Maximizing Corona Virus Lockdown
We’ve been involved in missionary work for about ten years. We never foresaw that something like the Corona Virus would take its toll and place heavy restrictions on us throughout this period someday. Hundreds of thousands of missionaries have left the mission field for obvious reasons, most of which stemmed from the coronavirus. Despite the delayed vaccine distribution across the country, safety has still not been guaranteed, and its publicized mortality rate is high. In places like Asia, billions of people have remained on lockdown and quarantines since last year. It’s most likely the lockdown will persist throughout 2021 in Asia. It has also been the most extended lockdown in the Philippines. We began national lockdown in March 2020. We are preparing for lockdown to continue onto December 2021 (18 months total).
We are preparing for lockdown to continue onto December 2021 (18 months total).
The lockdown has been a significant obstacle our family and teams have found challenging to grapple with. For mission organizations, this period has also been one of the most rewarding we’ve felt. By God’s grace, we have experienced tremendous progress in raising long-term leaders in the Philippines to sustain the movement throughout the year. This set of people have taken the responsibility upon themselves and proven to see God’s kingdom established in the country.
The Corona Virus made the missionaries be on the mission field just for the gospel’s sake. We foresaw this when the lockdown started last year, so we have leveraged that period to develop our staff and leaders. We will continue to build these people in preparation for our national campaign. We believe that after every conflict, there is a great harvest. History proves that any time there’s a catastrophe such as war, earthquakes, etc., a plentiful harvest would follow. This is an opportunity that we have decided to maximize, so we don’t lose out on God’s perspective for the harvest.
History proves that any time there’s a catastrophe such as war, earthquakes, etc., a plentiful harvest would follow. This is an opportunity that we have decided to maximize, so we don’t lose out on God’s perspective for the harvest.
If we look at things with our natural eyes, we’d agree that we’re losing. Churches have been shut down in the Philippines, and we lost all of our international power, and the country has been disrupted with 40% unemployment due to the pandemic. Hunger is skyrocketing. Depression, suicide, sexual abuse, and incest also happen regularly because people are made to stay in their homes. Families have no choice but to stay indoors like never before. However, if we look at things with a spiritual perspective, with our eyes full of faith, then we’d see that things are working for our good.
God has placed people who have surrendered totally to the gospel of Jesus. These people have given the totality of their lives to see God’s kingdom’s advancement regardless of the current situation. We have collaborated with these national leaders before the lockdown, and God has made those relationships grow exponentially during this lockdown.
Since the world is now digital, the church is not limited to how far it can reach people. We see tremendous progress as regards the harvest. By God’s grace, the leaders that have held on to the faith since the lockdown started are now blossoming and were able to run with that faith as we entered 2021. We’ve been in lockdown for nine months, and now we know what it feels like. Hence, even if the lockdown persists for another nine months, we know how to go about our plans and move forward more rapidly.
Preparing for The Harvest
Where there is a great catastrophe, a great harvest follows.
We know will witness a great harvest because, according to history, there is a huge need in the country like never before. Underground killings for various agendas are now predominant in the country. There has also been more persecution, generally in Asia. Anytime a Christian presents himself for help or relief in a persecuted nation, they’re being refused access. There is a high level of persecution, and people are trying to use the weaknesses to their advantage to proceed with their agenda. There are various problems in the family as well. There is depression, suicide, and many kids don’t want to go back to school. The Philippines’ average internet speed is one megabit per second, and many kids have committed suicide since they lack a good internet connection to get access to information for their online public schooling. Some of them don’t have the internet at all and are forced to operate from a module. Since it’s a developing country, many parents are uneducated, so it becomes challenging to educate their kids themselves since they are not educated themselves. A lot of people still suffer from poverty in the country as well. All these things would combine to produce a great cry together, and this would automatically result in a harvest. We want to respond to the roar when the time comes, so we are getting ourselves prepared.
The 4-14 Window
The Most Moldable Age Group.
Even before the harvest, 80% of people surrender their lives to Jesus Christ before the age of 21, and 70% are usually below the age of 14. From this data, we can infer that even without the catastrophe, that young age group committed their lives to Jesus even before a disaster. Now that we have a giant catastrophe and a multitude of young people who have responded to the gospel, there would be more people ready to respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have identified this opportunity, and we have decided to focus on that instead of focusing on the problems surrounding us. We believe that this opportunity would multiply if we’re able to leverage this period. The 4-14 window is when most people decide to commit their lives to Jesus Christ. Many churches cannot gather because of the current lockdown but instead meet digitally. This isn’t very easy for a regular Filipino unless they receive training on it or it’s their profession. This automatically translates to the fact that many people in the country are ready to be picked right now. Also, many things are happening right now, one of which is the growth of communism in the country. Communists are leveraging this period of pandemic and using it as an opportunity to recruit for communism. This is one of the trends in the Philippines now. One other trend is that the church itself is beginning to bubble and rise, and we want to get ahead of the curve when we get out of the lockdown. One of the crucial reasons for doing that is training leaders that are still walking by faith.
The 10-40 Window
Re-envisioning the most moldable age group with the most persecuted unreached nations
When asked if they had previously “heard of the Great Commission,” half of U.S. churchgoers (51%) say they do not know this term. It would be reassuring to assume that the other half who know the term are also actually familiar with the passage known by this name, but that proportion is low (17%). Meanwhile, “the Great Commission” does ring a bell for one in four (25%), though they can’t remember what it is. Six percent of churchgoers are simply not sure whether they have heard this term “the Great Commission” before.
The Barna Survey got statistics showing that below 17% of next-generation Christians have a simple scriptural grasp of the Great Commission. Most of them usually feel the Great Commission is reduced to compassion or rendering help to people that are in dire need. This is true, but only one part of the Commission. The Great Commission is far broader in scope than that. It involves reaching every single age group, every Buddhist, every Hindu, every tribe, and every non-religious person on the planet. These are about 3 billion people on earth, and many countries are even persecuting Christians. They are also receiving a large share of persecution. We believe that this catastrophe would birth a great harvest.
We’re planning to preach the gospel, disciple even the national leaders, and also re-envision them for what the Great Commission is at that moldable young age. We plan to re-envision the Great Commission in other spheres of life apart from religion, such as business, science, technology, healthcare, and other social sectors. We want the Bible to serve as the real transformative catalyst and foundation of all these social sectors. We want the Bible to be the manual of operation for different sectors of the society, professions, skill-sets, and everything. Even though this generation is in great need right now, we believe that in the next ten years, they could rise as one of the most potent forces in places where persecution is in Asia and make a lasting impact on the kingdom of God. This is possible if we plan prior and structure ourselves accordingly for the next ten years. We want to have faith goals, but we don’t want to stop there.
We believe that God grants us sufficient faith, wisdom, and human resources to develop these plans. This is why we are working with churches and other Christian leaders in various sectors to use this as a powerful driving force. We are currently developing our national leadership team that is channeled to measuring our goals related to the Great Commission. We are also building regional teams in 18 different regions of the country. We intend to divide them later into over 1300 inhabited islands and 40,000 cities, neighborhoods, communities, families, school districts, and all. We want to develop our leadership structure down to the family unit.
Leading With Data
Tracking Great Commission Data – Live
We also plan to create a digital app that would help us metric that throughout the country and track the nation and teams’ population. This app would also allow us to know how close we are to our goals. In this ten-year plan, we’re also looking at mobilizing one million missionaries and distribute them to the persecuted nations all over the world. This has remained a long-term goal for the national leaders of the country. To raise missionaries that can go to these nations, the Filipinos have to become missionaries to their country. This is how the major missionary sending forces such as America and Brazil have been. America is charged with giving 60%+ of its leadership to global missions of the world. They also offer 50%+ of funding for mission work. If we look at America critically, we would see a huge controversy on the gospel. The missionary-minded people in America believe that impact can be made both globally and locally. The Filipinos also need to think that their impact can be felt both locally and internationally. This is one of the things we are hoping to enforce in people’s minds.
We want to ensure they have collaborations towards achieving a common goal. Once the impact is felt in the country, faith and resources are made available to impact the nations. The Philippines have five times more Filipinos in the persecuted nations than America does. There are also three million Filipinos in the Middle East, even during this period of lockdown. However, when evangelists are being sent forth, and disciples are being made, it’s accidental. We believe that if we can successfully increase the country’s faith by using this God-given advantage, believing and planning in wisdom, and setting fire across the persecuted nations with the millions of Filipino residents there. We believe this would spark growth in mission building in general.
We have been fighting for our campus to begin development for the last three years, and now, by the grace of God, we are almost done with the legal process. We believe strongly that this process would have been finalized by half of this year, and we would begin the campus development after. We have 29 acres at the moment, and we can hold 150 predominantly single missionaries. However, we also want to be able to keep young couples and families on the base. We want to transition from holding 150 missionaries to 600 missionaries on our campus, use it as a national hub for the Philippines, and use it as a sending hub to the world’s persecuted nations. We want to leverage the fact that the Philippines is one of the few countries in Asia that doesn’t persecute Christians. 70% of Asia persecutes Christians. In many of these places, people get killed, jailed, or exiled by the government if they become Christians. This is why it is hard to train people internationally to complete the Great Commission except for the underground church movement. The Philippines is part of Asia and welcomes international people. Hence, it’s possible to train up Filipinos and internationals all across the world to complete the Great Commission. 40% of the planet that has not received the gospel is in Asia. This automatically means that to complete the Great Commission, Asia must be impacted, and the Philippines is one of the few countries that permits that and will allow us to send more trained missional leaders to our surrounding nations. The campus will maximize this privilege. One of the significant deposits of faith we have received from God is to believe that a great harvest would come after this very long lockdown.
Our Timeline for The Significant Progress of The Movement in The Philippines
In the first quarter, we are completing the recruitment and training for our campus staff. We are looking forward to having a digital national congress in the second quarter of the year. In the third quarter, we are developing the skill-sets required for our leaders to operate with the campaign after lockdown. The skill-sets are majorly focused on the coordination of campaign events, mission movements, and campus development. We’re focused on gauging a location where movement is in any sector of the society, evangelism, discipleship, and growing them exponentially. We’re also focused on developing the skill-sets needed to run our mission hub for the Philippines and various areas of Asia. In the last quarter, we believe that we would have gotten out of lockdown by then. We’re hoping to receive our international teams and staff leaders and prepare for a national congress, which would serve as the country’s actual launch. Here, we would have completed our app prototype, the infrastructures developed, and all the core teams ready. This ends in 2021. We hope to go into the actual national campaign in 2022, keep developing regional infrastructures, initiate campaign events, and multiply the mission movements.
Thank you for all the prayers, support, and believing in the call of God for the Philippines and the other unreached nations of the world.
Thank you for all the prayers, support, and believing in the call of God for the Philippines and the other unreached nations of the world. Your prayers and commitment to follow Jesus have given us the strength to persevere and endure everything currently in the Philippines and the world in general. We’re deeply grateful.
