Seven years of trials. Seven years of struggles. Seven years of character building. It is also seven years of discoveries. Of love. Of patience. Of kindness. Of Christ-centeredness. Seven years of blessings.
Seven years of failures and triumphs. Of giving and taking. Of loosing and gaining.
Today, I’d like to honor my wife, my love, my partner, my chear-leader, my personal psychologist and nurse, my no. 2 — as we both agreed that Jesus is our number 1. The Joy of my life.
We’ve made it to seven, why can’t we seven times seven?
In a span of one month, 3 new churches were launched in Makati. Our church, LifeChurch Makati at Glorietta 4 Cinema 1, was launched May 16. The next week, Word for the World’s RC Campus was also launched near the area of Rockwell Makati. Last week, Victory Makati started well with 300 attendance at AIM Conference Center.
That, actually, did not excite me. Seriously. Because I see churches being started left and right.
What excites the heck out of me is the fact that these 3 new churches did not come from the same organization but are friends. Pastor Rodney Garcia of RC became a good friend with LifeChurch Makati’s leadership team. Victory Makati’s Pastor LA Mumar, through Pastor Dennis Sy of Greenhills, is really interested to connect. Kuya Prudy, our lead pastor has met with him one time and I heard, they’re planning a get-together. This, to me, is inspiring.
Let me explain.
I came from a religious tradition that tries to divide God’s church. In fact, it became a sub-community on its own. After I felt my calling to be part of leading a church, and probably due to Craig Groeschel’s influence, it has become my passion to see the Church unite. It was Craig who said that “we can accomplish more things together than divided”. In a church world very diverse, selfishly thinking only about its own organization, even trying to tear each other down, I long to see us work together this time.
What if church leaders will forget about their denominations and their theological biases and instead pray for each other, encourage, help start-up churches get off the ground, mentor young pastors and inspire other organizations — even outside of your own? Imagine what will happen to Makati where 800,000 people reside (then swells to 4M on work days)! We will see more churches planted. On each street block. Small groups on each building. People’s lives changed. Marriages restored. Directions in life straightened.
Because, seriously, do you think 4 million very diverse people can be reached by just one church organization? Or could even multiple competing churches?
LifeChurch Makati is a testament, a case study on seeing how the big “C” church can be united.
When we were praying on how to bring LifeChurch.tv here in the Philippines, we saw hurdles. While LifeChurch.tv is very supportive — their enormous talent, creativity, leadership, training and Craig Groeschel pouring his heart out to us are in the bag — we pretty much are on our own as far as funding and starting up the church from the ground. And, unlike the 2 churches I mentioned, we don’t have a local mother church to support, train and provide encouragements. We’re on our own.
So, we have about 20 people from the original Grace Place team and a negative balance on our bank accounts and a raw passion to serve Jesus and make his name more famous.
I told the team, if we’re going to start this thing, we need the Church to come together and see our vision for the city. We need to be able to make them work together.
We’re on our 5th week after we launch. It is still a struggle as far as funding and enough volunteers are concerned. But in a small ways, we see the Church come together to help LifeChurch Makati get off the ground.
We have praise and worship volunteers who attended Joy Fellowship in Intramuros, Victory, Word for the World and Word of Hope. We have kids teachers, ushers and welcomers from New Life Christian Center, WWCF and other churches all over Makati. Financially, Horizon Fellowship promised to help out. Pastor Dennis Sy of Victory Greenhills not only provided encouragements and friendship but his church also helped us financially at some point during our preview services.
At this very early stage of this church “project”, we can feel the momentum going. If God blesses LifeChurch Makati with thousands of people in the future, it is because we have nothing and God’s Church have everything. We were united, we encouraged one another and we had no other goal in mind — not our egos, not for our own organizations, not to show our own strength — it is to make Jesus the Lord of Makati and every city.
Yesterday, “Mr. Koala boy”, as fondly called by Mr. James Jimenez “came out”, in mask, claiming some very sophisticated yet ridiculous claims about what they call “HOCUS PICOS” or automated cheating in the elections. Watch and learn, kids:
Here are some of the reasons why I believe this guy’s a fraud and may sound like he knows what he’s saying but is actually missing a lot of facts:
1. The CF card’s data are encrypted. Unless the “operators” know the algorithm, they can’t do this. For them to know, they will have to bribe Smartmatic.
2. The masked “witness” missed something: there’s a counter checking mechanism — the printed ERs per PCOS machine, which is given to the parties and PPCRV. If ever the claimed rigged transmission took place, counter checking its validity is very easy through the printouts. So, how can you expect candidates to pay you P1.4B if you haven’t solve that yet, huh?
3. Exit polls, more accurate than the pre-election surveys, confirm the result of the electronic election.
To pull off what he’s accusing, they will have to have a huge conspiracy among Smartmatic, COMELEC, the teachers, the poll watchers (who supposedly saw the printing and transmission of data), the media and PPCRV. Now, I don’t like very much some of the people in COMELEC, I don’t like Binay myself, but to conspire this huge for the sake of bringing in Aquino — who ironically needs the least of their help since he has lead the entire campaign season — is simply out of this world.
Some famous questions I’m hearing on the internet and some of the controversial answers I’m giving:
1. Why is Bro. Eddie’s votes just 1 million? Last election, he had 2 million and we’re more organized now than before? He must have been cheated!
Answer: maybe not so many people who voted for him the last time did this election — like.. myself? (PS. This is a political statement, not a religious statement. So please, stop the “Don’t criticize your brother” attacks)
Come on, now. Let’s just say the automation is not perfect, but it was very useful. This is all we need to have a fresh start. Remember that the reason why GMA’s administration is so messed up is because of the questions on her legitimacy — remember Garci? Now that we have an almost accurate election process, we still want to go back to the messed up lives that we have? What’s on your mind, people? Let’s not sow confusion and distrust to our new leadership. This is now the best time for us to work together and start a new government that we can trust.
* I’m 35 years old today. But with what I’ve gone through in life, I’ll say, I’m a guy about 40 years old with the looks of a 25 :D
* Thanks for those who greeted. One quick thought: 3 years ago, when I wake up in my birthday morning, my cellphone had already been swamped with text messages. Today, except for that message from my 2 brothers, I have none. Everyone else went to my Facebook page. The techopreneur in me is wondering how much mooneys does the telcos loose because of the popularity of Facebook.
* Nothing special today, really. This year’s the birthday that I never really felt any anticipation or excitement. The reason is simple: my thoughts were focused on other things, that is:
* Today, on my birthday, God birthed a new church family in Makati — LifeChurch Makati. The launch team worked hard, prayed hard, invited people (and its hard!) for this launch. And today, it’s official — we’re a church. :D
I thank God for 35 years of challenges, love, grace and peace that does not come from the things of this world. Thirty five years of ups and downs, victories and failures, joys and disappointments. I may have not survived it without my Mama and Papa, my wife Joy, my church family and most especially, the ever willing listening ear, ever forgiving, ever willing to give grace, the friend and Lord of my life — they call him Bro, JC, best friend — I call him with the name above all name, Jesus Christ.
While all seem to have lost trust on the COMELEC, I’d like to think that they deserve a chance to prove themselves.
They said they are positive they can pull this off. I’d say, let them. Let’s just run after them later if it’s proven wrong.
For the past 3 days, pessimism is all over the place — on the internet, on local news, even probably in your nearby “tambayan”. I just think that rather than creating and supporting conspiracy theories, blame people and sow news that can create fear, why don’t we just step back for a while, pray and see how we can make this happen, all together as a nation.
Whatever you blog about, post on twitter or even tell “mamang taxi driver”, it matters. Let’s choose to have hope — in our words and in our actions.
Let’s pray for our nation and give our best for our country. Remember that God is sovereign. He is our ultimate hope.
My small contribution as we take our weekend rest and cast our vote on Monday.
