Spiritually Sensitive People

Muslims Largely Unreached

Political and Military Unrest

Spiritually Sensitive People

Filipinos continue to be a very spiritually sensitive people. The predominant religious group, more than 70%, in the Philippines is still by far the Roman Catholic Church. More than a statistic, this reality has a huge impact on both culture the spiritual climate.

Large Charismatic groups within the Catholic Church have given new energy to what was once locked in traditionalism. However, many who claim to be traditional Catholics are in reality driven more by pagan and animistic beliefs than by Biblical truth. This undirected spiritual openness, combined with traditional spiritism and superstition has created an environment where cults flourish.

Arising from a tremendous period of growth in the late 70's and 80's the Philippines has a vibrant evangelical community. Several thousand Filipino missionaries now reach out to unreached or under-reached groups within the Philippines and to countries around the world. This is in addition to an estimated 500,000 evangelical Filipinos who work abroad as Overseas Contract Workers, many actively and purposely sharing their faith in their host countries. The Filipino evangelical church now faces the great challenge of adequately discipling and training their members. Spiritual and theological shallowness is a concern as the previous growth period moves into the next generation. Enthusiasm needs to be coupled with knowledge and experience.

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Muslims Largely Unreached

Muslim Filipinos comprise the largest unreached block within the Philippines. Of the 13 unreached peoples groups in the Philippines 12 are Muslim. Muslims comprise over 5% of the population of the Philippines. The largest group, Maguindanaoan, has a population of over one million. Substantial progress has been made in the past few years at reaching these groups. Most hopeful has been the rise of interest by Filipino groups at ministry to Muslims where once expatriates predominated.

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Political and Military Unrest

Political and military unrest between the government and several Muslim separatist groups continues to hamper what has started to be seen as a period of great progress in reaching Filipino Muslims. Ethnic Chinese, many of which are recent arrivals, comprise another great opportunity with the Philippines. Of the almost one million ethnic Chinese fewer than 3% are evangelical. The Chinese church faces the challenges of relating to the younger generation of Chinese Filipinos and of reaching out to a growing number of recent arrivals from mainland China.

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