New Wineskins: Missionaries’ Family Reunion

Anglican Missionary Norman Beale believes that God opens unexpected doors to Christian ministry. As he worked among Nepal’s Tamang people in the 1990s, he asked what he could pray for villagers, who directed him to an ailing water buffalo.

“I had no veterinary background,” Beale said, and he unsure where to place his hands on the suffering creature. After settling on its nose, the Anglican priest prayed, and the animal’s healing opened doors to literacy classes, screenings of the Jesus film, and the launch of a local church.

“The Holy Spirit just showed up in great power. I don’t have power to do any of this stuff, but God does,” Beale said. “Today the church in Nepal is full of people from many ethnic groups and castes, not just the Tamang people.”

“The hope of unreached peoples in the world and in Nepal is found in the Lord,” Beale’s wife, Beth, said before more than 1,500 people at the New Wineskins for Global Mission Conference, which met September 17-20 outside of Asheville, North Carolina. More than half were participating for the first time, ranging from missionaries with young children to retirement-age people still on the mission field.

The Tamang were at the inception of Anglican missionary efforts there, and today the country’s first indigenous dean leads the Anglican Church in Nepal, which ministers among the south Asian country’s 227 ethnic groups and 125 languages.

“God in his Spirit is growing and multiplying,” said the cleric, who requested anonymity for security reasons. “Let us dare to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to the unreached. It is our responsibility to extend the kingdom of God wherever in the globe we are in.”

The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Maet Paul, Bishop of Gambella, Ethiopia, echoed the Nepalese cleric’s words. Established in 1996, the Anglican Church in Gambella has grown to 75 churches, 47 congregations, and 16 church plants in the region.

“Many of these congregations are in a great need for discipleship training with a purpose of being rooted in Jesus. Many of our congregations worship under a tree, as they cannot afford to build proper church buildings for worship,” Paul said of his growing flock.

The triennial conference, which brought participants to the Blue Ridge mountains from dozens of nations, marked its 50th anniversary, first founded as the Episcopal Church Missionary Community in 1975. Among the largest recurring events in the Anglican Communion, New Wineskins serves as a mission conference, family reunion for sending churches and missionaries serving across the globe, and a time of united worship.

Under the theme “Hope for the Nations,” the 2025 event drew 70 different ministries, several of which hosted multiday pre-conference gatherings, including the sending organizations Anglican Frontier Missions and the Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders. Anglican institutions including Trinity Anglican Seminary and Nashotah House Theological Seminary also sent teams.

Anglican bishops from the provinces of Alexandria (Egypt and North Africa), Uganda, and Southeast Asia participated alongside those from the Anglican Church in Brazil and the Anglican Church in North America. Members of the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans and the Global Anglican Future Conference were present.

“I cannot tell you how proud I am that the largest event our province hosts is a mission conference,” ACNA Archbishop Steve Wood said during the conference’s concluding worship service, in which Archbishop of Southeast Asia Titus Chung and Archbishop of Uganda Stephen Kaziimba concelebrated the Holy Eucharist.

Visa issues prevented some longtime participants from attending the gathering, including many from Myanmar and Sudan. Archbishop Stephen Than Myint Oo of the Church of the Province of Myanmar provided a video message, and Ugandan participants’ visas were only granted the week before the conference, enabling their presence.

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