The Lighthouse Christian Ministry

It has been two years since I started writing and ministering here in Leyte. I and my wife chose to be here even after knowing that Leyte is not only the least evangelized province of the Philippines, but also the most difficult to evangelize. But with the grace of the Lord, I was able to disciple a couple of dozen people to work for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

One of the things that I did is that I wrote a material, which perfectly fits, for our context for more effective evangelism. This material that I wrote is based on my personal experience, and how we really do things in the field.

I also designed this material to be easily transferrable, easy to use, cheap and understandable. Influenced by “Training For Trainers”, I see to it that this material will be very useful for almost everyone who will choose to use it.

This material is not designed to give Christians a material to depend on in conducting a Bible Study. It is designed for the potential Bible study leader to depend on the Bible and not just on this material. Thus, we did not produce another material for Bible Study use, but we worked on a material to create our very own individual material for personal use in our Bible Studies. Thus, making our Bible Study leaders more dependent on the Bible rather than the material itself.  

Since we started our materials through our campaign of discipleship, we really did reach out not less than 70 people in Christ within a year. These people were Bible Studied first, accepted Jesus Christ, most of them have already gone continuously in the church, and committed themselves for water baptism.

I can safely say now that our church is an “Organic Church”, a church that grows spiritually, and grows by the numbers, as commanded and expected of what a living church should be. Most of our church members can now lead Bible Studies on their very own, and are willing to start their own Bible Studies whenever there is an open door of opportunity.

Our Bible Studies increased by numbers, from totally ZERO last two years ago to as much as nine Bible Studies last May-June this year, simultaneously at the same time, granted that we have only more than 50 active, regular,  and committed members. And we are praying for more people to come to Christ and obey Christ as we continue our endeavors in fulfilling His Great Commission and Great Commandment of loving God and mankind. 

You can visit our websites for full documentations of our ministries: www.forjesus.multiply.com and www.freewebs.com/lighthouseresource

What’s Next???

It is really in my heart to continue what we have started and what we saw as an effective and efficient approach. Even the Bible in Matthew 28:19 did not say that we have to end in Baptism only. After Jesus instructed us to baptize the new believers, he instructed us to disciple them by what Christ commanded “to teach them to obey everything Christ commanded us”.

In doing all these, I have seen that we need to have our own contextualized materials for our ministries, like the one we did at first, contextualized in our own settings.

I am thinking of a set of instructional materials that will cover training and discipleship, which will cover the foundation of basic Biblical doctrines.  As well as preaching materials that we can use for training new potential pastors. Also, edification and spiritual growth materials, which will cover and help all members in their spiritual walk in the Lord. And evangelism material which we already have as the first one to be written.

I attached in this pack the evangelism material that we are using for a year now and has proven its worth in the field of evangelism.

For this purpose, I am now forming a group of writers who can help us for this noble work.

As of now I have three people who is willing to work for this ministry. We have Bro. Augusto Hermosilla, Ph.D., who has a good educational background and has the gift of writing. He is willing to edit our work at least in correct grammatical form. We also have in this project Ptr. Vir Olaer (my father), who is an experienced translator from English to Cebuano and vice versa. Finally, Yours Truly, your humble laborer in the Lord who has the vision to go beyond the border limits of my ability all for God’s glory.

Is This For Business???

The aim of this project is to provide FREE materials for everybody who needs it. This is one of the reasons why we aim to design these materials to be transferrable, and that we will have a cheap cost in producing it where digital format is highly considered. This is definitely not for business.

We want to produce this first in digital format making it as an e-Book (like the “Lead It”). In this way, we can easily distribute them across the globe for FREE even via email or posting in our church's websites. It will also be easier for all of us to give the materials as a gift to our friends and to promote it in our own churches. 

Is This A Movement???

Well, as I will call it, it will be like a part of the “Organic Church” movement. You don’t need to sign up for membership with this movement. As long as you believe, desire, and help your church to be Organic, a church that grows, reproduce, and multiply, and so then you are already a part of this movement.

For this project, you really do not have to pay the e-books just to have one. Once that these e-books have been produced and uploaded online in cyberspace, what you can do is to help us distribute and promote all these to your friends and families, and even give your suggestions for the continuous improvements of its quality of excellence we are pursuing.

You can also help us by going to our websites and blogs and place your comments as well for this noble movement.

However, we deeply encourage you to give love gifts for this project, since we will still have to spend some amount in order to produce these ebooks.

Our Needs

1. Laptop – We need this so that we can continue working anywhere we are and anytime we will be inspired with what we can meditate or contemplate. We do not care if it is a second hand laptop, as long as it will still be functional and useable. Therefore, we are praying for a laptop, which is not older than 2005 models, since our programs for our work are already upgraded. Comparing wise, low power laptops may become useless for our purposes, especially if they cannot handle the programs that we already have.

Currently, I have a not so old computer that I am using right now, which enabled me to work for 3 materials so far within a year. My work, however, is slower because I cannot bring my heavy desktop pc wherever I go. Laptop is obviously portable. I used to work late up night after staying in the church the whole day. To make this work faster, we will be needing portable notebooks for this project.

2. Printer and Ink Cartridges – As of the moment, I have a Lexmark Z515, which can definitely do the job. If you prefer to send us cartridges for this model of printer, we will be very much thankful for this.

However, we are also looking forward to buy a laser printer. It is more expensive than inkjet printers, but its cost of printing and maintenance is a way lot cheaper compared to Inkjets in the long run.

3. Office Supplies – Here is the list of Office Supplies that we need:

a.    Bond Papers – 8 1/2” by 11”, Substance 24

b.    Pentel Pens – Will use this for brainstorming and meetings.

c.     Ballpens – Black and Red will be used for editing and proof reading.

4. Love Gift For the Staffs – Our staffs dedicated themselves to the Lord and are willing to voluntarily work for FREE, as in labor of love. Salary is never an issue. But they would really appreciate it, if you will send personal love gifts for their labor, and so that they will be able to devote more of time and focus for this project.

5. Prayer – This is the most important need that we have. Creating materials is never an easy task. But with prayer, we will be restrengthened spiritually and that all these labor will not be in vain.  As already known, a prayerless Christian is a powerless Christian.

Not having these materials does not necessarily mean that we have to stop working for this noble project. In fact, we already have started this project a year ago. What we just want to do is to continue it, and enrich it as it has blessed many Christians. Most of all, we also want to share this gift of labor to all of our brethrens around the globe.

Here Are the Expected Outcomes Of This Project

1. We will be able to produce our own contextualized materials, thus making our own people personally relate themselves from the material.
2. We will be able re-align the lost values of Christians by creating materials that will teach people to become solely dependent on the Bible, and not on the materials themselves, which are only for guides that they can always modify for relevance in their own settings.
3. We will be able to encourage everybody who reads the materials to join the Organic Church movement, and especially for reaching the lost.
4. We want to produce more disciples at the soonest possible time without sacrificing the quality of teaching and discipleship.
5. We will be able to produce more workers in the Lord, evangelizing the whole Region 8, as our vision and mission.
6. We want to boost our URBAN MINISTRY. These materials can definitely create credibility for our Churches and gain recognition, even from the non-Christian people.
7. We want to help our people to have some fun learning the Bible themselves.

Personally, I want to thank you for taking time reading this letter. As a token of my appreciation, please accept the latest issue of my “Lead It, An OBS Leader’s Manual”. It is not yet well polished, since my work is still much slower when it should be done by now. But you can already use this material for training your own deacons, leaders, and even ordinary members to lead their very own Outreach Bible Study.

By becoming a partner for this project, I will be sending you all the copies that will be accomplished from this endeavor, plus continuous updates and reports concerning our ministries here in Leyte.