Monday, June 22, 2009

About Us

Bagong Buhay Christian Church is an indigenous Christ-centered church committed to the sacred task of reaching and discipling unreached poor village people for Christ and engaging in community transforming action, to the end that Christ shall be made pre-eminent in personal, family and national life.

Our Vision:
A growing, indigenous Christ-centered Church established in the community that composed of strong families, zealous members serving the Lord in their own gift-based ministry, enthusiastically worshiping God in a descent church building built in its own property, produces preachers and workers that plant churches for the glory of God and for the fulfillment of the great commission of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Mission:
To glorify God by living a life of righteousness and holiness, bringing people to Jesus Christ and membership in His Church, nurture and edify them in the faith to attain Christ-like maturity, equip them to do the work of the ministry in the local church, in the community and beyond.

Our Core Values:
These core values serve as our guiding principles and foundational commitments:
o Life-transforming relationship with God.
o Upholding the Word of God as our standard for life and ministry.
o Love God and neighbors
o Exalting the Person and work of Jesus Christ.
o Total dependency on God’s power and resources
o Christ-like maturity.
o Commitment to passionate worship.
o Commitment to prayer and spiritual warfare.
o Fostering Biblical character, integrity and faithfulness.
o Fostering a lifestyle of giving.
o Commitment to evangelism and missions.
o Compassion for the lost souls, the poor and needy.
o Emphasizing a life of holiness and sanctification.
o Commitment to the priority of family relationships.
o Concern for the welfare of children and their future.

Our Statement of Faith:
These We Believe:

o The Bible, the Word of God, verbally inspired of God, the revelation of God
to man, infallible, the supreme and final authority of faith and conduct.

o One God, eternally existing in three distinct People: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

oThe Lord Jesus Christ: His eternal Deity, His virgin birth, His sinless life, His substitutionary death, burial and bodily resurrection, His ascension and exaltation to the right hand of the Father and His coming again in great power and glory.

o The Holy Spirit who shows the redeeming purpose of God to the world, by convicting the world of sin, righteousness and judgment; and by regenerating, indwelling, sanctifying, guiding, illuminating, and empowering for service, all who place complete faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

o The fall of Man. Man was created good and upright. However, man by voluntarily transgression fell and hereby incurred not only physical death, but also spiritual death which is separation from God.

o The Salvation of Man. Man’s only hope of Salvation is by grace through genuine repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

o The Church, which is Christ’s body that consists of all those who, in this age, have been born of the Spirit of God

o The Ministry. A divinely called and scripturally ordained ministry has been provided by our Lord Jesus Christ for a twofold purpose: the evangelization of the world and the edifying of the body of Christ.

o The Blessed Hope. The resurrection of the dead in Christ and their translation together with those who are alive and remain faithful until the coming of the Lord.

o The Imminence of Christ’s Return. Because the Lord could return at any moment, believers are to be diligent to live holy and godly lives, always encouraging one another to be ready and alert.

o The Final Judgment. There will be a final judgment in which the wicked dead will be raised and judged according to their works. Whoever is not found written in the book of life, together with the devil and his angels, will be consigned to everlasting punishment in the lake of fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

o The New Heaven and New Earth. We, according to His promise, look forward to a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness dwelleth.

Our Ministries:

Evangelism & Discipleship – Our church members aggressively conduct evangelism in the community and its neighbors and disciple others to reach other communities for Christ.

Church Planting – We reach out to other unreached poor communities and municipalities to engage in church planting work. We believe that this is the most effective way to disciple people for Christ, to multiply churches and to hasten the propagation of the Gospel.

Prayer Network – It is a prayer-generating link designed to mobilize the whole church to pray for specific concerns of the church, community and nations, as well as to pray for one another.

Christian School – Children’s Hope Christian School is committed to educate and train poor village children to fear God, which is the beginning of wisdom, think God’s thoughts after Him, discover and hone their God-given talents, and develop skills to prepare them for a faithful, effective and fruitful service to God and others.

Feeding Program – We have a feeding program for the children in the church fellowships every Sunday. We plan to extend this service to the other poor children in the community as the Lord provides the funds.

Child Sponsorship – We sponsor the education of the poor and underprivileged children in the community. This school year 2008-2009, we had eight poor children in our sponsorship program.

Theology and Missions – Our goal is to train and equip men and women in the Word of God to be effective church workers, preachers and leaders who, with godly character and in the power of the Holy Spirit, will transform communities and nations for the glory of God.

Values Instruction Class to The Public School – The Vision of Voice is to produce students rooted in biblical values for personal and national transformation. Through our weekly Values Orientation Class here in Bagong Buhay Public Elementary School, we were able to teach over 300 children weekly where our text book is the Bible itself through out the school year. This school year 2007 – 2008, there were 165 pupils graduated from grade 3 – grade 6.

Mangyan Tribal Mission – In this computer and high technological age, it is hard to imagine that some people in the Philippines still live in a primitive existence. They subsist in root crops and banana, walk kilometers upon kilometers across mountains and rivers with their bare feet, can neither read nor write, live in houses with roof of banana leaves, neither mat nor blankets to cover them in their sleep, many die because they have no access to any medical help. Through this mission, about 400 of them received medical, dental, relief and feeding twice a year for the past two years. They also had the opportunity to hear the message of the Gospel.

Summer Ministry:

Daily Vacation Bible School – Over 100 children and youth participated in this activity.

Family Camp – Whole families attend this fun-filled fellowship with other churches for evangelism, discipleship, revival and Challenge.

Our Strategy:

1. Enabling Leadership
Leaders don’t focus on doing the ministry themselves, but on equipping, enabling, empowering and training others. This enabling is done both by the pastors and other leaders.

2. Gift-based Ministry
Members are help to discover their gifts. Then, a Gift Placement counselor help match members to a ministry suited to their gifts. This produces great joy in the members.

3. Passionate Spirituality
Members have a burning desire to know God and follow Him. They practice spiritual disciplines and have a holy lifestyle.

4. Effective Structure
Healthy churches have goals and system to reach these goals. Regular evaluation is done and improvements are made. Structures that are no longer effective are replaced.

5. Inspiring Worship Services
God touch participants in the worship services of healthy churches. Members connect with God in worship. God speak to the members through the message. Members are eager to attend because they like it! The service inspires them! They don’t attend out of duty.

6. Comprehensive Small Groups
The small groups in healthy churches are far more then just bible Studies, although Bible Study is crucial component. Comprehensive small groups also includes worship, edification, prayer, fellowship, ministry to the whole person (spiritual, emotional, Physical, and social), operation of spiritual gifts within the small group, pastoral care, outreach, leadership development and multiplication of groups.

7. Need-meeting Evangelism
Healthy churches determine the needs in the community and do all they can to meet these needs. This includes holistic ministry and community transformation. While doing this, they also helps neighbors find the answer to their greatest need, their relationship wit6h God. Those who are reached become active participants in new or existing churches. There they effectively assimilated, disciple and mobilized to serve.

8. Loving Relationships
Members of healthy churches love to be together because they love each other. There is an atmosphere of joy and trust. Affirmation and encouragement is abundant.

Our Board of Trustees:
Chairman of the Board: Rev. Emerenciano F. Falla, Jr.
Vice Chairman: Faustino T. Viernes, Jr.
Corporate Secretary: Anelie D. Falla
Treasurer: Evelyn D. Viernes
Member: Ricardo O. Rivera

Our Brief History
On April 7, 1995, Pastor Jun Falla with his father, Pastor Emer conducted the first house-to-house evangelism in Bagong Buhay. Among the first who accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ are Mercy Aclan and her sister-in-law, Flora Castillo. From them, a regular Home Bible study was formed. As the Bible Study grew, Pastor Jun also encountered opposition and persecution from other people in the community. Added to that is the extreme difficulty of traveling on the rough road going to this remote community. In the midst of all the difficulties, Pastor Jun patiently and sacrificially continued the work of personal and house-to-house evangelism, Bible studies, follow-ups and visitations. By the grace of God, after five months of tireless labor, the first Sunday worship service was celebrated in a borrowed church building on September 24, 1995.
To penetrate the whole community with the Gospel, Pastor Jun often did prayer and fasting, prayer walking, and used various forms of evangelism. He used evangelistic concert, evangelistic film showing, and hosted seminary and university students in their mission exposure and conducted medical missions and relief distribution. The church also initiated a livelihood development. Moreover, we started and still operate a kinder school as a point of contact to the children and parents, sponsors children in the school, conduct a weekly feeding program and holds Vacation Bible School during summer. To be able to reach more children and be connected to more parents, Bagong Buhay Christian Church started campus ministry where we conducted Values Instruction Class to the Public School that our text book is the Bible itself. Through these strategies, the four corners of our community had the opportunity to hear the Gospel. But while the ministry of the church keep growing and expanding, a very difficult trial happened. The owner of the property where the church building is built sold the property that resulted to the demolition of our church building. July 8, 2007, the church building was demolished following the order of the new land owner. But only the building was demolished. The real “church”, the people who are members of Christ’s body, remained steadfast and strong and the ministry continues. Our worship services and prayer meetings and the daily kinder classes were temporarily held at the pastor’s house at that time. And that was a very difficult set-up because the living room/office in the pastor’s house is small. Pastor’s family need to empty the room of all the furniture like seats and tables in order to give room for the chairs and desks of the 19 children in our Kinder School and then return everything back again at the end of the class at noontime – rain or shine, daily. They also do the same during prayer meeting and worship service for over a month. But God is continually working in this Church despite of the many hardships, obstacles, persecutions and harassments we’re experiencing from the fanatic cult in the community. After a month, we were able to reconstruct our church building that is bigger than our former church building, and praising God for His infinite wisdom and marvelous ways. August 12, 2007, exactly seventeen days after we started rebuilding, and thirty-five days after the demolition, we held the first worship celebration at our new and bigger reconstructed church building. As in the time when the Israelites finished rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, “God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and the children also rejoiced.” (Nehemiah 12:43) This is the exact atmosphere at Bagong Buhay Christian Church that day.

Our church building is still built in a borrowed property because we don’t have our own property yet, but by God’s grace, Bagong Buhay Christian Church is thriving. It is lead and composed of lay men and women who love God and share God’s love. The emphasis is on the active participation of lay people committed to the fulfillment of the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ that brings big impact to our community and in the municipal government.

Our work has just begun and we are committed to advance indigenous mission despite of the economic condition of our church. To help fulfill the Great Commission of Christ, we welcome covenant partners who are willing to share the same vision and to labor together with us for the Glory of God and for the expansion of His Kingdom.

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