Page 60 - Malaysia by John Russel Denyes

Every village church is also a school. The native
preacher is expected to see that his church mem-
bers and their children are taught to read their
Bibles. This work is done in the vernacular of
the people. The inevitable out-
Marked Effect come of this policy is that while
in Villages. many of the converts come from
the poor and illiterate classes, in
a comparatively short time the whole social order
is overturned, and the Christians become the edu-
cated and well-to-do people of the community.

The most important branch of school work is
that of training the native preachers and Bible
women. Until the last few years the mission has
been compelled to depend for
Training School the most part upon the illiter-
for Men. ate and untrained converts
that could be picked up or
upon other denominations. The untrained con-
verts were generally unsatisfactory in places
where there was much responsibility, and those
brought from China or taken from other de-
nominations were unable to fit in readily with the
conditions of life as found in the Straits Settle-
ments and with the Methodist method of work.
The need of more efficient helpers led Dr. West,
then presiding elder of the Penang District, to
open in 1897 a Bible Training School for young
men. For twenty years the school was con-
ducted wholly in the vernacular, but in 1917 it
was felt that changed conditions had made it es-
sential that the native preachers should also have
a training in English, in order to provide for the
evangelization of the English-speaking natives
and in order that the preachers even in the verna-
cular churches could fit themselves for leadership
in the awakened thinking of the times.
A similar school for training workers among

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