Year 2018 is a year of renewed commitment to our calling. We can describe 2018 as finding our bearing and realigning to that bearing, we can also called it as refocusing on what God has called us to do.
There were three major gathering last year which the Lord used to lead us to our Unified Ministry Direction (UMD) for the year 2018-2022.
JAN 13-17, 2018 – LORD WHERE DO YOU WANT US TO GO? – FINDING OUR BEARING
All the staff gathered together for 5 days and we asked God “Lord, where do you want us to go? We spent time with God in prayer and in His Word focusing on the promises that He gave to our previous leaders, then we revisit important documents that served as records of God’s guidance to the Navigators Ministry globally and in the Philippines.
It is very clear from those documents that we are called to raise up LABORERS, by Evangelizing the Lost, Establishing young Believers and Equipping Disciples so that they will labor in God’s Kingdom for life wherever they are.
We state our CALLING as: “To advance the Gospel and His Kingdom into the nations through spiritual generations of LABORERS living and discipling among the lost.
This calling is very important because we believe that this is the reason why Navigators exist. “LABORERS” is what God wants us to contribute in the advancement of His Kingdom. We believe that Navigator Ministries is one of the many answers to prayer that Jesus told His disciples to pray in Mat. 9:35-38.
We define LABORERS as those who have committed to join God in advancing His Kingdom using their God’s given gifts, talents and resources in their lifetime.
Globally, the vision is to see workers of the Kingdom next door to everywhere. These are ordinary people from all walks of life who have decided to advance God’s Kingdom where they are.
In the Philippines, we see these laborers are being raised in the context of Biblical loving communities. Our vision which became our UNIFIED MINISTRY DIRECTION (UMD) was the outcome of the January staff gathering.
We state our Unified Ministry Direction in this manner; “We envision LOVING COMMUNITIES and LABORERS living out and proclaiming the Gospel of God’s Kingdom, leading to the transformation of hearts and lives, families and nations, from one generation to another”
This vision is not new, it written more than 15 years ago, the Lord just made it clearer to us by adding LABORERS (our calling) to it. The Lord has led us to focus on two things as we advance His Kingdom in the Philippines and beyond.
- Building Loving Communities
- Raising up of Laborers.
This is we believed the DIRECTION God wants us to go for the next five years (2018-2022) and beyond.
APRIL 4 –9, 2018 – LORD, HOW DO WE DO IT, HOW DO WE GET THERE?- OUR MINISTRY STRATEGIES
All the staff gathered again to ask the Lord these questions; Lord how do we do it? How do get there? The Lord led us to use what we already have just organize them to promote unity in the midst of diverse and different things that we are doing and align them to our Unified Ministry Direction (UMD).
I. BUILDING LOVING COMMUNITIES:
A. Regions and Regional Groupings
We have divided the whole country into six Regional Groupings led by Overseers:
1. North Luzon – Overseer: Danny Carigma
a. Region 1 – Ilocos Region
b. CAR – Cordellera Administrative Region
c. Region 2 – Cagayan Valley
d. Region 3 – Central Luzon (Vhal Alfonso as Regional Coordinator)
2. Metro Manila – Overseer: Howard Lee
a. North Western Manila – (Omar Ginon as Sub-Regional Coordinator)
b. North Eastern Manila
c. South Manila
3. South Luzon- Overseer: Wency Dela Vina
a. Region 4A – Calabarzon
b. Region 4B – Mimaropa
c. Region 5 – Bicol Region
4. Visayas – Overseer: Executive Team (Ronnie Saguit as point Person)
a. Region 6 – Western Visayas
b. Region 7 – Central Visayas
c. Region 8 – Eastern Visayas
5. North Mindanao – Overseer: Ed Amper
a. Region 9 – Zamboanga Penensula
b. Region 10 – Northern Mindanao
c. Region 13 – Caraga
6. South Mindanao – Overseer: Eseng Victolero
a. ARMM – Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao
b. Region 12 – Soccsksargen
c. Region 11 – Davao Region
The main tasks of the Overseers are:
1. To strengthen the existing ministry areas within their regions by aligning it to the Unified Ministry Direction (UMD)
2. To establish ministry in different regional and Provincial centers that will serve as Regional Ministry Hubs.
a. Ilocos Region – San Fernado City, LaUnion,
b. CAR – Baguio City
c. Cagayan Valley – Tuguegarao City
d. Central Luzon – San Fernando City, Pampanga
e. North Western Manila – Manila City
f. North Eastern Manila – Quezon City
g. South Manila – Makati City
h. CALABARZON –Los Banos/Calamba City
i. MIMAROPA – Calapan City, Mindoro
j. Bicol Rgion – Legazpi City
k. Western Visayas – Iloilo City
l. Central Visayas – Cebu City
m. Eastern Visayas – Tacloban City
n. Zamboanga Penensula – Pagadian City
o. Nothern Mindanao – Cagayan De Oro City
p. CARAGA – Butuan City
q. ARMM – Cotabato City
r. SOCCSKSARGEN – Koronadal City
s. Davao Region – Davao City
3. To expand the ministry in new places within the Region.
4. To raise up and train Regional Coordinators in each Region.
B. Local Ministry Areas – We call this Permanent Loving Community (PLC)
These are towns and cities within the Region with existing Navigators Ministry. A full pledge Permanent Loving Communities (PLC) are characterized as having:
1. Two or more local ministry entities (ELC’s).
2. Led by Team of Laborers who are permanent residence of the town or city.
3. Self-sufficient in terms of man-power (laborers) and financial resources.
4. Sending and supporting laborers to other places locally or overseas.
C. Local Ministry Entities – We call this Entity Loving Communities (ELC’s)
These are ministries to different entities with in the Local Ministry area or PLC’s like:
1. Campus Ministry (College, High School and Military)
2. Market Place Ministry (Professionals, Working people and Businessmen),
3. Community Ministry (Group of Families – upper class, middle class and poor)
4. Churches (Protestants and Catholics)
A full pledge Entity Loving Communities (ELC’s) are characterized as having:
1. Three or more Bible Study groups or Small Biblical Communities (SBC’s). These SBC’s are on the same entity.
2. Lead by Team of Laborers
3. Expanding the ministry within its entity
D. Bible Study Groups – We call this Small Biblical Community (SBC)
These are our Bible Study groups before. A full pledge SBC is characterized by having:
1. Three to Ten (3-10) people in the same entity.
2. The members have certain degree of commonality
3. Most of “Raising up of Laborers” are happening at SBC.
4. Led by 1 to 3 laborers.
To make these Loving communities (PLC, ELC and SBC) dynamic, vibrant and moving to advance God’s Kingdom we desire to see these four characteristics displayed and growing in each of these loving communities.
A. Transformational Loving Community – all of us are growing in our relationship with God and slowly transforming into the likeness of our Lord Jesus by:
1. Constantly learning the Word of God and applying it to ourlives.
2. Submission to the Holy Spirit
3. Applying biblical principles to our current situations.
4. The help of leaders and other members of loving community.
B. Communal Loving Community – we are loving, caring, helping and serving one another in all aspects of life. Spiritual, emotional and material and financial needs. We find ways that each one has their basic needs met.
C. Generational Loving Community– All of us are growing from baby Christian to faithful and committed Disciples of Christ and become equipped laborers of the Kingdom and see to it that the Gospel is passed-on not only to the next generation but to the third and fourth spiritual generations.
D. Missional Loving Community– All of us, especially the laborers are praying, thinking, planning and doing the advancing God’s Kingdom into their network of relationships and into different strata of society in different areas of the Philippines and beyond.
II. RAISING UP OF LABORERS
We are following the Biblical example of Jesus on how he raised up His disciples to become the foundational laborers. This is happening largely in our Small Biblical Communities (SBC’s) and summarized as follows:
A. Pioneering Stage: Forming the Small group or SBC – which include interacting with Non-believers and building trust and relationship and finally share the Gospel to them. We then form the SBC from all those who are called by God and responded to the Gospel. We called this stage as pioneering where Evangelizing is done.
B. Developing Stage: Helping the members of the SBC to get Established in their walk with God until they become committed followers of Jesus. We call this Follow-up, Discipleship or Establishing.
C. Maturing Stage: The members of the SBC are being equipped to do Evangelizing and Establishing. They are Equipped in terms of in-Depth knowledge of Word, in character, attitudes and heart and Skills in Ministry. We call this stage as Equipping.
D. Sending/Partnering Stage: We help the members get engage in the actual ministry that fits their situation and environment, starts pioneering another SBC’s where they are either individually or by two’s or three’s. We also call this stage as Engaging.
We call this process as 4 E’s (Evangelizing, Establishing, Equipping and Engaging)
The details of Building Loving Communities and Raising up Laborers are written in our PhilNavs Playbook which was the final output of the Staff Meeting last April 2018. You can download it HERE
AUGUST 24-27, 2018 – LORD, HOW DOES IT APPLY TO OUR MINISTRY AND THE DIFFERENT MINISTRY ENTITIES AND AREAS?
The staff gathered again last August 24-27, 2018 to find an answer to this question: Lord, how does it apply to our specific ministry and to different Ministry entities and ministry areas?
MINISTRY AREAS:
For Existing Ministry Areas: The leaders have organized their constituencies into different loving communities. They have an inventory of their existing Constituencies and Bible Study groups. They identified how many SBC’s they have in each ELC present in their PLC. They also identify at what stage they are in. They also identify potential SBC’s they can form. All this information became their basis for planning their activities and budgets.
Key to forming SBC’s are the existing and potential SBC leaders. Training to depend on God and building their skills and capacity will lead to sustainable growth of the ministry. Therefore each ministry area must have these trainings on going in their area.
OTHER MINISTRY ENTITIES
1. Ministry Among the Local Churches
The staff of Church Discipleship Ministry will have their SBC’s in the churches that they are attending. SBC’s which is similar our SBC within the Navs. This is important because this what they are going to teach to our alumni who are attending local churches and to other local churches who are open for discipleship training.
2. Ministry Among the Catholics
Our laborers with in the parishes and other Catholic movements will have their own SBC and should not disturb the ongoing programs of the Parish or the Catholic Charismatic movements where they belong.
3. Ministry Among the Poor
There are several methods that we adopted in ministering to the poor. The Antipolo model, the Tabaco model and the Discipling For Development (D4D) model. But in all these models the raising up of laborers in the context of SBC will still be adopted. The potential leaders will be formed as SBC while other constituencies can be part of ELC and PLC.
4. Ministry to the Nations (Missions)
We have adopted four types of missionaries who are going into missions both to the new nations (ethnic group) within the Philippines and overseas.
a. The Asia Pacific Missionaries – where we send our missionaries and Asia Pacific Navs will deploy them to priority countries.
b. On-loan Missionaries – where another disciplemaking organization will loan our staff and work in the country where they are operating.
c. OFW Missionaries – where our Nav laborers will not only work abroad but will bring with them our calling and vision and will do it where they work.
d. Migrant Missionaries – where our Nav Laborers migrated to other country but will bring with them our calling and vision wherever they are.
The common denominator among these types of missionaries is our calling and vision which is our unified ministry direction. The last two types of missionaries will consider reaching out for Filipinos first until they equip enough Filipino laborers to be able to minister to the locals who can in turn bring the gospel and raise up laborers among their people.
PIONEERING ANOTHER MINISTRY:
Pioneering ministry in any place and entity starts with forming the first SBC. One or two laborers start to intentionally reach out to their non-believing friends and to their network of relationships where they are. They pray for them and create an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel to them. Those who are interested to continue to study the Bible will now be formed as the first SBC.
The pioneers can be staff or alumni or partnership of both. They have clear vision of where they will go, our Unified Ministry Direction and they have the basic skills of evangelism and establishing.
The pioneers will concentrate on these first SBC’s until they become co-laborers forming and leading another SBC’s in the area. When several SBC’s are already existing, ELC can be formed and when several ELC’s are formed together they can form a PLC.
SEPTEMBER- DECEMBER 2018 – LORD, HELP US TO PUT OUR UNIFIED MINISTRY DIRECTION INTO PRACTICE. – MINISTRY VISITS.
Starting September until December 2019 the National Leadership have initially visited ministry areas in North Luzon, some in South Luzon, Visayas and some in Mindanao. The purpose was the help the local ministry area leaders to put the Unified Ministry Direction into practice one step at a time.
The focus of our first UMD’s application is the forming and building of Small Biblical Communities (SBC’s), and key to this are SBC leaders. Our SBC Carrying Capacity is equal to the number of SBC leaders we have multiplied by how many SBC’s they can realistically handle. People who are working 8 hours a day and 6 days a week can handle only 1 SBC while those who are freer can handle 2 to 3 and full-time staff who don’t have other responsibility can handle 5.
During the ministry visits the National Leadership help in determining the SBC carrying capacity of the area, by identifying the existing SBC leaders and the potential SBC leaders who are not handling SBC yet.
It is the responsibility of the fulltime staff with the help of the Regional Coordinators, the Overseers and the National Leadership to further equip and strengthen the existing SBC leaders and encourage the potential SBC leaders to form their own SBC’s wherever they are. In their schools, work places, neighborhood, their clubs and in their churches.
The staff will visit these potential SBC leaders one by one and be alongside with them until new SBC is born where they are. We believe that there are few reasons why a potential SBC leader is not involved in ministering to people even if they already receive basic training while in college or during the time that they were actively involved in the ministry.
1. They have not caught the calling of advancing God’s Kingdom through spiritual generation of Laborer.
2. They lack confidence – because they may lack the skills, knowledge and the gifting needed to start a small group. They do not know what to do and how to do it. They may also lack the content and the knowledge that is why they don’t have the confidence. Our NavPlayBook will help a lot in this aspect.
3. They are maybe pursing wealth and career and do not see the connection of advancing God’s kingdom to what they are pursuing.
4. They are maybe in sin.
5. They may see they are busy – in which if they are in any of the four reasons above, busyness is the most convenient excuse.
NEW MINISTRIES OPENED
Praise God for New ministries that was opened in 2018. The La Conception College in San Jose Del Monte Bulacan, The Rizal Technological University in Mandaluyong City, The Novaliches High School in Quezon City and the Racho Pogi community in Novaliches. Praise God for the Team of Kuya Omar Ginon who became instrumental in opening these campuses and community.
A new ministry area will also open through kuya Nani and Edna Romero, the Tagaytay Navs Ministry in Tagaytay City.
Another new Ministry in Makati was opened among the young professionals, Bobot and Jean gathered the yp’s in Makati area and they started to meet with a vision that several SBC’s in Makati will be formed among the employees of Mark Lumbay’s Construction Management company.
JERRY WHITE’s Visit
Jerry White the 3rd International President of the Navigators (After Dawson Trotman and Lorne Sanny) came last OCTOBER 12, 2018 He spent time with the staff and the general constituencies.
He shared three messages to the staff and 1 message to the Nav constiuncies.
His talks are found here.
– Lessons I’d wish I learned better – Among staff
– Leading from a Spiritual Foundation – Among the Staff
– Tough Issues on Leadership – Among the Staff.
– God’s View of Secular Work and its place in our ministry – Among the constituencies.
THE DEATH OF TWO NAVKIDS
In the midst of these advancement of the Kingdom among us, we also suffered two blows that almost devasted us. The death of our son JI and the daughter of Jaime and Nestine, Jazmin. These loses has driven us closer to God and realized that we are really on Spiritual Battle. So we end up the year by prayer and fasting last December 27.
Next Post: What do we look forward for 2019?