When I was in the Philippines in August-September of '99 I was seriously invited to come on a permanent basis and help with the Asian Baptist Center for World Missions, attached to the new L.D. Woosley Bethany Colleges. It will essentially be a missions major in the under grad level and a masters program in missions, with a view to helping Asians become missionaries to Asia. I have waited six months now and the thing just won't go to sleep and won't go away. I did not want to make a decision based on adrenaline and enthusiastic emotionalism, so we waited. But the Lord, has kept the vision alive.
A fellow would almost have to be an idiot to pick up and go to the mission field at age 60! His wife would have to be a worse idiot to agree to it. That is who we are! We are have passed the point of decision and commitment.
The cancer experience is life changing. I should have been a dead man a year ago. God gave me back my life. The physical strength is gradually returning. Now my question is, what will I do with the rest of my life? We believe the Lord has answered that question with this call.
I was absolutely overwhelmed by the response I got from a few personal friends I have told. Everyone was totally encouraging, not one soul said a discouraging word. I value that from people I respect.
John Gross and North Park Baptist in Humble (North Houston) is our sending church and we are commissioned from there. John has been a great encourager to us through all of these considerations, and has been a dear personal friend to us ever since we have been neighbors.
Harvest Time
I am excited to be a part of what I see as a "paradigm shift" as the places we have had such wonderful results transition to becoming "sending" nations. The Philippines has 50 foreign missionaries. They are wonderful people who are highly dedicated. We aspire to help them become trained as well as dedicated. That is the vision of the Asian Baptist Center for World Missions. I do not envision putting anyone out of work by being there. This will be a new project under the leadership of Bethany Baptist Church.
It is harvest time now in the Philippines and the rest of Asia after a lot of good men and women sowed a lot of seed for the past half century.
Bethany Baptist Church in Makati sponsors the college. My father, L. D. Woosley, built up the church over the years. (I preached his funeral there in 1990) They have a Bible College with 170 students and 450 graduates since 1967, in addition to the new liberal arts college. They also sponsor a Christian Academy, have approximately 27 mission churches and countless granddaughter churches. They are having their Millennium Missions Conference and Pastor's meeting May 23-28, and expecting 500 Filipino pastors to attend. They want me to come then, while all the provincial preachers are in town, (they expect a couple of hundred men) and help set up some things for the College with them. I think it expedient to go. There are far too many details to explain here and now. Gay will not attempt to make that trip with me. It will take about $1500.00 to do it. Please help us pray about that need.
Gay's parents remain a prime concern, but we are going to have to move on by faith and trust the Lord will resolve that problem when it has to be resolved. He is 89 and suffering from Alzheimer's. She is 85 and not understanding a lot of what is going on around her. Both are in a nursing home in Shreveport, LA.
My love for the Philippines has never abated, since I was a teenager there. We have always wanted to be missionaries, but, quite frankly, I knew far too much about missions and missionaries to attempt it without a clear leading of the Holy Spirit. Why it did not come earlier remains a mystery, but it is here now, and we must respond.
Thanks for allowing me to be your pastor friend, and I hope I can continue to be your missionary friend.
The challenges ahead:
There is a tremendous phenomenon going on in the Philippines right now. 50 years of planting have come to harvest in a beautiful way. Not only are the Christians maturing and doing their own indigenous church planting in the Islands, they are going to neighboring nations as missionaries in Asia.
The church my father built during his lifetime ministry there is a leader in that movement.
In 1999they opened a new degree granting liberal arts college and named it in my Father’s honor. They have approval for degrees, in several fields of study, from the Commission on Higher Education of the Philippine Republic. One of those bachelors’ degrees in "Ministry." Within that field we plan to install a school of Missions and add to it a graduate program in Missions so we can give these national missionaries the kind of valid, recognized degrees they will need for access to their neighboring countries.
That will be our job. We are calling it the Asian Baptist Center for World Missions. We will do much of it in short term modular courses, bringing teachers in who have specific experience and credentials in specialized fields of study. It will be my task to coordinate and plan all of that, and do a great amount of the teaching.
We think Bethany is ideally situated for the job because we can have actual lab situations for training candidates and students. Within Manila we have 16 million people, and we don't have to travel far to be in very rural and primitive places as well. We are expecting to attract students from other Asian nations as well.
Another feature we will be working on is to take the three-year Bible College degrees that the local preachers have and upgrade them through various courses of study to valid Bachelors and Masters degrees.
Bethany Baptist Church already has a Bible College with 180 students. That will be incorporated into the program. I have already an agreement in principle with Dr. Leland Kennedy to share all the syllabi from BBC Springfield so we can bring the Philippine College into compliance with BBC and create reciprocity of recognition. It will be a big project and take several years. We plan to spend the rest of our productive lives at it.
We will need to develop and probably print/publish textbooks, teach technology for missions, and coordinate the creation of other Bible Colleges in the surrounding countries for locals.
Needed Resources
We will have to raise as much as any other missionary for living in a large foreign city. For the work it will be necessary for me to travel to visit the surrounding countries where we will be sending Filipino missionaries to learn what they need to know in the missions courses. We will also have to write and publish textbooks and syllabi for various courses in the college. We will need a starter set of every text book recommended in parallel courses at Baptist Bible College, Springfield, MO.
One obstacle we will have to surmount is that the common custom is to pay rent on a house or apartment one year in advance plus first and last month, plus "key money" (or a damage deposit) of one month. So before we move in we have to pay 15 months rent! Choke! It is quite common there for the missionaries to have to pay $1,000.00 per month rent.
We will need some educational equipment, including video projector and computers, software for many applications.
Any further details that will help you understand our mission are readily available on request.
Bob Woosley
For more information, visit www.bbfi-asia.org/Woosley_B/
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