The decision of top CPBC leaders to terminate the 4 UIM staff without valid cause, starts training of 34 new staff for Panay Integrated Development Project without it's director participations caused Pastor Rudy bernal to resign...

M E M O R I E S: Life and Time of Pastor Rudy Bernal, His Glimpses on History & the Struggle for Freedom

Chapter 47 – The Decision of top CPBC leaders to terminate the 4 UIM staff without valid cause, starts training of 34 New Staff for Panay Integrated Development Project without it’s director participations, caused Pastor Rudy Bernal to resign…

The decision of the top CPBC leaders to terminate the services of the 4 UIM staff without valid causes and started training 34 new staff for UIM, was I think, an unfortunate incidents in 1987, under the leadership of Atty. Angel Lobaton, President; Rev. Penuelito Sacapano, General Secretary; and Rev. Edwin Lopez, Chairman, Committee of the New Frontier Ministries. This decision to terminate the 4 UIM staff, without justifiable reasons, except their 3 years contract was going to end was I believed, not right. This project, Integrated Development Project was approved for funding support by the Baptist Union of Sweden and EZE of West Germany.

The four terminated staff were - Rev. Job Santiago, Project Coordinator, Hernani Bautista, Project Agriculturist, Hector Belloga and Bonifacio Castronuevo, Community Organizers. There terms as staff of the project were ending, but they were part of the new project that we presented and approved by the CPBC Board of Trustees.

Pastor Rudy Bernal, NFM Director was one of the key persons supposed to train the 34 new recruited staff, with assistance by the 4 UIM staff. The trainees came from Central Iloilo, Aklan and Capiz. The President, the General Secretary and the Chairman of the New Frontier Committee could led the training. 

The Panay Integrated Development Project, part of the UIM ministry, was planned to help the project participants get trained and organized for a wide range of development works. Our project proposal was approved for fund resources of P 3 million a year, for three years. It was the biggest project of the New Frontier Ministries with 34 full time staff, being trained for the project.

The New Frontier Ministries (NFM) was tasked by the Convention General Assembly of 1977 to formulate developments projects for the future – it will train, develop, organize, empower, and mobilize people, churches and communities and resources from local and international sources and assist the people under difficult economic situations of that time.
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With proper directions and implementations of the CPBC projects, we saw a brighter future for CPBC churches, its members and the communities with strong livelihood associations and cooperatives working for improvements of people’s lives. With a components of well trained and highly committed staff, the possibilities for success was very high.

The exploitations of the Filipino people during the colonial government of Spain in the Philippines, followed by the deadly colonization of the United States, with the US-Spanish Treaty of Paris of 1898, that returned all Spanish properties already taken over by Philippine revolutionary forces, including properties of the Roman Catholic churches in the hands of the Iglesia Filipina Independente (IFI), and returned them to the Spaniards and their descendants was one unfortunate decisions for the Filipinos those times.

This evil land ownership system of the Spanish era in the Philippines and perpetuated by the Americans from 1898, was the major causes of more than 200 revolts by the Filipinos against Spain in different parts of the country. It was also the cause of the continued wars by the communists and other rebel forces in the Philippines since 1938 until today, June 2017.

To help alleviate the economic and social situations, the New Frontier Ministries, in its little ways, expanded with some kinds economic development projects that covers the area in the country where CPBC churches were organized and operates. It provided project participants with development education, leadership formation, peasants, workers and fishermen organizing, community based health projects, programs for the development of the disabled, practical farmers training, appropriate technology, organizing of cooperatives and farmers associations, legal education, labor education and labor organizing, rehabilitation programs for victims of disaster and human rights violations.

It’s Biblical studies touches the evils of Roman Imperialism experienced by the people of Israel, who continued the struggle and fought for many decades, that was exemplified by the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ. There’s was a struggle similar to the Filipinos struggle from the Spanish time and the American rule that were fought hard by the nationalist Filipinos and the Communist Party of the Philippines for more than a century.

With the CPBC Assembly mandate, despite some apprehensions and fears, under Marcos martial rule, we undertook the implementation of New Frontier Ministries and Urban Industrial Missions, pushing to make it a real national development arms of the Convention. It started with building core groups in different municipalities, that covered Panay Island, Negros Occidental, Romblon and Mindoro, some part of Manila and Luzon and some areas of Mindanao.

From the experiences of this involvement, we move fast and organized development projects in Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Central Negros, Upper South Negros, Romblon and Northern Negros, as a response to call of the Convention Assembly for a dynamic program that responds to the need of the people under martial law.

We started preparations for the implementations of “ Panay Integrated Development Project” jointly assisted by Diakonia of Sweden and EZE of West Germany, thru Rev. Olof Lindstrom of Sweden and Mr. Heinz Havercorn of West Germany.

With the implementations of UIM – Panay Integrated Development Project, the resources committed by International funding partners in Iloilo and Capiz will be transferred to Mindanao and some area in Luzon where CPBC churches and communities were already organized.

The New Frontier Ministries with strong financial resources and a potentials of nearly a hundred full time staff trained in organizing and mobilizations, was becoming a strong spiritual, social, economic and political force in the Baptist Convention and some parts of the country .

Three things have developed in the social and political situations during that time.

First, the top leadership of the Baptist Convention from 1980 onward has started to weaver. There were two things that they were deeply concerned. They began to feel there leadership will be weakened with the emerging strength and political forces of the UIM and NFM staff that have strong holds on the leadership of churches in the provinces. Some top leaders of the Convention began to feel that their leadership will be weakened with the emerging new forces. But these fears were unfounded. We have no plans against the leadership.

Second, the leadership wavered at the strong pressure of the military/ With the four raids made by the military, at CPU College of Theology, the two raids and arrests of UIM & NFM staff in Cabudian Baptist Church, Duenas and Guevera Beach, Oton, Iloilo, in 1984, I think the CPBC leadership felt a grave apprehensions.

Together with with this, was the arrest of Rev. Nestor Bunda at restaurant near Jaro Plaza one night, brought to unknown place until he was left at the rice fields near the Iloilo airport, with hundred Baptists and ecumenical groups looking for him, visiting the police stations, calling radio stations asking for his whereabouts through the night, with an American missionary, Mrs. Sandy Mosher, joining and leading the search, was an event that time.

This was also followed several months later, when a ecumenical rally of more than 50 people were arrested and detained at the Jaro Police Headquarters for a night and day together with Ms. Sharon Joy Ruiz Duremdez, CPU College of Theology professor in Jaro, Iloilo City.

In the national level, the arrests and detentions of several NCCP staff and raids of other NCCP related projects in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, has chilling effects on the top leadership during those days.

By that time, the military seemed to have succeeded in their propaganda that the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), where the Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches (CPBC) was a member, the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) and the Philippine Independent Church (PIC), together with some 30 other national organizations in the country, were communist front organizations.

This developments s affected the faith of some CPBC leaders. Pastors and church leaders who showed the spirit of militancy and were not submissive to President Marcos’ martial law regime, where subjected to raids and arrests. And some, where subjected to possible job terminations, if they were employed at CPBC. There were efforts during those time, pushing for CPBC to leave the NCCP and join with another national church organization that supports the martial law regimes.

The strategy adapted by CPBC leadership was to terminate the UIM and some NFM staff whose contracts of 3 years were ending. The first group for termination was UIM. These will be will be followed with the termination of Urban Rural Mission staff. Rev. Joel Valdes and the staff of the Woodcrraft and Bamboo Craft Projects.

The 4 full time UIM Staff were sent official termination letters. Their contracts was ending that month.

The termination letter of Rev. Sacapano was clear. The work will end that month. They were advised to return the Honda Motorcycles assigned to them. They will work only until the end of the month

When I came to the General Secretary and asked him why I was not involved in the training of the 34 new UIM staff, he told me it was on the direction of the President. And when, I went to Rev. Lopez and asked why he did not involved me in the training, he told me it was the instruction of the President. I felt, I am now given a strong message. I am not needed in the Convention anymore. I have to tender my resignation. It was a painful feeling. But it sometimes happened in some organizations, both in secular organizations and churches.

I left the room where the new 34 UIM staff were having their training under Rev. Lopez. I looked at them. I have helped identified some of them as potentials for the UIM works when given the needed trainings, motivations and directions. But now I have to leave them. I have no choice.

The CPBC leadership has done to us, what it had done previously to other projects, related to CPBC like the “Health Aid to the Needy for Development (HAND)” headed by Johnny de la Fuente, former President of CPBC. The same thing happened to the Center for Education and Research (CER), formerly headed by Rev. Conrad Brown and now headed by Rev. Sammy Formelleza - two potential development and educational programs of the Convention several years ago. These two projects were terminated, under the leadership of Rev. Edwin Lopez. And UIM and NFM will now follow.

I prayed, asking God if my resignation was right. Was I not going away from the Lord'w call?

But I felt the pressures. It was a strong pressure. To continue working under the situations, will be very hard. I will be director of the 4th Program of CPBC without authority. I will be a big “Flower Base” in the CPBC Office.

I gave my letter of resignation to Rev. Penuelito Sacapano. I left a copy for the President and the Chairman of the New Frontier Ministries Committee.

Then I went to my office. I sat on my desk. I looked out of the window. The blue skies was growing a bit darker with some heavy clouds forming some lines on the eastern horizon. I felt sad. It was not sadness for myself. Neither was it sadness for losing a job.

It was sadness for a lost opportunities of service we could have worked together, I and the 4 staff of UIM that were terminated, the 3 staff of Sacada Development Project that will soon, be terminated when their contracts end in by 5 months time. I felt sad for the lost opportunities we and CPBC could have done for our churches and the people of communities we have committed to serve.

I prayed for God’s guidance and strength. It seems, I heared His voice, whispered in my heart: “I will not leave you, nor forsake you.” I closed my eyes again. I tried to capture deeper the meanings of the Lord’s words. “I will not leave you…”