Cults, Religion and Boredom

Yesterday I joined a meeting with Pastors, Church leaders and Christian NGOs. Our hosts: the Provincial Government leaders from the Ministry of Cults and Religion. (Yeah, I know... established, mainstream denominations and kooky cults are on a level playing field in Cambodia!) The purpose of the meeting was to tell us all that Churches need to be registered. Fair enough. I would have been okay with an email but communicating this message in the local style required a full-day conference in the Provincial Capital.

It was boring. Don't get me wrong... I did learn some stuff. I now understand that if a church has a sign in a foreign language as well as in Khmer then the Khmer script must be at least one-third larger than the foreign letters. I learned that a new Christian church cannot be started within 2km of an existing church. Our attention was drawn to a 2003 document that states that Christians are forbidden to sit and wait and use the words, "God has come already." (Maybe this was a reference to the latest End Of The World predictions late last month?) Anyway...

On the whole it was boring. But that's one of the reasons I went. If I'm going to send a staff member to these public meetings I should be willing to endure one occasionally. I took notes. Last night I reviewed the single page of scribble that read: "I'm so tired... Jesus is NOT coming back on May 21. I will not sleeb todxyx__....." I blame the hot weather and the early start from Poipet with no time for coffee. I put it down to not sitting directly under a fan and having to sit through long speeches in formal Khmer.

But I guess we all have parts of our work that are boring?