Working with International Care Ministries (ICM)
This month we are coming alongside International Care Ministries (ICM) to fulfill needs the organization is necessary designed to fulfill.
International Care Ministries was founded by Christian businessmen who strategically put in place feeding and medical programs through local churches in the Philippines. As they do so, they have regular fellowships and training seminars for Filipino pastors who are/have recently church-planted. ICM also trains lay people in how to lead others to Christ, as well as basic discipleship. All of their staff (with the exception of one couple) are Filipino, which makes it an extremely effective ministry. It is funded and guided in leadership by an international executive board in Hong Kong made up of an American, a man from Hong Kong, two Australians and a Singaporean–all who are international business people living in Hong Kong and investing their money and their business connections into spreading the Gospel and changing poverty in the Philippines. So far, the Filipino pastors who are connected to ICM have never worked with foreigners.
Poverty is a HUGE problem, and something we have already began to see.
We will be working alongside pastors who are extremely poor and/or pastor churches less than two years old. The congregation sizes range from 5 to 60 adults and denominations vary from church to church, thus leading to ICM being an interdenominational.
Our main focus is to meet the needs of pastor that ICM can’t, such as construction, evangelism, delivering supplies, crusades, children’s ministry, leading church services, film showings and school outreaches. We have already had chances to pray and encourage pastors. Some of the pastors we will work with have given up good paying jobs and moved to an area where they are unable to get a job. They have put everything they can into their church and the growth of their members. As a result they have no income and feed their families off of unripened bananas while living in one-room bamboo structures that leaks when it rains (every day for 8 months/year). They do all of it because they know the Lord has called them to that place, and they are determined to not have anything consume their life, but His will. We will try to help these pastors, but prayerfully we will encourage them, an act just as significant as any ministry we can do alongside of them.
We are staying at an ICM base in Bacolod; we had to convince them that it was ok to let foreigners not sleep in a hotel – needless to say that our budget doesn’t cover hotels. The base has about 20 Flipino staff, most in their twenties and thirties. We are excited to have already begun building relationships and praying for opportunities to come alongside them to informally disciple them. God is so vibrant in this place!!
