Greetings from the Philippines

Greetings from the Philippines. It is March 6th and I have just arrived in Santiago City in the northern part of the island of Luzon about 7 hours drive from Manila. Tomorrow, we will be participating in a business skills training with about 60 of the local clergy, development workers and managers of credit cooperatives.

Earlier this week, I was privileged to be part of a joyous event with the Episcopal Church in the Philippines (ECP) and its worldwide partners to celebrate its financial autonomy from the Episcopal Church in the United States. For more than 110 years, it has relied on grants from the US church to pay for its operations. Almost 20 years ago a decision was made to eventually eliminate those subsidies.

The church leaders admitted that many in their pews thought the church would die without the outside support. Instead, it has flourished and in the last three years alone, it has grown at an amazing rate building the most number of churches, highest number of seminarians, etc.

It is a significant story and it is a remarkable achievement. So, how does this roadmap to autonomy relate to the Millennium Development Goals? One of the important aspects of the church’s self-sufficiency is tied to directly to their vision and implementation of community development projects. The outreach to the poor through 130 community projects nationwide including agricultural, irrigation, water, microcredit, advocacy and many other projects directly resulted in the growth of the church. The projects had the affect of empowering and mobilizing them to take collective actions for the improvement of their lives. This in turn resulted in more members coming to church and those members giving rising significantly.

The other part of the story of this road to autonomy is that partners came alongside to assist in these community development projects including organizations from the UK, Australia, Canada, US and even Sweden. Now that autonomy has arrived what happens to those partnerships? The relationships are in the midst of changing because the Episcopal Church in the Philippines has a different view of itself, a more confident view because of its financial independence. The partnerships are still welcome but the nature of the relationship has now changed and that is profound shift from what was once a “Mother-Daughter” situation to one of equal footing.

The lesson simply put is that by empowering the poor, the church itself becomes empowered.

Craig Cole is the executive director of Five Talents International, an Anglican microfinance nonprofit. He is also a member of the Diocese of Virginia's Mission Commission and an EGR board member.