KATIPAN Hall: Monument of Gains in Networking

Early this morning I received blogging tips from Pastor Jonan Castillon. He is the pastor-friend I mentioned earlier who advised and taught me to open a blog. Enjoying now the benefits of on-line writing, he is willing to share his talent to pastors for free. Tentatively, we have scheduled a hands-on training for pastors on April 27, 2011.

Learning Institute for the Fullness of life and Empowerment (LIFE) will coordinate this activity. LIFE is a voluntary organization of pastors, social workers, educators and other professionals which was organized after my term in CBMA. Purposely, it will continue the commitment to serve the pastors beyond our term in the association. Interested pastors in Iloilo may contact this blog. You can also visit Pastor Jonan’s site.

Following an expert advice, starting today, this blog comes out every Thursday, Sunday, and Tuesday to avoid information overload. A journal of faith journey, it attempts to inspire readers to continue the commitment in service in respective fields no matter what. This is a forerunner of my dream book, PADAYON: Our life journey.

Padayon is an Ilonggo term which means continue. In deeper sense, it connotes moving/going on (or never give up) despite adversaries or adversities.PADAYON serves as framework or acrostic of my life’s experiences and the lessons learned from life. This blog deals each area or sub topic accordingly. The series of posts on Gains and Pains in Serving the Pastors is a representation of the second letter in PADAYON, i.e., Antipodes. After three more posts, discussion will focus on the third topic – Doing God’s Will is dangerous to your health.

Previous blogs mentioned the role of KATIPAN Hall in reclaiming the spiritual heritage of the Camp Higher Ground as icon of serenity, spirituality and renewal. Katipan is an Ilonggo term for Covenant. In the CBMA context it means Katuman sang Tingob nga Pagsalig kag Binuhatan (realization of something through collective faith and action.

Never did it occur in our wildest dream that our association would engage in an infrastructure project. More so, under my term as president. My social work orientation and past organizing experience taught me to be people-centered in approach to development. However, circumstances led us to this new challenge.

It started from an invitation of the Pastors’ Kids (PK) Association to hold our National Assembly at Camp Higher Ground in 2006 for free. At that time, they were starting to develop the Camp after the mandate to manage this neglected treasure of our Convention. Few months later, the Convention leadership retracted, forcing the PK to cancel its goodwill.

Having set our preparation on the venue, our Association decided to take matters in our hands. With the projected cost within our reach, we undertook the project. Only to found out later, there was an overly underestimation of the cost. Upon expert advice, we opted to improve the design with permanent materials due to susceptibility of the area to termites. Exhausting our own resources, we engaged in various fund campaign and use our network, both personal and organizational. Concerts, dinner for a cause, solicitation, loans were but a few of the strategies we undertook.

Soon, we got the support of auxiliary organizations in our Convention, as well as related institutions and Kasapulanans. Our NGO network was also tapped, as well as linkages with the government officials the city and province of Iloilo. Later, independent foundation and network of our pastors abroad assisted us. The rest is history. After fours year, the collective faith and action was realized. The Katipan Hall was finished- a monument of gains in networking.