February 25th marked the first session of this year's series of Discovery Meetings which began with a simple but delicious early supper of chicken—pork adobo, chopsuey, and minatamis na saging at sago. This was followed by the main course—or rather, by an introductory discourse on the structure and content of the Discovery Meetings (what you may expect from the Discovery Meetings, what it is we hope you discover in them). After the introduction, the forty-some participants, fifteen or so church members and their twenty-five guests, rearranged themselves into small groups to tackle key questions over cookies and coffee.

The Discovery Meetings (or DM as we refer to them for short) are the annual evangelistic dinners given by DCBC. To these dinner meetings we invite our friends and officemates, family and household members with whom we desire to share the key points of our faith, hoping to help them find what it is they might be searching for. There have also been walk-ins, mostly citizens of various UP communities, such as Employees Village, that were attracted to the DM by word of mouth and the leaflet distribution that usually precedes the meetings. Our belief is that all who seek but do not know what it is they are searching for are actually in search of God. Our hope is that some may find Him through the DM. But beyond this initial purpose, the DM has also helped believers clarify issues that continue to linger as questions in their minds.

The desire and intent of the DM is to present and reveal Jesus Christ in such a manner that the participant may be convinced He IS the only way to God. Thus, after the introductory Saturday session, six Saturday meetings followed with these corresponding topics: 'Jesus-Who Was He?,' 'Jesus-Why Did He Come?,' 'Jesus-His Death,' 'What is Grace?,' 'Jesus-His Resurrection,' and 'What is a Christian?'

Previous DM series were conducted purely in English with handouts and bibles provided in the same language. But by the fourth DM last year, which was also the very first year of our Tagalog worship service, we were faced by a mostly non-English-speaking audience, augmented in no small way by the UP College of Statistics guard's eleven friends and neighbors. This required a prompt shift into Taglish and the development and provision of handouts in Tagalog which were thankfully completed and distributed to attendees by the second session. As a direct benefit from this experience, sessions and materials have been standardized for delivery in Taglish. This tells us that the DM series is now able to reach out and minister to the various UP communities and is beginning to be an effective way of increasing the congregation's headcount.

Even as the DM series for the year wound down with its last session on April 8th, already there are plans to hold more DMs in 2006, the first time DCBC will be hosting more than one annual DM series. Specifically, the second series for the year is intended to serve the student outreach program of DCBC's Sunset service, yet another refinement of the original DM concept.

As this flagship program evolves, we look forward to welcoming family, friends, and neighbors who attend the DM and who will eventually join us in worship as part of DCBC's congregation. We look forward to the road ahead that promises the discovery of many deeper truths… a Truth, a Way, and a Life beyond the scope of DCBC's Discovery Meetings.