Interview with Rick and Anne Weymouth — NZCMS missionaries share 30 years of mission work in the Middle East and Asia
Rev Harry Newton of Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church interviews Rick and Anne Weymouth, long-serving NZCMS mission partners.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton interviews Rick and Anne Weymouth, who have served over 30 years in cross-cultural mission, including more than 20 years living in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Rick now serves as Associate Secretary for Accreditation with the Asia Theological Association (ATA), supporting a network of nearly 400 Bible colleges across 33 nations in Asia and the Middle East, while also contributing to the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE). In a spare-time capacity, Rick also serves as an equipper with the Increase Association, a network of 30 church-based theological education by extension programs training first-generation Christians across Asia. Anne, no longer a formal mission partner, is active in her local church and community in Martinborough, including teaching art and serving on the committee of the Martinborough and District Budget Service. The interview covers their call to mission, the challenges of raising a family overseas, the decision to return to New Zealand, and the significant behind-the-scenes work of theological education and accreditation that underpins church growth across Asia.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and Family Update
Rev Harry Newton: First of all, for those of you who have served overseas as missionaries, or have known missionaries as my family has, we all know that actually you come as a cohesive whole. It's a family unit. It's not just the two of you. So you've got two boys, Matthew and Stephen. Do you want to tell us about them and what they're up to at the moment?
Rick Weymouth: Sure. So we've got Matt and Steve. Matt's on the left. He's nearly 25, and he's been with YWAM for a few years. Recently he's left there and gone to live in Whakatane. He was doing what I would call voluntary ministry there, kind of surviving on the smell of an oily rag, but he's realised that he needs a job — that's real life. So he's been looking for a job, and it looks like he may be on to something, which is really good. His passions really are discipling youth and evangelism.
Anne Weymouth: And I don't know whether last time we were here he probably had — he wasn't here — but we would have shown you all his big dreadlocks. Well, he's actually shaved those off and they're gone.
Rick Weymouth: And Steve is 23, and he's studying at Bethlehem Training Institute in Tauranga to be a primary school teacher.
Transition from Joint to Solo Mission Partnership
Rev Harry Newton: Now, this is a bit of a time of transition for you guys, because while you've both been NZCMS mission partners in the past — and for those who don't know, NZCMS is the New Zealand Church Missionary Society, descended from CMS, the Church Missionary Society, who sent the original missionaries to New Zealand and helped write the Treaty of Waitangi — actually now, Rick, you are technically the sole mission partner, as it were. Do you guys want to explain to us about this time of transition, what's going on?
Rick Weymouth: Sure. Thanks, Harry. It's lovely to be with you all. God bless you. It's great to be back here again. So it has been a time of transition. Up until recently — up until about a year ago — we were both mission partners. In 2018, as a family, we moved back from the Middle East. We'd lived in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. We moved back to New Zealand but continued to be involved in the Middle East for about six years from home. So we became New Zealand-based, overseas-focused mission partners.
But now, formally, Anne has reached the age of getting a gold card. I've got a couple of years to go. So formally, I'm the mission partner, and Anne is no longer formally a mission partner. But we're still together, still connected, and still working together and supporting each other in ministry.
Up until two years ago, I was working for a church-based training program in the Middle East, serving the Arab world out of Jordan. I was basically involved there for about 20 years. But it was time to hand over those roles to my Jordanian colleagues. I was involved in online learning, converting printed courses into multimedia online courses for a discipleship and training program. That finished two years ago. At that point, I'd had a long connection with the Asia Theological Association — ATA — and joined them on staff. So having finished the role linked to the program in Jordan, I joined the staff of the ATA. I'm one of their accreditation staff, and from two years ago that became my full-time role, again based in New Zealand but with lots of trips overseas.
Call to Mission and Early Years
Rev Harry Newton: You guys have done 30-plus years of mission service, including 20-plus years in the Middle East itself, which is pretty amazing. How did you end up living overseas, and where were you mostly based?
Anne Weymouth: For me, I received what I call a mission call before I'd even really given my life to the Lord properly. When I was 17 years old, I remember going to a service at the Baptist Tabernacle in Auckland. They had a missions call, and I stood up — I really felt prompted to stand up. Then I really gave my life to the Lord when I was 20. So I did have missions on my mind. At one stage I'd read a book and thought I want to go to India, so I went to talk to this guy Viv Gregg, who was taking a group over to India, and I thought I could just tag along. But he actually said, "What were you planning to do this year before you came to see me?" And I said I was planning to go to Bible college. He said, "Well, you go to Bible college, and if you still feel called to go to India at the end of the year, come back and see me." But during the year I met Rick at Bible college, and that kind of changed the focus to the Middle East. So that's how I ended up in that part of the world — because of him, and because of God.
Rick Weymouth: I have a secret. I'm originally from the West Island of New Zealand — Australia. I came to New Zealand to go to Bible college. It was actually in my fourth year at Bible college in Auckland that we met, and it gets called bridal college because of people like us. Originally I came thinking I would end up in Australia — that was my horizon. But coming to New Zealand, coming to a different country where I only knew one person, was an amazing story. In our first year of practical field ministry, doing Bible in schools, I was partnered with someone who was the first cousin of that one contact I had in New Zealand. Now of course I know hundreds of people.
I used to go to mission speakers at Bible college and ask them, what are the most difficult parts of the world for Christians to live in and work in, particularly as missionaries? They typically would say the communist world and the Muslim world. I've always been someone up for a bit of a challenge. The communist world started to open up — the former Soviet Union became Russia and started to let people in — so that was less of a challenge to me. That left me with the Muslim world. There's a great book, now available online too, called Operation World — a prayer guide to all the countries of the world — and through that God gave a real burden for the Middle East. So when Anne and I met, that's what was on my heart and what we were sharing about, and we ended up there together by God's grace.
The Decision to Return to New Zealand
Rev Harry Newton: After 22-odd years abroad, you remained involved in missions, but sometimes when we think of missions in churchy circles we think it all has to be over there. But actually you made a decision to come back to New Zealand — overseas-focused but New Zealand-based. What led to that decision?
Anne Weymouth: It was really just about the needs of the family at that time. With the boys in their mid-teenage years, we were having a few struggles. To me as the mum, it felt like that illustration of the frog in water that's getting warmer and warmer and the frog isn't noticing until it's too late. I was kind of feeling that about our family circumstances. Rick and the boys did not want to leave Jordan at all, so it was a process we had to go through. It took about a year, and then we all felt it was right to go home. Well, the boys were still protesting, but later on they said it was the right decision after they'd been in New Zealand a while. It was really about family — family here as well.
Rev Harry Newton: What are some of the blessings and challenges that went along with that?
Rick Weymouth: It was a difficult decision. The Middle East — we love the Middle East, we love the people, the culture, the food, and we've got so many friends there now. But it's a stressful cross-cultural environment, and those stresses tend to accumulate and have an impact on you. For the sake of the family, we needed to come back somewhere more relaxed, and for us that was home in New Zealand.
But for Matthew and Stephen as teenagers at the time, New Zealand was not home. Jordan was their home. They were going to be leaving the place where they'd grown up and gone to school. We were part of an Arabic-speaking church. They were in an international school for Christian workers' kids. They were protesting, particularly one of them. For a while, we were the worst parents in the world for making them leave their home to come back to New Zealand. Even when we got home, we were still the worst parents in the world. It just could not have been God who said for us to come back — not from their point of view. But after a while they did come to accept it. Thankfully now we've come back to being the best parents in the world for the two of them, by God's grace.
It was a challenge, it was difficult, but we needed to do it — that was just the reality for our family. And it has enabled the longevity of our ministry and our ability to serve with an overseas focus by being back in a more relaxed environment in New Zealand. That has been God's gift in a way.
Rev Harry Newton: As bad parents, you join the ranks of my parents and my in-laws, apparently. In our case, when we moved to Sumner, we bribed our kids with a puppy. Don't recommend that, just for the record, because you get stuck with the puppy. Guess who picks up her poo? Not the kids.
The Asia Theological Association and Accreditation Work
Rev Harry Newton: You mentioned serving with the Asia Theological Association — ATA — supporting over 396 Bible colleges across the world, serving 33 nations, training in excess of 70,000 people a year for ministry and mission across the Middle East and Asia. You are part of this organisation. What is your primary role with ATA? I know it involves accreditation. What does that mean? What does it look like?
Rick: We might even go over 400 Bible colleges this year as we're getting new members, which is really exciting. And half of them are in one country — India. Half of the 400 are in India. Amazing.
I've had a long involvement with the ATA now for 16 years. I've been on their accrediting commission — the body that decides the accreditation of all these Bible colleges, the ones who become members and then want to accredit their programs. For the past two years, as part of this transition — leaving the role in Jordan and joining the ATA on staff — I've become Associate Secretary for Accreditation. We add on educational development, but that becomes too long for a job title, so we all get called secretaries in this theological education world.
Essentially, our role is to support the network of Bible colleges. We provide what we call accreditation — another more modern word for that is quality assurance. We do quality assurance for Bible colleges who have their own God-given mission and vision to serve their country or their part of the world in Asia. We come alongside them every five years and do a really thorough evaluation. We look at everything in the life of the Bible college — not just the academic programs, but how they care for their students, how they do governance with their board, how they do management. We look into the kitchens and the dining room. We talk to existing students and past students, the graduates. We talk to the stakeholders like the churches where the students are going to work after they graduate. We do a very holistic, whole-institution evaluation in order to help them fulfil their own mission and vision and do it to the glory of God with quite high academic standards, intended to serve their mission for the glory of God.
That's probably one of the greatest privileges for me — just to see the wonderful things that believers in multiple countries are doing to strengthen the church in their countries, and of course as they strengthen the church they're strengthening the mission of God in their countries. My role is to help in that process through policy development, and I do visits to the colleges from time to time, which keeps me in touch with the amazing brothers and sisters in Christ in multiple Asian countries including the Middle East.
Travel Across 24 Countries
Rev Harry Newton: My understanding is 24 countries in 10 years. That's pretty impressive. These guys live in Martinborough — has anyone been to Martinborough? For those of you who haven't been there, you're missing out. It's a metropolis. Martinborough's not a very big place, is it?
Rick: About 5,000. It's a little bit bigger than where we were in Greytown, actually. Not by much. But yeah, lovely part of the world.
Rev Harry Newton: Nonetheless, you're involved in supporting the work overseas, so obviously it necessitates travel. You've got these trips lined up, except you're not allowed to go into India. Do you want to tell us why?
Rick: Yes, sadly. I did have a visa for India and went there last year. It was a real highlight for me, visiting South India, four cities, six Bible colleges. The ATA have an office in Bangalore for ATA India, where they look after the 200 Bible colleges — half of the ATA. So I had that privilege of going there once. But this year I applied, and I mentioned that I had been in Pakistan. There's of course some border conflict going on at the moment with fighting between the two sides, and they were obviously very strict. I got an email from the online visa application people saying, "Please explain the circumstances of your visit to Pakistan — who you were visiting, where you were staying, what you were doing." So I did that as generically as possible, but two weeks later I got the visa rejected. That was really a disappointment, because I was due to go there two weeks ago. ATA India had convened a meeting of denominational leaders from all across India — two meetings actually — and I was going to go to one of them. We wanted to hear from the church leaders of the country as to how we as a theological accrediting association could better serve the churches. We ended up having to leave that to just my Indian colleagues to have that meeting with the church leaders, so I missed out. But yeah, visas are getting difficult in lots of places, and the church is under struggle in lots of places too.
Rev Harry Newton: And correct me if I'm wrong, but that means now if you apply for a visa and they ask, "Have you ever been denied a visa?" you have to say yes and explain to every other country why you got denied. So hopefully they don't think you're a terrorist. Yeah, that was a joke. No one laughed. All right.
What are some of the biggest challenges and joys that come with so much travel?
Anne: For me, I love the fact that Rick loves what he's doing. In fact, he told me that his boss — who's a Filipino lady — introduced him at a big conference as somebody who writes policies and manuals and loves his work, and everybody laughed. And a man from Africa who's in charge of Africa said, "Could you send him to me please?" So he loves what he's doing, and that's awesome. He does go away for weeks at a time, and it gives me a chance to have some curry, because Rick doesn't like curry so much. And I don't mind being on my own — I feel very safe. For me, a good curry is one that's not too hot. We just had her birthday recently and we had Indian for her birthday, which I helped to cook.
Rick: Some of the joys of travel include meeting really amazing brothers and sisters in Christ who are leading these Bible colleges — the staff and the students. They're committed to serving the work of the gospel in their countries. It's just a privilege to meet godly men and women who are serving the Lord and have a vision for their country. That's probably the greatest joy.
But as you can see, we're getting older, and it becomes more of a challenge to travel. You're more easily tired. So I now have to build in days when you travel — as soon as you arrive rather than getting straight into the work as I used to be able to do. You need a rest day, a recovery day, a catching-up-on-sleep day before you get into things. So that becomes a challenge. But it's an awesome privilege at the same time.
And I should mention — one of the big transitions for me: a year ago I became a New Zealand citizen.
Rev Harry Newton: Your life is better for it. Well done.
ICETE and Global Theological Education Standards
Rev Harry Newton: There's a great quote here: "Theological education is the most significant missiological task in our time." Often we like to think of the mission people serving in refugee camps in the Middle East — amazing work, I can't take away from that. However, sometimes the work behind the scenes, like what Rick's doing — the accreditation, supporting biblical formation, helping train up the next generation of leaders — is actually the really important stuff that we miss. Rick, you've been involved in quite a lot of organisations recently, including ICETE. Do you want to tell us what ICETE is and what you're doing with them?
Rick: ICETE is the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education. In theological education we use lots of abbreviations, and this one gets called ICETE because it's too hard to say the full name. ICETE is an umbrella body for all of the regional accrediting and quality assurance associations and institutions — like the Asia Theological Association, who I'm on staff with. The ATA is in fact the biggest of these global or regional accrediting associations, even beating some of the ones in North America.
ICETE is the supervising body that provides a set of global standards. They're trying to globalise some of the work of theological education so that if someone gets a degree in Asia, they could go to another part of the world — to South America, Africa, or Europe — and have their degrees fully recognised with comparable and equivalent standards. This year, one of the jobs I'm involved with is putting the ATA through a process of alignment with these global standards that ICETE defines. We have to show that we are in substantial compliance with these global theological education standards. So I'm doing a self-study report for the ATA where we demonstrate that compliance and explain how we're doing. Just as we do an evaluation of Bible colleges every five years, they're going to assess and evaluate how well we do our job. So we're under the scrutiny and under the microscope in the coming few months, and that's one of my roles.
I'm on a couple of ICETE committees too. I've been on a committee that has developed what we call a qualifications framework — similar to the New Zealand qualifications framework — where we have level descriptors that define what holistic theological formation looks like at various levels: certificate, diploma, bachelor's, master's, doctoral, and so on. Another thing I've been involved with for them is micro-credentials. Micro-credentials are short learning units, anywhere from 10 learning hours up to 400 learning hours. New Zealand is actually a world leader in micro-credentials and has a really robust set of micro-credential policies. So I've helped to introduce New Zealand standards into our Asian standards, and I'm currently doing the final draft of a policy statement for micro-credentials as part of a little ICETE task force.
The Increase Association
Rev Harry Newton: Final question for you, Rick. There's lots going on. You're working with ICETE, you've been doing other stuff with ATA, you're NZCMS mission partners, you've previously partnered with ministries in Jordan and also MECO across the Middle East. You've worn so many hats. Tell us about the Increase Association and serving a network of churches.
Rick: Whilst the ATA is my full-time job, I have a spare-time role with a group called Increase. This is a network of church-based training programs that do theological education by extension — a church-based training model that does grassroots training, typically for first-generation Christians in many of these countries. So Christians who've come to faith from Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, or atheist-communist backgrounds right across Asia. The church is starting to grow right across this region, but there's a need to train the whole people of God, not just leaders for the churches. Training of leaders is critical for the future of the church, but training the whole people of God who've come from non-Christian backgrounds and need to be built up in the faith is equally important.
The Increase Association has 30 programs and is a big network. I serve as an equipper — which is just the biblical term for a consultant — and there are about 20 of us who serve this movement of church-based training programs. I've got a conference coming up in October in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and I'm looking forward to that. But yeah, that's a part-time, spare-time role. ATA is the main one.
Anne's Life and Ministry in Martinborough
Rev Harry Newton: Coming sort of full circle, Anne — you're in Martinborough. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing. I know you're involved in some budgetary support service stuff.
Anne: In Martinborough, I enjoy being very much involved in our little local church. I'm also very involved in our arts centre, and I've been teaching an art class there for five years. I've got ten people and we have a great time, lots of fun. I coordinate our workshops as well. And I'm also involved with the Martinborough and District Budget Service, which is a budgeting service that's government-funded. I'm on the committee and help out a bit there.
Rev Harry Newton: I know that region well — having cousins all across the area, I know that the regions aren't always well-serviced for that kind of support. So I think what you're doing is amazing. Is there anything in particular we can pray for, for you in your ministry and your life in Martinborough?
Anne: I really just want to have a witness there. I'm on a committee with nine ladies, basically, and as far as I know I'm the only one who goes to church. So just that we'll have a witness in our community. Pray for Matt — that he'll get a job. That would be great so that he can continue to do the stuff he loves doing. And of course the job itself — God gives us work and he wants us to work.
Prayer Requests and Closing
Rick: I mentioned two of the things I'm working on — finalising this micro-credentials policy and writing this big self-study report for ICETE for the accreditation of the accrediting agency. Part of that also involves a new update of our accreditation manual — we have to do a 2026 version of that. So I'm doing the updates for that. There's a bit of pressure involved. And then a big trip, hopefully, after all the work is done. October and November, I've got a seven-week trip to visit five different countries. Appreciate prayers for that.
And thank you so much for your prayers and support over many years. Our first connection with Sumner Redcliffs parish goes right back to 1994. Some of you are from that era, some of you are newer, of course. But yeah, it's been an amazing journey. Thanks for your prayers and support.
Rev Harry Newton: You guys are much loved here in this parish, and people pray for you regularly. Could I end by praying for you guys?