Writing a Commentary on Galatians (in Malay)

I am pleased and encouraged by a pastor's comments on my John's Gospel's commentary last Sunday. I did not seek it but when he saw I was holding a copy of the book, he said that he bought a copy some months back and was blessed by it. That gave me further impetus to write the Galatians' commentary that I am working on since March this year. After the difficult chapters of Gal 2 & Gal 3, I have reached the last paragraph of Gal 4 on Hagar and Sarah. Paul's letter to the Galatians is a great epistle and one of my three favourites as a young Christian (the other two being Romans and John's Gospel). Books in Malay are not only scarce but rare. There are a few Indonesian books but the Indonesian language has developed and diverged so much from Malay (Malaysia's Malay) that only scholars and those educated in Indonesia could understand. So it behoves me to write books in Malay to bless the Malay-speaking church especially among the indigenous peoples.

How can you get an educated clergy (trained pastors) without books? Many pastors in Sabah do not have a library, perhaps at most 20 or 30 books on their shelves, if they have any book shelf at all in their office or room in the church house. Out of the 60 or 70 pastors whom I know personally, I know only one pastor who spent her money every other month to buy books. She is indeed a rare species in our denomination. 

When I talked about the pastors' education, one senior leader said that the pastors have hunger for theological education and higher education for that matter. I wholeheartedly agreed with him, but our disagreement is over the standard of theological education. How can you award a Masters' degree when student read less than 10 books for each subject? Could they have developed critical thinking skills at a Masters level if there are hardly good theological books written in Malay? There are some in Indonesian, but many of them are translations from American or English authors. And translations from the original English into Indonesian makes it worse for the Malaysian readers. It's time for Malaysian scholars to write scholarly books in Malay. There are few and far in between. Yes, there are many devotional books and even a handful of topical or thematic books in Malay, like "Spiritual Gifts in 1 Cor 12-14" but I can't find solid monographs or commentaries that focus on the exegesis of Scriptural texts either in the OT or NT. May God be gracious to His Church in Malaysia and in Sabah.