If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.
~Mary Engelbreit
I am a social entrepreneur specializing in marketing to boost financial support for our church, Lugar ng Pag-asa (Place of Hope) and its ministries. I love Film and Music and understand the language of the mainstream. A tech savvy but all these I integrated in our ministries.
My dad is the pastor of Pasig Bible Baptist Church, “A Place of Hope” Main. I was a Sunday school kid. Needless to say, I spent my early life in and around the church, being regularly trained through Bible studies and ministries. I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ at a young age. I think that salvation happened when I was a kid, but conversion is something that happened just recently.
The problem with growing up in an institutional and traditional church is that you become immune to the outside world, to the real needs of the people. You grow up in a bubble, with the ideology that you are on the right track, and that your righteous living is pleasing to God. However, discontentment crept in. I may have been a regular fixture at church, but I was easily backsliding in my heart. I was a prodigal preacher’s son, and soon I also experienced rock bottom. I lost everything.
From that pit, I gained a peek at the things which I needed to look at besides myself. Real life burst the bubble that I was in, and I approached the road towards conversion at the moment my eyes, ears and heart were opened to the outside world, to the real plight of my countrymen.
I began to leave my previous way of life. I was a traditional, religious person before, but now I approached things through building relationships. This change was prompted by the life story of Mary Rose, a young girl who earned a living by picking out garbage from one of the largest dumpsites in Metro Manila. I got involved in helping her build a new life. That is when I started to understand people apart from the religious institution. I let go of judgment, and started operating through love.
I grew up believing that life was compartmentalized into the “spiritual” and the “secular”, into Christian thought and non-Christian thought. Now, I realized that this mindset is flawed. Spirituality is all about connection. It is a flow of God’s love through everything. Thus, Christian life is a lifestyle, not something that is turned on and off once a week. It should come full circle in one’s life, and be integrated in all our endeavors.
Through my work, I also came to realize that social action is a result of evangelism. It is an expression of love, the completion of the gospel. In traditional evangelism, Christ is presented as a mere ticket to heaven. In social action, the love of Christ is felt, and the message is understood through realistic strategies.
I now approach life and Christianity with these new ways of thinking. This way, I have become more effective in sharing Christ’s love not through traditional and mechanical strategies, but through heartfelt and passionate means of making Him real to the least of my Filipino brothers and sisters.
Lugar ng Pag-asa (tagalog (local dialect for “A Place of Hope”) is different in that it is located in the mountains at the outskirts of the city, in contrast to the usual city-based church. The landscape is provincial, and the people belong to the lower bracket of the socio-economic stratum. This includes the communities at San Mateo and Pintong Bukawe, the Dumagat tribes, the Tagalogs, and the Remotados (people of mixed Dumagat and Tagalog lineage).
Our church has also become the driving force of the community because our discipleship is holistic; it is infused in the education and livelihood endeavors that we initiate. Our church is less of a congregational structure and more of a gathering of different sectors to uplift the life of marginalized communities. I am particularly involved in the aspect of economic enterprise, because I believe that we cannot help the poor if we ourselves are poor. As we develop our economic channels, we also develop the quality of life of these communities.
The ministries I am involved in are all geared towards this end. We have agricultural entrepreneurship to promote a sustainable food supply and income for farmers. We have a garment factory where community members are involved in sewing clothes that are sold for additional income. We have also built a school to provide free education to economically challenged kids. We provide salaries to the faculty and staff of the school. Not only do we reach out to kids, but to their parents as well. Through the school, the lives of both child and parent are changed and uplifted.
My new foundation, the Hop.E (www.hop-e.org) Foundation, is directly involved in generating funds for all of these endeavors. Hop.E is a ministry-turned-advocacy that uses creative and innovative strategies to get private companies involved in sustaining the ministries. Through the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs of big, private companies, we are able to source funds for the benefit of the poor. We are able to channel resources to the people who need and deserve the support.
Being the marketing arm of our church takes up a lot of my time and energy, but I feel fulfilled knowing that every day, lives are being improved, and hope is being rekindled in the hearts of the hopeless.
I believe in touching the physicality of a person to be able to touch that person’s spirituality as well. That is why I consider providing livelihood and education to communities as my two greatest achievements.
Through livelihood, we are able to put food on the table, to provide the very basic physical and financial contentment to simple people who otherwise could not have risen to the challenge.
Through education, we are able to educate both kids and parents through a ministry, which operates like an outreach.
I thank the Lord for enabling us to do all of these things, and for arranging so many opportunities for these visions to come true. I could not have achieved these things without the Lord’s favor and blessing which are very present in my life.
Our church is unique. It does not look and feel like the institutional church we have all been brought up in. We promote a non-churchlike and non-traditional approach. We are also very community-based, which is an upgrade from being merely congregational. Building the community is long term, in contrast to building an institutional church that tends to be only a Sunday thing. Our church has become an everyday thing, a way of life. And that is the way it has been for me, too.
Even our funding is unique. We do not just source it from the members, but from CSR. This way, we do not burden new Christians into supporting a newly planted church which they may not yet fully understand. Instead, we enable them to share blessings and resources equally among themselves.
People will probably remember me for the story I never get tired of sharing. Mary Rose is a kid who was helped out by Fusion Excel’s Hope for Children, and Hop.E Foundation. From being a garbage picker, she is now living a normal life, the life that a child deserves. She has left the harsh and cruel life in the garbage dump where she is forced to eat leftover food straight from the dumpsite. She and her family are now residing in a concrete house, something that has merely been an object of their dreams a few years back. Mary Rose has also acquired a scholarship until her graduation, plus her own simple business to be able to sustain her family. She has already traveled around Asia, sharing her story and giving hope to kids her age.
Her story has captured the hearts and minds of people across Asia. She caused companies to rethink their priorities and to include CSR in their strategies. She has become the image of hope to so many people. Her life proved that miracles do happen, and that dreams do come true. She may be this beacon of hope to others, but to me, she is a personal story, someone who reflects my own journey from indifference to compassion.
While I was witnessing the miracles in the lives of the people around me, I thought that the change was happening within them. But actually, the change was happening within me. God was changing the landscape around me, but He was also changing my heart and my perception, my character as a Christian. I truly repented (rethink) from being the typical judgmental lawful Christian, to a grace and gratitude, on relationship instead of rituals son of the King. Even the way I think about money is revolutionized. God has taught me how to be a true steward of His money – and that is by sharing it with those who need it the most. Do what you can to make this world a better world for all! His Kingdom come, and His will be done here on earth as it is in heaven!
Twitter: Jayjaylizarondo
