Philippines church planting: A bumper crop

By Ed Fenstermacher
Special to the Hoosier UM News

Description of the country

Although the Philippines is slightly larger than the state of Arizona, its population is 84.5 million. It is comprised of over 7,000 islands. Its people are 95 percent literate, yet 40 percent of household incomes are below the poverty line. In 2002, the unemployment rate was 10 percent. The population continues to grow rapidly. It is the most Christian nation in Asia with 92 percent of its population claiming to be Christian

Philippine UM Church planting

United Methodism's presence in the Philippines began back in 1898 when the Spanish ceded the country to the United States. The two oldest churches are Knox and Central UMCs located in Manila. By 1980, the UMC was an aging denomination with very inward-focused congregations. In 1980, Bishop Emerito Nacpil, now retired, had the dream that every United Methodist church would regularly be involved in establishing a new outreach mission (mainly new churches).

As a result, a church-planting movement has developed in the Philippines that is local-church initiated with the bishop's and superintendents' support. Taytay UMC, for example, established twenty new churches over an eight-year period. And it has had 40 laity receive the call to ministry since 1980! The church in the Manila Episcopal Area alone tripled in size -- from 100,000 to 300,000 people. The number of churches has increased from 200 to 600. As a result not only have new districts been established, whole conferences have been formed as well.

How they grew churches:

The bishop, who had helped initiate three churches in a four-year period, himself, cast the vision -- raising the expectations of his superintendents, pastors, and churches -- and provided accountability.
The bishop and superintendents relied on the laity to help fund, initiate, and lead the new churches.
To become a pastor, you first have to plant a new church.
Although seminary is still encouraged, primary training is a two-week intensive course on how to be a pastor and plant a church, followed by local-pastor school.
The conference reallocated most of its resources to the local-church effort.

What are leaders' roles, now?

The bishop's role continues to be casting the vision and holding people accountable, but it also includes raising funds for pastors' salaries.
The district superintendent's role is identifying potential mission areas, helping local churches identify potential church planters, supervising pastors, and raising funds for church planting, including pastors' salaries. (One district raises pigs to earn funds. A local church is assigned the responsibility of raising them.)
The local church's role is to be actively sending out teams to start new churches, providing funds for church plants, and recruiting and supporting new pastors.

Learnings from the past twenty years

A church's location is important. Some hard-to-get-to churches are struggling.
Teams plant churches better than solo church-planters. Some churches now are being planted with two local pastors, a key lay couple from the sponsoring UMC, and a supervising elder that meets with the pastors each month.
An effective model for establishing a new faith community includes:
- Having a sponsoring UM church or churches.
- Having UMC members already in the targeted community.
- Initially reaching the children through programming.
- Meeting physical as well as spiritual needs.*
- Starting Bible studies in homes.
- Contemporary worship is essential if the young people are to be reached. (Their services -- including the songs they sing -- are very similar to those in the NIC.)
- Reaching men is hardest. They usually come once they see the changes in their families.
- Prayer is a key ingredient.

*They use M.O.D.E.L. which stands for Medical, Optical, Dental, Evangelism, and Legal. Lay teams with those gifts come for a day to meet the needs of those living in the target area. Before the physical needs are met, each household has a spiritual assessment done. Those unchurched are then invited to attend home Bible studies and an evening evangelistic worship service.

Last updated on 01/14/2004

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