November 9th, 2009 by Ptr. Vince
It has been almost a week that I have been a little silent. It all started last week when I attended the 17th Associational Meeting of Leyte Association of Southern Baptist Churches.
The meeting has a theme: “Steadfastness For A Better Harvest” taken from the key verse Galatians 6:9. Since Ptr. Joe Ytom was not able to come due to health reason, the meeting was still blessed by equally powerful speaker, Ptr. Joe Fernandez.
The meeting’s lectures were about worship leading lead by Cainta Baptist Church worship team and Preaching Lessons taught by yours truly.
About 70-80 people attended the meeting and it was indeed a great blessing to each one of us. God’s message centered about the “Bountiful Harvest” in the Lord. Ptr. Joe talked about harvest season. By quoting the incident where Jesus ask water from a Samaritan woman, Ptr. Joe explained that the Samaritan woman have become the harvest, and immediately became a harvester where she went to her relatives and told them about Jesus Christ.
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September 28th, 2009 by Ptr. Vince
Christians Were Also Victims of Typhoon Ondoy
For the last few days of following the news, I could not help but to let tears fall from my eyes seeing my fellow Filipinos suffering from the catastrophic effect of the Typhoon Ondoy. There were already close to 100 death toll and still unknown total numbers of missing people.
We are not talking about remote places, we are talking about the capital city of the Philippines, Manila along with surrounding metro provinces like Rizal, Bulacan, Pampanga, Cavite, etc.
Typhoon Ondoy already have damaged about Php95M worth of crops in Calabarzon alone (Inquirer). Hundreds of millions in damaging properties like vehicles, houses, appliances, etc. Thousands were in evacuation areas. Hundreds of people were now getting sick.
My dearest brethrens, I encourage you all to pray for the Filipno people. We are in the midst of crisis.
We have lots of Christian brothers who were also affected by typhoon Ondoy. And worst, there is another typhoon threatening the Philippines within two to three days. Pray that God will intervene on these catastrophic event. May God save the Philippines.
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August 11th, 2009 by oggie
Viewing the Organized Church
For the past 7 years since my wife and I began doing Home Church, one question has persisted: How do we view the denominational/organized churches and those who attend them? I have to admit that my initial feeling was one of distaste and even disgust for a time. After all, did not some of the errors, excesses and unbiblical forms and practices of the traditional church system drive us to discovering the freedom and greater effectiveness of Home Church?
Our experience was that after having devoted nearly two decades of service to the traditional church system, we were beginning to see its failures on many fronts. From that God began to show us how many of the things we previously read into the book of Acts as being normal church life were simply not there. We saw how open the meetings were in the New Testament in comparison to the typical North American church service. We also saw how the leaders were expected to serve more than be served and adulated. Besides that, the attention given to the church building itself was compared to the First Century, when special church buildings were not given much consideration at all.
Having church in the home, of course, does not automatically fix everything. I see it as a step in the right direction, that direction being towards God’s perfect will for His people. But if we are not careful another dangerous step can inadvertently be taken in the wrong direction, away from God’s Heart and Mind for us!
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July 31st, 2009 by oggie
Several years ago, some co-workers dropped in without any warning at the weekly small group gathering for Christians in our company. We were pleasantly surprised, of course, and asked what prompted them to join our group. They shared about a Christian co-worker who had been their supervisor for a few months on an assignment in another province in the Philippines. They were amazed by the way this brother conducted himself — he was a person of honesty and integrity, he showed that he cared for his people and he pursued excellence in his work. They also noticed that he had been with our small group before they went together on that assignment and came to the conclusion that there must have been something in what we were doing together that influenced the life of this brother. They came to us because they wanted to be like him. They saw Jesus in and through his life.
When the subject of influencing the world for Christ comes up the first images that flash into the minds of many believers often include Christian celebrities who use their status to affect change, massive evangelism events and big churches with outreach programs. The Lord may use such highly visible means but He often works in many other invisible ways to reveal His Kingdom to a lost world.
We often judge the success of what we are doing by its visibility and size. But somehow God’s economy seems to work differently. Jesus often illustrated influence for His Kingdom using the picture of small seeds falling to the ground or being sown in a field, a lamp on a hillside or grains of salt on a plate of food (Matt. 5:13-16; 13:1-42). Perhaps Jesus is saying that it is in the small deeds of “ordinary” Christians in everyday life more than the big people, the big events and the big programs that He and His Kingdom will be revealed.
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June 2nd, 2009 by Ptr. Vince
May 6-8, some of the young adults from Cainta Baptist Church and a young pastor from Tagbilaran came to Ormoc Lighthouse Christian ministry to teach and share valuable things concerning music ministry in our churches.
Ptr. Gumps Beltran taught voice lesson, playing guitar and playing drums along with bro. Luke Barromeo a young people from Cainta Baptist Church.
Ptr. Emer Cables and bro. Allan Ingeniero taught things about worship leading. They covered the who, when, where, what, how, and why of worhip leading; how to be an effective worship leader; recruiting worship team members, and living a life of worship.
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October 8th, 2008 by Ptr. Vince
There Is A Need For A Local Mission Organization
It is a “MUST” for every church no matter how small it is to have a mission organization or a mission body who will take care of the mission efforts of the church. Christ himself commanded for us to reach and make disciple of all nations, to baptize them, and teaching them to obey everything he commanded (Matt 28:18-20)
However, there are churches that refused to work on this essential part for the reason that “they cannot” fully support a pastor or a church planter in full. And if they will be supporting a missionary, it has to be channeled through para-church mission organizations for transparency purposes and taking care of credibility.
There is no question concerning the efforts of these big mission organizations. They have been very helpful in the mission efforts. However, most of these mission organizations focus on foreign mission efforts, to which sometimes, we now forget that we also need to have a local mission efforts.
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