March 2016

Students planting churches among students on campus? Students graduating with church planting experience who then go to other campus, into professional communities and into new cities and plant churches like they learned while in college? This is happening in one part of the Philippines. College Instructor and Electrical Engineer Pee Jay N. Gealone is leading this initiative.

Pee Jay says,

Our vision is to see multiplying churches across Bicol [area of the Philippines] and eventually across the country that will really bless and transform this nation. We believe that being a Christian is not only about personal change but rather a change that once happened collectively can really transform this country. We want to see Christ-centered multiplying leaders in all sectors of society that are moving into church planting.

Eighteen churches are under Pee Jay’s care with about 600 involved members. So far, students have graduated and are opening campuses for student churches, opening house churches for professionals and opening churches in communities where God sends them.

Paul warned them. What causes a church to lose zeal? Why fizzle after 30-40 years?

I stood there on the site of Miletus where Paul called the Ephesian leaders. It’s not a big place. The entire town was on a peninsula surrounded by water, a few hundred yards across. In the late afternoon cool, I could imagine Paul warning them. The magnificent center of missionary zeal and church expansion in Ephesus would be led astray, even from among the very leaders to whom he was speaking (Ephesians 20:17-38).

There were 3 epicenters of Christianity in the first century. Missionary expansion began in Jerusalem, then moved to Antioch and blossomed in Ephesus.

A few days earlier, I had walked the ancient town of Ephesus where Paul had visited several times and lived and taught for 2 years so that “all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord.”

Ephesus had about a 10 year run of excellence during Paul’s day then another 30 years or so under the leadership of John before his exile, according to tradition. But by the end of the first century when John wrote Revelation from exile on Patmos, the church in Ephesus was losing its zeal. They were still doing “church” but Jesus told them, “you have abandoned the love you had at first.” You don’t burn with my zeal for the lost like you did at first.

Jesus’ warning was in my mind as we sat in the huge stone theater in Ephesus. Jesus must remain the center. Our core activity must remain telling others about the goodness of his kingdom. To cease telling others is to begin to die as a church.

Archives for March 2016

Student churches in the Philippines

Losing Zeal as a Church