Churches In The Philippines Ppp

THE CHURCH IN THE PHILIPPINES

NUMBER OF CHURCHES IN THE PHILIPPINES

1890 – 1975 : 5,0001976 – 2000 : 51,5752001 – 2007 : 60,000

POPULATION OF CHRISTIAN CHURCHES:

SIZE OF EVANGELICAL / PROTESTANT CHURCHES

CHURCHES MEMBERSHIP %

19,720 BELOW 30 38.20

11,900 31-50 23.05

7,410 51-75 14.35

5,310 76-100 10.28

6,200 101-300 12.01

595 301-500 1.15

320 501-1000 .62

120 1,001 & UP .33

TOTAL: 51,575

Source: The church in the Philippines

THE CHURCH IN THE PHILIPPINES

OBSERVATIONS

Why are Christian churches not growing?

WHY ARE CHURCHES NOT GROWING?

SURVEY QUESTIONAIRE

1. COMPLETE NAME2. NAME OF CHURCH3. DESIGNATION/ RESPONSIBILITY

Result of survey / Reasons cited:

American church statistics show

D-GRP; G-12; CELL GRPS; CARE GROUP; etc

THE PROBLEM?• CHRISTIANS THINK CHURCH IS A BUILDING

LOCATED IN A CERTAIN PLACE. THEY HAVE CONFUSED CHURCH WITH A BUILDING.

• THE TRUE MEANING & DEFINITION OF CHURCH HAS BEEN OBLITERATED.

• WORSHIP HAS TAKEN ON A DIFFERENT MEANING. IT IS SINGING ON A SUNDAY SERVICE.

• WORSHIP IS DONE ONLY ONCE A WEEK.

THE PROBLEM?• PASTORS FAILED TO EQUIP THEIR PEOPLE TO

ACT AS A ROYAL PRIESTHOOD.• CHRISTIANS THINK ONLY PASTORS ARE

TASKED TO PLANT CHURCHES.• CHRISTIANS THINK ONLY ORDAINED PASTORS

ARE EQUIPPED & QUALIFIED TO DO THE WORK OF A MINISTER.

THE PROBLEM?• CHRISTIANS NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE

PRIESTHOOD OF THE BELIEVER.• THEY NEVER UNDERSTOOD THEIR CALLING.

JN.15:16• THEY ARE CONTENT TO SIT IN PEWS & LISTEN

TO THE PASTOR. • CHRISTIANS HAVE BEEN UNWITTINGLY

CONDITIONED TO ACT AS SPECTATORS IN CHURCH.

THE PROBLEM?• MOST CHRISTIANS CAN BE CATEGORIZED AS

NOMINAL CHRISTIANS. • THEY ARE REPRESENTED BY THOSE WHO PAUL

WARNED TIMOTHY ABOUT • “AS HAVING A FORM OF GODLINESS, BUT

DENYING THE POWER THEREIN.” THEY SIT IN CHURCH PEWS, BUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE GOSPEL SIMPLY GO OVER THEIR HEADS.

THE PROBLEM?• LAYMEN HAVE NOT BEEN ENCOURAGED NOR

TAPPED TO DO THE WORK OF CHURCH PLANTING.

• CHRISTIANS HAVE CREATED THE WRONG IMPRESSION THAT TO BE CALLED A CHRISTIAN YOU NEED TO GO TO CHURCH EVERY SUNDAY.

• MANY CHRISTIANS ARE AT BEST CHURCH GOERS OR ATTENDEES.

THE PROBLEM?• PEOPLE ARE MORE PROTECTIVE OF

THEIR POSITION & POSSESSIONS THAN THEY ARE OF THE GOSPEL AND ITS SPREAD.• CHURCH HAS BECOME A LOCATION

RATHER THAN US.• MANY CHRISTIANS ARE NOT

LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO DISCIPLE

Amazing, wonderful, MIRACLES happening all

around the World.By: James Rutz

An Unprecedented Movement

• In China, there is an unprecedented movement that even surpasses that early growth of the church

• and this unparalleled revival is a house church movement.

• The following is taken from the Caleb Report in the 1990 Jan./Feb. issue of MINISTRIES MAGAZINE. The report is given by Loren Cunningham, founder and president of YWAM “YOUTH WITH A MISSION:”

An Unprecedented Movement

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA

Lily & Zhang

From Open Doors’ Pierre Tschanz comes a charming report that will make you delighted or embarrassed or both:

One of their workers took some bibles to a house church in Central China and gave them to two new believers, Lily & Zhang, sisters who had been saved that day in the house church.

Around two years later, another member of their staff was in the same town and met Lily & Zhang. He wanted to know what they had done since becoming Christians.

Lily & Zhang


IN A RESTRICTED AREA, A GROUP OF BELIEVERS STARTED PROCLAIMING THE GOSPEL IN NOV.2000. BY SEPT.2004 THEY :

• PLANTED 44,086 CHURCHES• WON 483,635 NEW BELIEVERS• TO DATE THEY ESTIMATE THEY COULD WELL

BE OVER A MILLION CHRISTIANS NOW


• THAT’S THE PET NAME OF BROTHER YUN, A MUCH LOVED GENTLEMAN WHO PROVIDES LEADERSHIP FOR CHINA’S LARGEST NETWORK OF HOUSE CHURCHES, TOTALING

•60,000,000 PEOPLE• HIS MOVEMENT IS PLANNING ON

• WINNING 45 MILLION MORE TO CHRIST THIS YEAR!

• As of 1995, India was probably seeing only a few hundred new churches planted per year (all traditional and institutional).

• Then they adopted the house church model, where even the dalits (“untouchables”) could go out and plant ever-expanding networks of lay-led, home based congregation.

Dramatic Church Growth

Meanwhile, in MexicoIn the small Southern Mexico village of

Chiconamiel, an epidemic of black measles swept through in 1998 and quickly killed about forty people.

Two of the victims were teenage girls, daughters of a widow who was a fairly new Christian. By the time the girls died, there was no one left in town healthy enough to carry the girl’s bodies to the graveyard. So the poor woman had to drag both bodies there herself.

Meanwhile, in Mexico• Because of the plague, there were only two

young men strong enough to dig graves, so there was a line of 21 corpses waiting to be buried. The woman tenderly laid the bodies at the end of the line, and since it was hot, sprinkled a lot of white lime powder over the bodies as disinfectant. Then she set off walking down the mountain.

• The next morning, after eight hours of walking, she reached the town where her Christian contacts lived.

Meanwhile, in Mexico• But since the men were in the midst of a

heavy prayer and fasting meeting, she had to wait two hours more to see them.

• By that time, they didn’t think they could climb back up the hill to Chiconamiel before nightfall, so they waited till the next morning.

• When they finished the uphill trek, it was evening again, and the girls’ bodies were only three or four away from being buried.

Meanwhile, in Mexico

The men gathered around the bodies in a circle, as the disciples did for Paul when he had been stoned and left for dead in Acts 14:19.

They prayed in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they called the girls by name.

Both of the girls sat up! The young men then had a good laugh as they watched the girls trying to spit the lime out of their mouths.

Meanwhile, in Mexico

This is but one of the many highly varied occurrences in Sothern Mexico (plus the highlands of Guatemala) that have sprung from the work of the Freedom Ministries staff.

(They’ve stopped counting.) This is the world’s major epicenter of resurrections.

Buddhist MonkAthet Pyan Shintaw Paulu was born in 1958 in

the town of Bogale on the Irrawaddy Delta in Southern Burma (now Myanmar).

He became a zealous Buddhist monk and died in 1998, remaining dead for three days.

Then at the end of his funeral, just moments before his coffin was to be shut and cremated, he sat up in front of the hundreds of people, shouting:

Buddhist Monk

“It’s all a lie! I saw our ancestors burning and being tortured in some kind of fire. I also saw Buddha and many other Buddhist holy men. They were all in a sea of fire!...

We must listen to the Christians. They are the only ones who know the

truth!”

The Most Important Resurrection Since Christ

• One of the seven leaders of China’s Church Planting Movement is Wang Xin Cai, a tough-as-nails, highly outspoken man about 5’3”.

• Wang spent 13 years in prison loading rocks onto trucks by hand. His daily quota was a staggering 20 tons.

• By 1996, his health was broken, and he was near death. The government didn’t want the embarrassment of top religious leader dying in prison, so they sent him home to die with his family.


• Surprise!

• God healed him!• The next year, he and his wife had a second

child, another girl. The first was three years old at his arrest. He returned to find she was a

• 16-year-old traveling evangelist.


• Though things were going well for him, Wang was quite distressed by a major problem: At that time, there were just four major strands of the Chinese church that had ever cooperated with one another, and even they had unraveled from each other because of some minor differences. Suspicion and condemnation reigned all across the land.

• He saw this as a major threat to the future of the church in China, so in December he called for a summit meeting in his city in Henan province.


• On the morning the other three leaders were arriving, Wang’s daughter was hanging out clothes on a clothesline attached to their fourth-floor apartment. She had the baby in a baby pack, but as she leaned out,

• the baby twisted unexpectedly and fell out, plunging three floors to instant death, her head split wide open.

• In a state of shock, Wang gathered up the remains, put the body on a blanket, and laid it on a couch in his living room.


• Then he prayed loudly, “Lord, if this unity meeting is of You, then You have to heal my daughter. If you don’t, I’m finished serving you because I just can’t take it anymore. And I’ll know that this unity vision is not of You.”

• He then left his heart behind and staggered off to the meeting-to struggle earnestly for unity in the church.


• After a hard day of prayer and negotiation, Wang returned home and looked at the couch. The baby was still dead, but amazingly, her head was together again, in one piece! In faith, Wang gave thanks.

• The next morning, there was no change, but instead of staying to pray, he left for another day of conference. That evening, he returned home to find the baby breathing! But she was in a deep coma. Again he gave thanks.


• The third morning, he put his feelings behind him as best he could and went to the meeting again.

• That was a day of salvation for the church in China.

• In a breakthrough of immense importance, the four brothers resolved their differences and found ways to work together as body of Christ. The largest church on earth was saved from perhaps decades of fragmentation and destructive conflict.


• Returning home that evening, Wang Xin Cai found his daughter awake, alert, eating happily, and perfectly whole in every way.

• Today she is a bouncy seven-year-old who reflects the joy of the Father when He sees His children living in unity.

The Only Known Cure for AIDS

If you have AIDS or are HIV positive, your best bet is a quick trip to Africa, where people are being cured in churches.

For instance, the Synagogue Church of all Nations was founded 7 years ago with only 8 people. Now this church in Lagos, Nigeria, has 250,000, give or take. Their pastor, T. B. Joshua, can’t pray for everyone who attends, but he prays for quite a few.

The Only Known Cure for AIDS

In Uzbekistan• In June, 1999, two Korean women came to pray for a

village in Uzbekistan. Although they spoke only Korean, they were invited (by gestures) to enter a home and pray for an old man, who was unable to move.

• One of the ladies, Kim, said later, “The lame man begin to wriggle, and then stood up as though someone has just cut his chains. He was healed”.

• But as he got to his feet, the Koreans suddenly realized that the impressed bystanders had no idea why the man was healed. So in desperation, Kim began explaining the gospel in Korean, hoping they would understand a word or two and catch the drift.

In Uzbekistan

IN ARGENTINA

• Two years later and a half a world away, a 12-year-old gypsy girl died in Argentina. She had been a Christian for some months, but her attempts to be witness to the tightly knit gypsy community had been rejected.

• In the wee hours of the morning, in the middle of her funeral wake,

• she suddenly sat up in her casket, causing the people in attendance to jump up, rejoice and dance, and start dismantling the funeral setup.

IN ARGENTINA• “Don’t take anything down!” the girl warned.• “Jesus told me to return just to tell you that

He loves you and that you have to accept Him if you want to be saved.

• That’s the only reason why I’m here. At ten o’clock, Jesus will come back for me, so leave everything like it is.”

• At 10A.M., her Lord Jesus came back and took her home.

• Her gypsy friends swarmed into the kingdom.

A Most Intricate Miracle

• Wolf Simson, editor of the Friday Fax , read by seven million readers, is at the vortex of information on church growth.

• In 1998 he began to feel God wanted him to leave India and move to a more strategic location. He asked a number of his Christian friends to seek God for guidance on his behalf.

• It wasn’t long in coming.


• One of them (Bernard Ankoma of Ghana) said, “You’re going to go back to the homeland of your mother.”

• Another said, “Borders. I see a place surrounded by national borders.”

• Another said, “I see a nice, clean river. Your place is near a bend in the river.”

• Yes, its hilly country, “ someone else chimed in, ”and I have the name of that river. It’s the Rhine.”


• A YWAM staff member added, “Your home is the middle unit in a triplex. Its got green doors, green window frames, and there’s a chimney on one end.”

• “And don’t worry about money,” one declared. “I know you don’t have any, but God’s got it for you.”

• In all, ten friends responded to Wolfgang’s request for help. On that basis, he and his wife, Mercy, packed up and went to his mother’s homeland, Germany. Arriving there, they went to a town near the Rhine and soon found the triplex with the green windows and doors and the chimney.

A Most Intricate Miracle• (In July 2000, James Rutz, author of MegaShift, stayed with

the Simsons, and he said their home was indeed in a little finger of German territory that juts out into Switzerland near Zurich; there are Swiss borders on three sides within 700 meters)

• The unit was for sale, and he found the owner and introduced himself, “Hello, I’m Wolfgang Simson.”

• “Oh, yeah, ”he replied, “ the guy who’s going to buy my house. God told me someone named Simson was going to buy it. You must be a Christian, too, so here’s the keys. Don’t worry about money, we’ll do the paperwork later. Just give me a down payment when you get it.”

A Most Intricate Miracle• After they got most of their things moved in,

Wolfgang decided to clean out the mailbox, as the unit had been vacant for a while. One envelope in the pile was from Switzerland.

• It was addressed only to the street number. Inside was a letter from a man he’d never heard of, saying,

• “The Lord has given us this address & impressed upon us that we are to send you fifty thousand Swiss francs. Please send your name and account information so we can wire the money.”

GOD INTERVENES• A lot of today’s miracles cannot be traced to any

human efforts-not our faith or obedience or evangelism or sensitive response to the voice of God.

• They just happen because God saw a need and decided to handle it Himself.

• On Christmas Eve, 1998, a young Hindu named Mohan Kanojia rounded up 25 of his friends to form a hit squad and kill a church planter, a 55-year-old Mannu Lal. After a few drinks and sacrifices to evil spirits, they set out on their mission of murder.

GOD INTERVENES

It’s Not About You • Sometimes God does a miracle unrelated to your

needs, mostly to show us how wonderful He is.• On several occasions, He has brought someone

back to life for a few set hours or days-for a specific mission usually evangelistic.

• In the state of Bihar, India, there is a notoriously anti-Christian tribe called the Malto. When a crew with Campus Crusade’s Jesus film attempted to schedule a showing there in 1998, they were strongly rebuffed.

It’s Not About You • A few days later, a 16-year-old Malto girl died.

But that evening, just as her parents were about to bury her, she came back to life.

• As an awed crowd gathered around her, she told them that the God of the film crew has sent her back for seven days “to tell as many people as I can that He is real.”

It’s Not About You • The girl and her mother went searching, and the

next day, they found the crew in a nearby village and invited them back for a showing. For seven days she told her story in every village they could get to, drawing large crowds for the film.

• Hundreds of people became Christians and started churches.

• After seven days the girl still looked fine, but she collapsed and died once again

What is Church?

• “The Greek word for church, ekklesia, is composed of two words: “ek” meaning “out of,” and “kalleo,” meaning “I call.”

• The full and simple meaning of “church” according to the original word is, “I call out from.”

• When Jesus said, “I will build my church,” He was saying, “I will call My people out of the world, and they will assemble in My name, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against them.”

What is Church?

What is Church? • Christianity is not about doing church, but being

the church.• Church is not some place to go to participate in,

but it is about being who you are in Christ and thus experiencing His real life in you.

• Your Christianity was never defined by attending a particular church. It is defined by Christ in you.

• In other words, you are a Christian 24/7, not because you participate in a two-hour worship service, but

• because Christ lives in you every minute of every day. Molong Nacua

What is Church? • Wolfgang Simson describes his vision of what the church,

unhindered, is becoming:• [I dream of a] church, which does not need huge amounts of

money, or rhetoric, control and manipulation• which can do without powerful and charismatic heroes• which is non-religious at heart• which can thrill people to the core, make them lose their

tongues out of sheer joy and astonishment• and simply teach us the Way to live. • A church which not only has a message, but is the message.• Something which spreads like an unstoppable virus, infects

whatever it touches, and ultimately covers the earth with the glory and knowledge of God

What is Church?

Before Jesus was born, where would we have to go to be in the presence of God? The holy of holies in the Temple in Jerusalem

While Jesus was walking this planet, where would we have to go to be in God’s presence? Wherever Jesus was.

After the death, burial, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost, where do we need to go to be in the presence of God? Wherever God’s people are together (Matt. 18:20).

5 things we need to understand about church

WHAT IS A HOUSE CHURCH?

WHAT IS A HOUSE CHURCH?They talk. They share what God is doing in

their lives. They sing. They intercede for people and

for all kinds of needs all over the world.

They pray. They minister one to another through the gifts God has given each one.

They eat a meal together. They love one another

They take the holy communion together

They seek to encourage one another

They study the Bible. They build each other up in their faith.

House Church BasedChurch Planting

• To plant a house church you do not need to buy property or build a building.

• You won’t need a pulpit or pews or hymnbooks or a piano.

• You can do without a baptistery, a Sunday School and a youth pastor.

• You won’t have to belong to a denomination or be incorporated or meet on Sundays or have a church bulletin or meet in the same place every week.

• You won’t have to have a sign with the name of your church on it.

• It won’t need a name.

• In fact, you don’t even have to call it a "church" as long as you know that it is "the church, which is His Body".

• None of the above is bad or wrong, but neither are they essential.

• The apostle Paul used none of the above in his church-planting ministry.

What does this tell you?

• It tells you that “EMPOWERMENT of what used to be called “the laity” is the greatest paradigm-shattering event since the rise of the priesthood class in the second century.


• Empowerment of non-professional Christians is behind most of the miracles we see today.

• Paid leaders are realizing (with great relief) that their job is not to do all the ministry work, but to equip others to do it

• (which is exactly what Ephesians 4:12 says).

What does this tell you?• In total contrast, a poll of several traditional U.S.

churches asked members about the direction in which empowerment flows:

• In your expression of the body of Christ, is it your experience that the resources are expected to flow…

A.From you to the leaders, so that they might fulfill their ministries and visions.

B.From them to you, so that you might fulfill yours.• Answer A was nearly unanimous.

The Holy Spirit is rapidly revising Christianity

He is putting at the core of his new church small groups that are:

• Interactive• Informal• Exciting and • Geared to rapid multiplication

This is the beginning of the end for Spectator Christianity

• Suddenly, • it’s out of style to be a spectator,

doing little for the kingdom except sitting in a row on Sundays, sometimes listening to the preacher & looking at the back of someone’s head, and wondering if your team will win in the afternoon game on TV.

This is the beginning of the end for Spectator Christianity

• For centuries, the main way to express your Christian identity has been by “going to church”

• There, a lone, overworked pastor exhorted you to be holy, love your neighbor, be salt and light, and do great stuff for God.

The 100x Church Hits the Field Running

In India• A band of rabbit teams plant about

fifty house churches a year. • These home churches are smaller than

traditional congregations • about 6-20 instead of 75 or so

Rabbit Teams

Rabbit Teams• In every village, as they pray, the Holy Spirit

points out to them a certain house - and reveals unknowable things about the occupants, such as hidden sins, special needs, or the presence of occult objects.

• They just knock on the door. Most of the people are so touched that they quickly accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and become the hub of a new house church.

The advantage of smallness

An Example of the Group-by Group Approach

• A Vietnamese pastor named Ai was in jail for being a Christian. There he met a young man I’ll call Duc from the “Tai Dang” tribe and led him to Christ.

• After their releases, Ai started Duc in a Bible training course for remote church planters. It’s a four-level course.

• In the first level, the student has one month to lead five others to the Lord.

An Example of the Group-by Group Approach

Bigger example ofGroup-by Group


• In Goiania, Brazil (pop. 1,2000,000), the busy capital of Goias state.

• Back in 1989, a housewife and mother named Elizabeth Cornelio became concerned about Goiania because it was a major center for prayer with four women from other churches.


• Then in 1993, she invited Christians all over the city to unite and pray.

• When 850 showed up, her pastor kicked her out of the church, saying, “Members of other churches are not spiritual brothers and sisters; they are at most spiritual cousins.”

• (A good example of the thinking you won’t find in today’s open fellowships.)


Goiania does have rabbit teams, which on a typical weekend will start one new church (altogether). But every believer in town gets into the act in his or her own way:

• Christian midwives anoint newborns with oil, dedicating them to Jesus

• Christians walk the aisles in the supermarkets, praying for people

• a few preach in bars, to great effect and • some even get up at 4:00 a.m. to walk through the

empty streetcars, praying that God will bless each rider that day.


• The result? • In seven years, evangelicals in Goiania went

from 7% of the population to

With Facts Like These, Who Needs Theories?


• Swedish radio mission IBRA estimates, “In the Middle East, there are perhaps millions of isolated ‘radio Christians’ who have become Christians through hearing evangelistic transmissions…”

• More Muslims have turned to Christ in the last ten years than in the previous 1,000 years.

• Nagaland and Mizoram states in India now claim to be 100% Christians.


More than 100,000 members of the Hmong tribe in northern Vietnam have turned to the Lord after listening to Christians radio programs.

No missionaries involved. This was discovered by accident because none of them were literate enough to write the station and report their massive response.

How Is Satan Going to Stop 707,000,000 Missionaries?

Very short story: An elderly man in India got saved, then started 42 churches-in his first year.

• The moral of the story:1. It’s never too late to start planting churches.2. You can move real fast if you don’t have to build

buildings.3. You can move even faster if you don’t have to

hire pastors to do all the work (Just let the people do the work. What a concept!)


4. You don’t need an M.Div. (master of divinity), special ordination, or even a year of Bible study to start telling people about the new life in Christ. Its basically simple. A famous German theologian was once asked if he could summarize his theology briefly. He replied with the classic children’s songs:Jesus loves me, this I know,For the Bible tells me so.

WORKSHOP:

Who will you send to start House churchDiscuss how to organize a house churchBible Study outline for House churches

PARADIGM SHIFT

Traditional vs. SimpleInstitutional Approach Simple Approach

Seating: Rows only Circle(s)

Environment: Anonymous Intimate

Leader Source: From institutions of higher learning From the harvest

Growth: Addition where it can be found Multiplication at every level

Results: An audience is attracted An army is raised up

Ministry Practitioners

The Ordained The Ordinary

Resources Imported to the harvest Discovered in the harvest

Primary Leadership: Pastoral/Teacher Apostolic Team

Traditional vs. SimpleInstitutional Approach Simple Approach

Learning Lab: Classroom-based education Trench-based education

Cost: Expensive Inexpensive

Ministry Location: The Meeting Place The Marketplace

Goal: Deeper Knowledge Deeper Relationships

Success: Full seating capacity Full sending capacity

Church Posture: Passive: Y’all Come! Active: We all Go!

Attraction: Felt Need Programming Obvious Life Transformation

Expectations: Conversions are surprising Conversions are expected

PARADIGM SHIFT

Churches In The Philippines Ppp

Spiritual

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