Posted on: February 18, 2020 12:51 PM

[ACNS, by Staff Writer] Archbishop Melter Jiki Tais was installed as the primate of the Church of the Province of South East Asia last week (Sunday 9 February) in a service at All Saints Cathedral in Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. He succeeds Archbishop Moon Hing, who will continue to serve as Bishop of West Malaysia until his retirement in November.

Archbishop Melter is the sixth archbishop and primate of the Anglican Church in South East Asia and will lead the Church for the next four years. He has been the Bishop of Sabah since 2015, and was the first native of Sabah to be installed as bishop of the diocese.

The archbishop was ordained to the priesthood in 1993 and has served in various capacities in many parts of Sabah, including Priest-in-Charge of St Margaret’s Church in Keningau and St Peter’s Church in Tenom, Rector of St Mark’s Church in Lahad Datu and St Luke’s Mission District in Telupid.

Delegates from the four dioceses of Kuching, Sabah, Singapore and West Malaysia gathered for an extraordinary synod in September 2019 to elect their new archbishop.

In addition to Malaysia and Singapore, the province also extends into Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia and Nepal; all of which are country-wide missionary deaneries. Legally, these missionary deaneries are part of the Diocese of Singapore; but for all practical purposes they are deaneries of the whole province – churches across the province are engaged in missionary activity with them.

The service was live-streamed on the Anglican Diocese of Sabah’s Facebook page and remains available to view here (the service starts at minutes, and the sound begins at 36 minutes).