Pastora Lucinda "Luz" Tamayo led Taytay First Church in adopting a community on a landfill, called Arenda, in 2000.
When the Manila government cleared the old landfill to relocate poor families, nearly 100,000 moved into the small area, constructing simple homes with scraps of wood and metal.
For income, some pick through the garbage for things to clean up and sell.
Taytay First Church of the Nazarene began ministry in Arenda with children's feeding programs. Soon, a small congregation formed and work teams came to build a church building.
Today the church has over 100 members, and up to 300 families regularly attend worship after the church responded to community needs following September's typhoon.
Editor's note: Engage interviewed Pastora Lucinda "Luz" Tamayo, pastor of Taytay First Church of the Nazarene, in the northern Philippines, to learn how this congregation of some 400 people has taken an impoverished community under its wing, beginning a new church among the 100,000 families who live on an old landfill called Arenda. Over the past 10 years, Taytay has learned a great deal about the challenges involved with reaching out to a very poor community. (To read more about this story, check out the companion article in Engage.)
Engage: What are some of the challenges that the people of Arenda must live with every day?
Tamayo: Arenda is a depressed area, the least developed among the other communities in Taytay. It used to be a dump site of waste and garbage from neighboring towns and cities. Although the government has converted it from a landfill to relocate homeless people from the other cities, the stench [of garbage] is still in the air. Because the roads are not paved with concrete, they become hardly passable during rainy season and the smell becomes stronger; and during the dry season they become very dusty with craters and holes. When the craters become deeper, that’s the only time the government will fill them up again. The process is repeated every now and then. Skin disease and other diseases are common and rampant especially to the children because of malnutrition and poor sanitation.
Engage: Does your ministry represent a classic strategy or combination of strategies for our denomination or does it represent a new model of ministry?
Tamayo: I think strategies vary in every place, and every community is different from another. Up to now, we are still discovering the best strategies. We are adapting an experimental strategy based on what the mother church can afford and is able to do to meet the present need of the people.
Arenda is a depressed area, and the people have other needs that are not being met – social – for the following reasons:
1. Arenda has a mixture of people coming from different places in the country, with varied cultural and religious backgrounds. We have to be careful in introducing spiritual truths.
2. Severe poverty problem – Most of the people have no means of living, no decent jobs and they survive by digging junk from the garbage being dumped and selling it to earn a little money. They always expect or look forward to what any organization (including the church) can give to them. It is hard to invite them to church or invite them to listen to spiritual truths without any material benefits.
The church is trying to adopt a holistic ministry, meeting the spiritual needs and some physical needs at the same time. The feeding program is effective [because it meets physical needs]. During the feeding program, the parents are invited to a Bible study. Our budget for compassionate ministry is not enough to sustain the program on a larger scale. But thank God, the church is being helped by a sponsor from the USA who regularly sends financial support for this program.
We also link with some government agencies and charitable organizations so we can provide free medical and dental check-ups for the people at least once a year.
The easiest way to the hearts of the people is by way of “love,” demonstrating the church is there for the people. For instance, the church building becomes a shelter during storms to those whose houses have been destroyed; the church assists sick people in bringing them to the hospital during emergencies; the church workers provide counseling to some families in conflict.
Engage: How has the church plant in Arenda changed over its life span?
Tamayo: During the first two years of mission outreach in Arenda, we did not receive members into the church because most of the people kept moving and changing residence. Many sell the property that was awarded to them by the local government so they can have money. Our main purpose was to proclaim to them the good news and make them know Jesus.
After the [church] building was put up, we started receiving members to the church. As of last year, 2008, there are 118 members received. The church, with a full-time worker now, operates regular programs and activities all on their own, such as: Saturday feeding program, Sunday school for children, youth and adult, Sunday morning worship, afternoon Nazarene Youth International (NYI) fellowship, Wednesday prayer meeting and Bible studies daily from Monday to Friday.
Engage: How has the mother church been blessed by God or benefited by reaching out to the poor?
Tamayo: Arenda outreach serves as a catalyst in realizing the mission commitment of our church, and involves the members in the mission program whereby they have the opportunity to share the good news “one on one” and demonstrate the love of Jesus by giving a helping hand through the compassionate ministry.
This ministry gives the people of the church a real experience of Jesus' love for the needy as can be read in Matthew 25:35-40, and thus able to understand and demonstrate the love of Jesus to other people.
The outreach ministry also has encouraged and inspired the people to give more generously, enabling the church to increase the budget for the feeding program by 50%, and opening another compassionate program in Tibagan (another community).
Engage: What has been your personal role with the ministry in Arenda?
Tamayo: I was directly leading the ministry in Arenda for the first two years. I cast the vision and organized a team that went there once a week for the mission work. I trained the first team members on personal evangelism and together we conducted a once-a-week personal crusades in the community.
I helped organized a “Martha group” composed of some women who cooked the food in feeding the children one meal every week. I was directly involved in conducting Bible studies. Eventually, I was able to train and delegate the teaching to some laymen.
Engage: Who are some key people who attend or lead the church?
Tamayo: Today, we have a couple, Rina and Jun Candano, who are assigned to lead the church in Arenda. They were part of the original team of lay volunteers who started the mission work there. Because of their exposure to the outreach work, the Lord began to speak in their hearts to give up their secular work and accept the call to a full-time ministry in Arenda.
Arenda work is not really easy – the area is hot, the environment is dirty, lack of good facilities, no water, no electricity (at first) and the people are hostile and not responsive to spiritual things.
Since 2003, the mother church has attempted to hire a full-time pastor-worker to handle the work in Arenda. There had been two, but none stayed for more than one year. But thank the Lord, Rina and Jun offered themselves and accepted the assignment. They are still our lay pastors in Arenda up to the present.
Engage: What do you see in the future for this congregation in Arenda?
Tamayo: The community development in Arenda is slow because of lack of assistance and attention from the government and yet the population keeps growing. So there is great potential of abundant harvest of souls.
I dream to see the church become self-supporting some years from now. I am confident that as the members become mature in their faith, they will also strive to change their lives, find good, decent jobs, and will have a good testimony to the community of how the Lord has blessed them.
The focus of the ministry there now is on the children and the youth with the belief that this new generation will establish the church in the future.
Engage: Share some stories of people God has transformed through Taytay's work in Arenda.
Tamayo: Herbie was a new Christian and a new member of the mother church where he got involved in the outreach work in Arenda. He would join the volunteers, gather children and assist in teaching them about Jesus and serving the meal afterward. When the building was being put up by a Work & Witness team, he was one of the Filipino volunteers from the mother church. His exposure and involvement in the outreach work opened his eyes to see the importance of the mission of Jesus to the poor. This led him to develop a desire to serve God full time. Today, he is one of our Bible school students, in his third year.
Mark is from Arenda. Whenever he passed by the church, there was a question in his mind: "What are these people doing here?” One day, he was attracted by some music coming from the church. He went to see what was going on – a group of 10 youth were being taught some guitar lessons and Christian songs (part of the ministry). He was invited to come in and join them. Because he loves music, he became a regular comer to the music session every Sunday afternoon until he received Jesus in his heart. He started coming to church regularly to the Sunday morning worship service and eventually became a children worker and youth leader. He is now the president of the Arenda NYI and is enrolled in our Christian leadership training program. He wants to serve the Lord in whatever capacity he can.