Summary of ACTION Philippines (2007)

1. Strengths:

a. We are aggressive in evangelism, discipleship, and development. We are a "blue collar" team meaning very hands-on working in the streets, slums, church-planting, prisons and jails, classroom and shop with youth, conferences and workshops for pastors and Christian workers, camps, disaster zones, individual crisis intervention, clinics, writing materials, distributing literature, community development, connecting the wealthy to the poor, and teaching Missionaries' Kids (MKs). We work very closely with the local church as a partner and are known as a compassionate, flexible, and responsive team. We're learning what the Lord wants our team to be and do so we're sticking to it by focusing our resources on ACTION's purposes.

b. We work closely as a team. We try to complement and build upon each other's ministries as much as possible. We meet monthly for prayer, fellowship, reporting and encouragement in the Word, have an annual field conference for the same purposes as well as a Christmas party for missionaries and staff including family members of our staff.

c. We have formal networking with like-minded organizations. We have several Agency and Personnel Agreements each year with compatible like-minded churches and organizations.

d. We are a Sending and Receiving Field. We have sent three Filipinas to work with ACTION abroad, (Columbia, Mexico and Cambodia), another married gal possibly going to serve in Africa (Malawi, Uganda or Zambia) with her American husband and another Filipina in the process of going to Zambia. We are ramping up our sending processes because we see a day when the Lord may possibly send several Filipinos through our office. We have a global view of our work.

e. We have veterans on the team who view work internationally within ACTION. We have veterans on the team, both staff and missionaries, who can (and have) mentor new ACTION missionaries. Our team is connected to ACTION internationally and is able and willing to train new ACTION missionaries before they deploy to their assigned field 

2. Weaknesses:

a. We're very thin administratively. We continue, by God's grace and the volunteer spirit of a few, to carry on administratively but this is my greatest concern for the team. We could do so much more if we had a full-time business manager, human resource coordinator and a director who knew what he was doing. This area of vulnerability needs to be strengthened but we've done all we can to try to recruit people for these positions but the Lord of the harvest hasn't seen fit yet to send skilled people for these positions.

b. We're an aging team which was cited as a strength but is also a weakness. We need younger people to come in behind the vets and carry on the good work that's been started and maintained over the years. We are a mission organization so we need younger missionaries with a like calling and passion to join our ranks and move the ministries forward; but where are they?

3. Summary:

I continue to be amazed that anything worthwhile gets done. We're not a great company of highly skilled and educated people with lots of material resources backing up our ministries. We are a bunch of ordinary faithful people who love the Lord, do what we're called to do trusting Him to provide the resources to do what needs doing. We trust Him to produce the fruit. To God be the glory for anything worthwhile that's accomplished with the credit going to the team.