It’s a weekday, and I have time to write. I usually don’t.
The steady hum of doing pastoral ministry in Redeemer Christian Church Manila usually means my days and weeks are full. If I’m preaching on a Sunday, I start to read my passage on a Tuesday — just reading, not putting down anything to writing yet, because I know it’s rare that I can actually read and process for myself. On Wednesday nights, we usually gather for Bible study. Church members would faithfully gather in a small room in Nakpil to study Scripture. Then comes the wrestling and fleshing out of the manuscript on a Thursday and Friday afternoon. Kali, my wife, works beside me, and we’ve found that rhythm of doing coffee and work on weekdays in our small work area at home. The weekend is usually full — counseling and meeting up with people on Saturdays, and then the Lord’s Day.
The end of the year is usually busy as well, but after the Christmas rush, I found a few days of not doing anything (which is rare, but good). And in those quiet moments, I could finally sit back and thank the Lord for what he has done in the church this year. It has been a quiet but stark reminder to me that whatever is lasting and enduring in the church is never finally built by our planning or energy, but by the Lord himself.
We marked five years of ministry in Redeemer Christian Church Manila in 2025.
Five years isn’t long, and it isn’t nothing either. It’s long enough to feel the weight of time, mistakes, prayers that took longer to answer than we expected, and lessons we didn’t know we needed to learn. It’s also long enough to look back and see a pattern — not of our cleverness or success — but of God’s steady faithfulness to his people.
If there’s anything the past five years have clarified for us, it’s this: God has been more committed to this church than we ever could be. He has been gracious and compassionate because that is who he is. And we’ve learned, sometimes slowly, that faithfulness over time matters more than visibility or speed. He has been faithful — not only when things were going well, but especially when things were uncertain, slow, or hard. And again and again, he has reminded us that the church is not built by intensity, novelty, or momentum, but by his ordinary means of grace, applied patiently over time.
We’ve learned that growth often looks unimpressive. That faithfulness rarely feels dramatic. That obedience usually shows up quietly — in showing up, in listening, in repenting, in forgiving, in trusting God when outcomes are unclear. And yet, this is precisely how God builds his church.
I remember Wednesday night Bible studies clearly, because these are the times when God’s Word is brought to bear on our broken lives, and I’ve seen what healing it can bring to people. Not because the Word is always easy to hear, but because God faithfully uses it to accomplish what he intends, even when we don’t yet see the results.
I remember nights when the teaching was difficult (actually, it often felt like it always was) — and people would shed tears because they were wrestling with what they were seeing in the text and what it meant for their lives. I remember moments when God’s Word seemed to speak directly into things we were experiencing as a church. I remember nights of tears — the joyful kind — because the Gospel encouraged us to endure this life we have been called to live together.
If we wanted to build a community and culture for the church, there would have been no better foundation than God’s Word. And thankfully, God has providentially given us the means to start building — and to keep building. We pray and hope to be a people shaped, corrected, comforted, and bonded together by Scripture. And this simple commitment to pause in the middle of the week to open the Bible together has been one of the strongest ways God has been forming Redeemer Christian Church Manila.
The slow, steady, and repetitive (by which I really mean regular) nature of studying God’s Word is beautiful for the local church. It doesn’t promise quick fixes. It doesn’t cater to our impatience. But over time, it does something far better — it reorients us away from ourselves and toward Christ.
In many ways, what we’ve been doing in the church is not new at all — simply gathering as God’s people around his Word, trusting that this is how he has always chosen to grow and sustain the church.
I have a few more days that I can spend concentrating on rest, family, and the joy of Advent. But even now, my heart is already looking ahead to January, when we gather again and continue this long and beautiful work: opening the Scriptures, asking honest questions, learning what obedience looks like in real life, and walking with one another through the painful but necessary steps of stepping away from ourselves and stepping into Christ-likeness. It often feels like labor, and sometimes like struggle — but always with the confidence that whatever strength there is in us comes from God himself.
I want to count the years of doing this. And if the Lord allows, I hope to count ten or more — with a satisfied and grateful smile on my face — knowing that whatever fruit there is came not from us, but from a faithful God who finishes what he begins in his people.
“Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” (Psalm 127:1)