In the interview done by GMA News Network, he said he saved his family 1st, then the other people whom he didn’t personally know by bringing them to a Mango tree. After bringing them to the tree he went back to the house where they were staying, got electrical wires and extension cords then used it to tie them to the branches of the tree so that they won’t be swept away by the rushing flood.

During the 7 darkest grueling hours he encouraged and humor the people with him while he himself was very much afraid because the tree was being tossed by debris and logs rushed by the flood. He asked everyone to pray while they heard drowning people shouting and pleading for help, he knew that despite of what he did it is only God alone can save them from the devastation. And God did!

When the dawn came and the flood receded he emotionally said, ‘Kulang pa rin ang ginawa ko kasi ang dami pa ring hindi nakaligtas!”

One of Sendong's victims!

I was amazed and touched by the story and I deduced pregnant lessons for evangelism. Let me enumerate these lessons:

1. First, our world is in a devastating universal calamity called SIN like a rushing deadly flash flood. Everyone will die unless we do something about it by bringing them to a secure place of salvation. The Bible mentions that there is one tree called “Cedar of Lebanon” and  it represents Jesus Himself. We have to lead them to have a personal relationship with JESUS CHRIST alone, not to a religious institution and the likes, not even to ourselves!

2. We have to help 1st our families, then people who are around us, even those whom we do not know personally.

3. We have to secure their position and that position is in the local churches! In doing so we have to be very sensible and wise by using every means as long as it is not a sin!

4. We have to care for them and encourage them though we maybe afraid of the great devastation and we have to be totally dependent on God’s mighty saving power through PRAYER!

5. And lastly, though you dear readers can still get more lessons from this story, we have to have the mind set that we need to exert our efforts and do our very best to help people because at the end of times there will still be thousands that if we won’t do our roles will not be saved and die in that eternal hell!

Church leaders and fellow Christians, I ask you to please be sensible in doing the calling that God gave us. And let us pray for the mercy of God while we do this WONDERFUL TASK of LEADING people to SALVATION!

Volunteers doing team activity during one of the dinner & vision nights!

Our church is passionate in leading people to become fully devoted followers of Christ and we are establishing it as a church where people who are far away from God would love to attend!  These are the things we strongly believe God would like us to do in Makati City.

More so we are so much blessed with a team of leaders who owned for themselves the church’s mission and vision and a bunch of strong dedicated volunteers whose transformed lives are sold out to what LifeChurch Makati has to accomplish!

Because of these we are assured that when we do anything, short of sin, we will be able to accomplish our calling!

OUR 2011 MOVES…

The LifeChurch Makati Band

1. Despite of the comfort we had at Glorietta 4 Cinema 1 as our Sunday Experience venue, for more than a year, we decided to move to Glorietta 4 Multipurpose Hall and adjusted our time schedule from 10:45 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon. We did that to be strategic in our time because our target population were mostly available during the Sunday afternoons. Doing so the lifers were given an enjoyable team effort in transforming the venue to a theater-like ambiance, hanging draperies and the screen, set up the stage and some signage. That happened last September 18, 2011!

Just a note: We also put up a LifeChurch Café where our guests can chat with the lifers over a cup of coffee before the start of the Sunday Experience.

The result of this was the increase of the weekly attendance and we never saw a Sunday where there were no new guests! Lifers were encouraged to bring their friends to a more convenient time and an accommodating venue!

Praying Team

2. Another Makati Lifers’ big move was setting up a Prayer Team who prayed for the prayer requests written in the provided Connection Cards. We have organized our team to pray for every request during the week and made it sure that the prayer messages were sent to those who requested either by mobile phone text message or through their email addresses.

We found out that people appreciated very much being prayed for and they acknowledged that this church really cared so they came back!

3. Then we moved to make our praise and worship time up to another level by organizing three LifeChurch Makati Bands. They sing positive music with state of the art equipments and performances to lead the guests and attendees to worship God in it’s fullest!

The Glorietta Activity Center

OUR 2012 MOVES…

This coming year we were impressed by God to saturate the city in an intentional way!

1. We will start to make the presence of God felt through LifeChurch Makati in the mall where we are house. We plan to have activities such as events in the activity center and the hallways, awareness of our existence through print ads and movie commercials in the Glorietta cinemas. Through these we will shout out that GOD CARES for this city, for its workers and residents!

2. Another move we will do this coming year is to multiply our LifeGroup meetings during the week nights to enhance the way how we  lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ (Disciples) by developing and training leaders, as we end 2011, to create new LifeGroups!

We know He will bring many lives back to Him through what we are going to do…THESE ARE BIG MOVES FOR GOD!!!

To all Lifers, Volunteers, Friends and prayer and financial Partners we would like to thank you for being with us in doing church for God…We do these MOVES to bring life to the people of this city because we believe…WHOEVER FINDS GOD FINDS LIFE!!!

Then this Monday afternoon I attended a Pastoral-Mentoring group lead by Manong Don Cua (founding pastor of Philadelphia Christ-centered Fellowship). I was gladly surprised when Manong Don shared with us, the pastors he is mentoring, the same passage yesterday. (Posted in  picture above).

Let me share with you here what Manong Don presented…

Here are 4 facts about problems that come into our lives (according to the letter of James):

Problems are inevitable. James said “when you meet trials” NOT “if you meet trials.” By that, he meant problems will definitely come in our lives. Problems will come for sure!

Problems are unpredictable. It is a fact of life that we cannot say when is the exact time a problem will come. It will come whether we are ready or not. Whether we are capable of handling it or not. You do not know what kind of problem will attack us. And it comes in the most unexpected time, in the most unexpected way.

Problems are of many kinds. Problems that will come our way are in many varieties. It will be petty, controllable, tremendous, unimaginable or out of this world. And to say the least, it comes also in different sizes and forms.

Yet the good thing is, with God problems are PURPOSEFUL! God has always a way to make all of these problems that come our way to give purpose, meaning and reason in our lives!

To end Manong Don stated the 3 purposes of the problems God allowed to come in our lives:

• Problems PURIFY our FAITH!
• Those FORTIFY our PATIENCE!
• And they SANCTIFY our CHARACTER!

All of my fellow pastors who were struggling in their personal and in their serving lives were so much blessed with these thoughts. And I was doubly blessed by hearing the thoughts on the same passage two times, in two different ways.

I pray that you my readers are blessed alike!

This will be a two part message series on:

September 4  ”Heart and Soul”

September 11  ”Where Everybody Knows Your Name”

This is a very challenging vision because you seldom find people far from God go to church…in fact they are most probably if not afraid, hate to attend a church, an institution directly identified with God.

To make them love to be in our church we need to have Bold Actions, one of which is to have BOLD INVITATIONS. But do you know people will not be interested in your concern unless they sense that you are interested with their concerns and that you are interested to know who they are and what they are? If they sense that….they will be attracted to what you are telling them and as a result will be interested with your invitation. That calls for INVESTING in in them!

Investing in people means spending time with them when they needed you. That may even mean investing your personal money to share goods or food to them and let me add emotional investment – that is a bit uncomfortable but if you really wanted your friends who are not incline to be with God will love and enjoy our church experiences we are called to boldly do that.

...to Christ for our BIG MOVE!

I have some few strategical tips in INVESTING and INVITING your friends and family (like that of what most networking companies are advising their members) whom you will invite:

1. First, PRAY BOLDLY for God to open your eyes of who are the people whom He would like you to lead to Him.
2. Secondly, you need to MAKE A LIST OF AS MANY FRIENDS AND FAMILY MEMBERS WHO ARE FAR FROM GOD. Do not label them by behaviors, characteristics and attitudes while you are writing down their names. Just make a list of all of them.
3. After doing so, start the screening process, again not by their characteristics and attitudes but by IDENTIFYING THEIR RESIDENTIAL LOCATION. Take out from the list those who are living in the Visayas and the Mindanao and retain the ones who are living closest to the Makati area so that our church venue will be accessible to them.
4. Then after identifying those who are residing closest to LifeChurch Makati venue…begin the big work of investing in them by RECOGNIZING WHO AMONG YOUR FRIENDS  AND FAMILY MEMBERS ARE LOW MAINTENANCE, RETAIN THEM IN THE LIST, because people who are high maintenance will tear you down in the long run. Later go back to your high maintenance friends and family when the Lord molded you with more patience and love!

As we prepare for the BIG MOVE on September we have our slogan of “LEAD ONE  to Christ!” From the remaining names in your list God will give you the right insight of whom to invest and invite  so that you will have someONE to lead.

I pray that you will enjoy your INVEST and INVITE…so that you will be over joyed when you see them enjoying our church’s experiences. God Bless your INVESTING and INVITING!!!

Murad, MILF leader & PNoy talking for peace for Mindanao (done secretly in Japan)

The secret-but-not-secret-anymore talk of PNoy with the MILF leadership in Japan is a big news these days. There are positive and negative reactions to it but one thing is sure…this surprising unconventional step of PNoy’s administration is a try to achieve the very evasive ‘peace vision for Mindanao.’

LifeChurch Makati have the big vision of ‘building a church where people far from God would love to attend!’

In achieving that vision we need to do something ‘different’ not for the sake of doing different but to have unconventional steps to reach those who are the most evasive & most unlikely to be led to Christ – that is a grand vision! In doing so, like PNoy’s Team who made unusual way to achieve a vision, as a church ‘we have to do things, short of sin, no other church is doing to reach people that no other churches are reaching.’

With that I would like to ask you Lifers to be with your church leaders on the following:

1. BE WITH US IN THIS VISION. Let us be in one page as we step in building our church where people far from God would love to attend. Let us start to think for them, let us be more concern on their comfort than on our comfort, say on the time schedule of our services. Let us equip ourselves so we can welcome and serve them well. And SERVE in a particular team where you think you will be good at!
2. TELL THE LEADERS ‘OUT-OF-THE-BOX’ STRATEGIES YOU MAY THINK OF…so that we can consider those to reach those who are far from God.
3. PRAY FOR THE THINGS WE WILL BE DOING IN THE COMING MONTHS. We need the empowerment of God’s Spirit for only in Him we can find strength & courage in reaching our target people.
4. And lastly, SHARE GENEROUSLY so that we can do excellent service and so that your family members and friends will be enticed to be in our church though they maybe far from God.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR RIDING INTO THIS VISION!

Let me share the recap of the message specially for those of you who were not able to come last Sunday.

Arnold began the message by presenting the vision of LifeChurch Makati which is: TO BUILT A CHURCH WHERE PEOPLE FAR FROM GOD LOVE TO ATTEND!

He mentioned the following situations why do we embraced this vision:

1. Even if we claim to be a Christian country, according to statistics, only 20% have a personal relationship with God and have the personal understanding of what Christ has done to them by dying on the cross. Then the rest of the 80% do not know God in a personal level and do not fully understand Jesus’ act of Sacrifice for men’s Forgiveness and Salvation – literally they are “far from God!”
2. Sadly, most churches create their own Christian subculture, own wardrobe, own lingo, their own hang out places, own books to read, songs to sing and to listen to and feeling like superior than the non-Christians. And whether we like it or not most of us become exclusive in our own Christian-rights so the called “Non-Christians” who are far away from God are considered to be the OUTSIDERS!
3. Bad of all badness most Christian churches are acting like as if the rest of the 80% are like the 20%, forgetting how it feel to be in their shoes when they were invited to a church. That make them feel unwelcome unless they embrace the Christian subculture first.

A picture of a church people would love to attend!

LifeChurch Makati is sure of God’s call to be different by setting this Bold Vision of building a church where these people who don’t even realize that they are far from God would love to attend!

This will not be an easy thing to do because to make these people love to attend our church, whom other churches do not try to reach, we will have to do things that no other churches are doing yet (as long as these things are short of sin)!

This is a BOLD VISION that needs to be done with a bold calling (that is the part that I talked about), and these calling are:

1. First we have to BE BOLD IN OUR INVITATION! Let us invite our friends who maybe the most difficult to invite to a church! Because if we don’t invite them they maybe lost forever and will even haunt us the question: Why didn’t you invite me to Christ when you know that I will be lost in hell forever?
2. Secondly, BE BOLD IN OUR GIVING in two things: in our Money and in our Service! But let me be clear on the first one…God doesn’t need our money because He owns the whole universe. In asking for it He is asking for our hearts which are closely attached to money. So if you would like to support this vision of leading people far from God we ask for that closest thing to your heart. Besides that will help to meet the requirement to build a High Definition church and quality service to people we would like to bring. We also ask for your service because there will be a big work to be done in the coming move to reach these people who are far from God.
3. Third, BE BOLD IN OUR PRAYERS: Let us pray for our family and friends who seemed too difficult to invite! Let us pray for great provision as we move the church together and let us pray for leaders and volunteers to stand and to come so that we can share the work together!

If we do it together…just picture in your mind that in the future you will be happy to say that you are a part of a movement where people with changed  lives are enjoying each other!

Let me invite you to be with us in this BOLD VISION!

She said, “Sir Prudy, bakit po pati ang iyong personal finances ay naiibigay mo sa church nyo? Sana po ‘wag naman lahat baka kayo maubusan.” (Sir, why are you giving your personal finances to your church? Don’t give everything, you may have nothing left in the end.)

Misunderstood money

No I’m not rich! If I will be compared to Henry Sy, Lucio Tan, Manny Pangilinan, The Ayala & The Gocongwei I’m poor as a rat. In fact there were many times I can’t even watch a movie that I desperately wanted to see because of budget constraints. Though I should say the good Lord has been very good that He gave me an opportunity to have a meager amount to put in an investment institution which produced a bit of good earnings with which I gladly shared to my church family, LifeChurch Makati. And there was a time that our church needed some amount and I also found it a privilege to share a big portion of my personal finances to it.

My friend talked to be about it because she knew some of those activities and it was out of her concern . BUT she doesn’t understand my position and my heart for God and His work.

Here is what I told her…”I do understand your concern and I’m very grateful, yet I believe that when I put God first even in my financial priorities He will bless me because I am His concern and He will provide me more what I needed!”

With that she did not contest yet still I knew she didn’t understand!

From the “Financial Margin” message yesterday at LifeChurch Makati, Craig Groeschel said…

“When you give God your First and your Best He will BLESS the REST!”

God is concern with me more than I can understand and that He gave all that He has for me, who is His Son Jesus…with that act all Heaven became bankrupt…and He did it just to turn my life to the best that He wanted for me…which is BETTER than the BEST!

Because I understand how He did it for me, I live the principle of making Him the priority in all areas of my life…even in my finances and I am assured that because of that He will pour out blessings I could never even imagine!

So, let me encourage you to live your lives…Him as your priority though people misunderstand you because it is BETTER to be misunderstood by people than to put God to the least of your priorities!

Let me write here again the Mission of LifeChurch Makati, which is from LifeChurch.tv’s mission: To lead people to become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ!

If that is our mission we need to have a mind image or picture of that mission…That is our VISION!

Arnold presenting the vision of LifeChurch Makati.

In our last rainy Vision Casting Night we have talked about our vision where Arnold described its details. So, for those of you who were not able to come that night let me share it here with you and for those of you who were there please read this so that you will have a good reminder of our vision:

“To build a church where people far from God would love to attend!”

Let me share with you my personal thoughts on this vision…

1. Building an edifice is never a loner’s job. It is always a Collaboration. It is always a Team Work. As partners and regular attendees of LifeChurch Makati we need you to share with us the joy of working for God in building this church, which is a church of living PEOPLE. This is not an organization, a denomination nor an institution. We need your expertise. We need your talents. We need your contribution. We need YOU to be part of this building project!
2. We love to see PEOPLE who may know God but on a very distant reality and who doesn’t have any inclination to talk about Him or ‘allergic’ on ideas pertaining to religion or spirituality. They could be one of your family members, a neighbor, a childhood friend, a friend from your work, from your school and from civic group or club you are a member, someone from a place you regularly visits like the gym, barbershop, saloon, your favorite shop, a client or a regular business contact or competitor. They maybe just around your circle of community whom you sense is far from God. Invite them to experience our church!
3. And that we like to see these PEOPLE enjoying and loving to be in our church because they feel not pointed out, labeled nor forced to be ‘Christianized’ or just simply find our church a cool place to hang around.

It would be wonderful when one day when our church is bigger than you could imagine, people you know and whom you do not know will approach you and will say THANK YOU for inviting me, THANK YOU for welcoming me, THANK YOU for singing for me, THANK YOU for taking good care of my kids, THANK YOU for just being with me in times that I needed it the most.

Lifers own this vision and keep this vision!

The lifers who attended the rainy Vision Night