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| The purposes of Island Impact Ministry |
We are here to plant churches and to raise up new pastors throughout Asia and Africa, predominantly in the poorer areas. We accomplish this through a leadership school for new pastors as God brings young men and women desiring training (the school is in the Philippines), evangelistic outreaches, and a model church plant. Because most of our target population lives at the poverty level, each of our church plants should make it their goal to have agricultural, benevolence, and livelihood programs to benefit the local people.
OUR CHURCH-PLANTING, DISCIPLESHIP,
AND LEADERSHIP SCHOOLS
Our schools train and release new full-time ministers, who will be equipped to plant new churches. For example, our leadership school's main campus in Tagbilaran City released four graduates in June 1999; all four entered the ministry that year. Our most recent (spring 2002) class in Tagbilaran City had seven students, two Filipinos and five Africans; all will probably begin church plants later this year. We were in Africa from March to May 2002, helping our graduates with some new church plants and a new children's home in Senegal.
For each class, the students' first four months are in the classroom with "hands-on" ministry projects; this is three days a week, with practicum at least one day a week (church-planting as a team). The next two months are in internship. The graduates may then enter full-time ministry if they desire. The students are so committed to learning that some of them live at school, sleeping on tables, mats, and benches.
THE MINISTRY'S FARM
We strongly believe that a ministry should become self-sustaining, so that it will be indigenously owned and supported, raising up able nationals that will not always be dependent on donations. At the ministry's small farm in the village of Lourdes (on the Bohol mainland), we raise vegetables, bananas, goats, turkeys, chickens, pigs, and dogs. We also have a tilapia fish pond. Our long-term goal is that the farm will support all the children's home needs.
 Here's John Mory holding one of our prize pigs. |
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Our best farm success to date has been our pigs. Some of our piglets are given to local needy families, teaching the families the importance of scriptural giving, investing, and budgeting; this is part of our livelihood program. We also sell some piglets at reduced-price to local prison inmates to raise for food.
Our farm also has 15 goats, including a milk-goat. Our goats roam freely; when we get their pen built, we'll have more success with our mango trees and other trees. And later this year, we will have some sturdy sheep arriving from Barbados.
JAIL MINISTRY
In late 1998, God just opened the doors to this ministry. It was quite a surprise to go in the first time and find out that one inmate was a former neighbor of ours, and another knew us from our children's ministry in a nearby area. The Tagbilaran City Jail has about 50 inmates (mostly men, but also a few women); all the inmates participate in our time of worship and Bible study.
There are also a few children in the jail; children who break the law should not be in an adult jail, but because the government has no other place for them, they're here. There is also Mark, a precious eight-year-old deaf boy who is in jail only because his parents and the government don't have anywhere else to send him. Mark knows American sign language but can't speak verbally, so we struggle to communicate with him. We hope to one day have a children's home [1] for kids like Mark.
 Our team usually drives to jail in their motorcycles, with guitars and Bibles strapped to their back. |
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 Typical cell. These fellows have made Christmas ornaments, to be sold in the jail store. |
Island Impact's e-mail address is john@islandimpact.org.Web-site address: http://www.islandimpact.org
All photos ©John Mory except where noted otherwise.
Web-site design by James.com.
[1]We want to make a home for these children, not an "orphanage".
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