Ministry Update - Kalubian and Bahala

I’m heading back to the UK for a few weeks today, so posting is likely to be a bit haphazard for a while. Just wanted to give a quick update regarding the church plants at Kalubian and Bahala. We have been praying a lot about who would be the best person to take the work on in these villages, and a missionary friend recently introduced us to Pastor Glemar, who is an evangelist working in a nearby area. Pastor Glemar was recently ordained in the Christian and Missionary Alliance church of the Philippines, and has a real heart for outreach and ministry among the poor. When I met him I discovered that he was engaged in a very similar ministry to ours in a village nearby to Kalubian. He also runs a children’s ministry in one of the poor downtown areas of Cebu city.

For the last 3 weeks pastor Glemar has been visiting Kalubian and Bahala with me to meet people and get a flavour of the ministry there. Now that I am going to be away for a month Glemar will look after the 2 churches for us, and if all goes well we will have a ‘handover’ some time after I get back. Our vision has always been that we would be a catalyst for starting new ministries, and that as soon as the right leaders developed or joined us we would look to hand over responsibility to them. So far the church members have been very positive. The ladies of Kalubian have formed an outreach team to visit Bahala with Glemar and encourage the new church members there. There is sadness that I will be pulling out of this ministry, but also joy that they will finally have their own Filipino pastor and not have to cope with my excruciatingly bad Cebuano.

Do keep praying for all concerned, the churches and pastor Glemar especially. It is not all finalised yet, and I know from experience how these types of arrangements can easily get derailed, but I am hopeful that this is going to develop positively.