas Helwys as the leaders in 1609, ended up with the inception of the Baptist church. Today it is a worldwide movement with over 43 million baptised members in over 200 countries.

A few important tenets that set the Baptist moving:

i) The Bible and not church tradition or creeds as their guide in matters of faith and practice.
ii) The church is only of believers and accordingly only those who believe maybe baptised.
iii) They emphasised on freedom of conscience to worship God and not human authority be it the King or the Pope. This set them against King James I of England (of King James Bible fame). The booklet of Thomas Helwys titled "Mystery of Iniquity" (1612) saw him being imprisoned until his death around 1616. In it he wrote in defense of the freedom of even non-Christians "Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure."

We have a rich legacy of heroes of faith who championed Social Action, like William Carey, Martin Luther King Jr., or in Evangelism, Johan Oncken of Germany who famously said "Every Baptist is a Missionary," and Billy Graham ! Or our own Billy Kim and Leena Lavanya and many unknown saints who labour for the Lord.

It is interesting to note that while emphasizing local church autonomy, early Baptists also believed in cooperative Christianity. Baptist Associations were formed as early as 1640's in Britian. Today we have Conventions, Unions and in the international fora, Baptist World Alliance and Asia Pacific Baptist Federation and so on.

2009, saw many celebrations of Jubilees, that mark a testimony to God's work and faithfulness in raising His church ! I was privileged to speak in several of them: to name a few, the 75th anniversary of the Lallaguda Baptist Church in Secunderabad, India; the 50th anniversary of the Chozuba Baptist Church, Nagaland and the first annual assembly of the Arunachal Baptist Church Council (Convention) at Longding, in the India/China border.

We also witnessed the first ever gathering of Baptist mission leaders at the Metropolitan YMCA, Singapore from October 27-30, 2009. 90 mission leaders from 35 member bodies and 20 countries converged to get to know each other and learn from each other. This is significant considering the fact that at least 95% of Asia/Pacific still remains unreached and many countries do not grant visas for 'missionaries'. New and creative ways of mission outreach were shared. We are grateful to the BWA Living Water, for their partnership in organizing this historic event.

As minorities in most countries, we face persecution of one kind or the other. Some are reported, while some suffer silently and bear witness to their Christ ! In India alone a total of 152 incidents of anti-Christian violence have been recorded in 2009. The Christian response to these attacks has been one of forgiveness and appeal to the government, to protect the life and property of its citizens. Let us pray and support one another. APBF would like to do more to help and advocate the cause of the persecuted church.

Natural disasters, one after the other, have struck our region from Taiwan to the Samoa Islands, wreaking havoc and death. The Asia Pacific Baptist Aid (APBAid) seeks to create awereness, prepare people to face disasters and mobilise resources to help the affected. We are greatly encouraged by the generous response from our churches and conventions, including individuals. It is indeed heartening to see even economically weaker conventions contributing to our appeals.

We congratulate the Asia Pacific Baptist Youth Fellowship (APBYF) for holding a successful conference in Hong Kong from December 27-30, 2009. The Baptist Convention of Hong Kong deserves our appreciation for the excellent hosting. We welcome a new team of leaders with Vee Tetseo of Okinawa as President. APBF would like to thank all member bodies for faithfully supporting it. I appeal that you will continue to include APBF also in your ANNUAL BUDGET of 2010.

Together with Rev. Chu Wood Ping and the APBF Executive Committee members, I would like to WISH YOU A BLESSED AND FRUITFUL 2010!