(It seems like only yesterday that Pastor Isabelo F. Magalit gave his first official sermon at the UP School of Statistics auditorium. February 5, 2006 was the start of his full-time preaching as DCBC’s Senior Pastor, ending the church’s five-year quest for someone to shepherd the English service flock. His acceptance of the church elders’ invitation made for perfect timing, as 2006 marked DCBC’s 30th anniversary.

I recently sat down with Doctor-Pastor-Doctor Bel (as some of us fondly call him, acknowledging his spiritual calling and medical training) for a recap of the year just passed and a broad look at the plans for 2007, the second year of his three-year term. Following are excerpts from our chat.)

My first year at DCBC was just wonderful! I thoroughly enjoyed the past fourteen months which flew by so quickly. What I’ve especially enjoyed is the preparation of sermons for our Sunday services. There’s a lot involved in doing an exegesis of biblical text — analyzing significant words in regard to translation and examination of their general historical and cultural context; combing through my forty years of preaching experience; interacting with the biblical passage under study; deciding what to include in the sermon; and correlating it to the congregation and/or current events.

There is nothing like studying scripture — it’s like mining gold. As you dig deeper, you uncover nuggets of wisdom that you fashion into “gold jewelry.” You craft different facets of insight and understanding into something beautiful, powerful, and applicable, so that God’s people can learn from His Word and obey.

Although I’ve been preparing sermons for quite some time now, thirty-three of my forty years of preaching were spent ministering mostly to large groups of students, attending to their schoolwork, computing their grades, arranging and attending conferences. Only seven years of this period were spent catering to a small, intimate group — the DBC (Diliman Bible Church) congregation in particular, not coincidentally DCBC’s mother church.

Not to say that I did not enjoy serving large groups — but one derives a different kind of satisfaction from writing sermons for a small congregation. Knowing the church members, their personalities and their life stories makes it infinitely more satisfying crafting sermons into beautiful, powerful and applicable messages that speak to their hearts and minds.

The rapid growth of the Tagalog service congregation with the range of programs being offered for its members is very encouraging. I understand that there are more plans to provide and expand access to the microfinance lending program. Livelihood opportunities through handicraft outsourcing, will be of help to our less entrepreneurial members. There are also plans to assist more of the children of our members to avail themselves of scholarships from the Advancing the Ministries of the Gospel (AMG) in Bulacan. The Adult Literacy Program may also be offered beyond the ranks of our church members, to reach out to non-Christians who would like to avail of this free educational service.

The new apologetics format of the Discovery Meetings has also been a very positive development. I’m very happy with the elders’ direct involvement in this, the primary evangelistic project of the church — their study and teaching of the Word in spite of their busy schedules in the practice of their respective secular professions.

Other ministry opportunities I look forward to in the months ahead include:

• Being able to address the Sunset service students regularly, on top of the Tagalog service congregation, hopefully every fourth Sunday of the month;

• The creation of a Prayer Team, a core group that would pray for the church as a whole, covering its members, activities and programs with prayer, as their personal ministry;

• A lineup of events being planned by UP Christian faculty members in celebration of the UP Centennial Year which officially runs from June 2007 to June 2008:

• The establishment of a mini-library of Christian books at the Bonsai Garden office. I plan to bring over 30 to 40 “essential” books from my personal library and hope that we can find someone to set up a mini-library, for the congregation’s use. (Calling UP Library Science graduates!)

One very useful book already available in the office is “The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity” by Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens, voted as one of the Books of the Year (Christianity Today, 1998). It contains nearly 400 articles on common everyday concerns: from adoption to automobiles, chocolate to craftsmanship, gardening to gossip, shopping malls to storytelling, taxes to tourism and much more. It’s a great way to spend the summer, and will be helpful in gaining insight on how Christian faith can guide, illuminate and energize your everyday life.

However, if allowed to make a “wish list” for the improvement of the church as a whole, such a list would include:
• Better attendance by more of the English service congregation at Saturday Prayer meetings at the Bonsai Garden;

• Working together to start church activities on time;

• More equitable division of labor among church members so that more will be involved in the various ministries, not just a core group that eventually gets burned out with the continuous demand for volunteer work. One way to address this is to draw up a catalogue of members’ gifts and match these with various ministry opportunities so that members can be better encouraged to take on programs;

• To have more volunteers help out with the Outreach to International Students (OIS), the ministry that seeks to befriend and evangelize foreign non-Christian students attending the University, or at the very least, enable them to experience Christian love while they typically live alone far from family and friends. This is such a strategic ministry especially since most if not all of these students return to their respective countries where they can in turn share their personal experience of Christ’s love and so encourage their communities to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior.

These are just some of the plans for the year ahead, but there are other things being discussed with the church council, which will be presented to the body in due time.

(There have been several humorous exchanges between Doctor-Pastor-Doctor Bel and Council Chairman and Elder Mon Rocha about the Senior Pastor’s term of office. Mainly that the three-year term in the original agreement is really a five-year term, that this was merely a typo error.

Happily, at the tail end of our chat, when asked what his 5-year plan for DCBC would look like, Pastor Bel readily said that given the chance, he would expand the already defined 3-year line-up of Teaching and Training Sessions and Preaching Sermons to help DCBC members take root more deeply in God’s word. It would seem that the typo error has been corrected.)