Kiribati Uniting Church (KUC) recently held a church service at Tangintebu Theological College to commemorate 164 years of the arrival of the gospel, through missionary Rev. Dr Hiram Bingham and members of the American Board Commission Foreign Mission (ABCFM) in 1857. Later in 1870, Samoan missionaries came with a missionary from the London Missionary Society (LMS) to Southern Kiribati. A boarding school, a training institution for pastors and a printing press were established in 1900. When the ABCFM left in 1917, it entrusted all the schools and churches in Northern and Central Kiribati to the LMS.
During this anniversary celebration, The Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) General Secretary Rev. James Bhagwan acknowledged the role of the Kiribati churches in speaking strongly to the world on issues of climate change, as he sent greetings, well wishes and prayers for the occasion.