FREE Registration Now Required
You must be a registered user to access our website. Please complete the registration form at no cost, or login if you are already a registered user. Be assured, your registration information is secure and will not be sold or made available to others.
To learn why registration is now required, see this editorial on the website changes. Once you have completed the registration process, to include verification of your email address, a cookie will be placed on your computer to automatically complete the login process in the future.
Registered users, click here.
New users or if you have never registered before, click here.
- Despite risks, entrepreneur sets sights on Asia
- USCIRF: Religious liberty ‘increasingly dire’
- PEW: Muslims world-wide reject suicide bombings, support sharia law
- Cooperative Program top giving churches in 2012
- Family mission trip a ‘last chance’ gift for graduating college student
- Dominican government opens doors for expanded outreach to children
- FBCH hosts annual CEO Children’s Council meeting
- From Madagascar to Central Asia, Florida Baptist collegians serve globally
- Church history prof Leon McBeth dies
- Baptist music innovator Buryl Red dies at 76
- Latest Stories...
RSS News Feed (What is it?)
By NAMB STAFF
PHILADELPHIA (NAMB)—If anyone understands the impact church planting and evangelism can have on someone, it’s Peter Yanes. Together, the two changed his life.
Born and raised in the islands of the Philippines, Yanes grew up in a predominantly Roman Catholic nation with a family deeply devoted to the church. Yanes himself spent much of his youth serving as an altar boy with aspirations of one day becoming a priest.
All that changed with an invitation.
“I was in high school and a friend invited me to a Bible study,” Yanes recalls. “That’s where I came to know Jesus Christ in a personal way. Since then, there’s been no turning back.”
The church that hosted this Bible study was a church plant started by a Filipino planter. 
OPPORTUNITIES Serving as a pastor in his native Philippines prepared North American Mission Board missionary Peter Yanes for the opportunities he finds to preach, like at a Filipino community church service held in a Philadelphia park. Yanes serves churches and church planters in the area with mobilization strategy and leadership development. NAMB photo by Ted Wilcox
“Church planting is very special and important to me because without it, I wouldn’t be where I am,” Yanes explains.
This heart for church planting makes Yanes the perfect fit for his role as a mobilization missionary for the Baptist Convention of Pennsylvania/South Jersey. Based in Philadelphia, Yanes’ work as a mobilizer for the area allows him to identify and support planters and partners as they start and grow new churches. With only 400 SBC congregations serving a population of more than 15 million in the convention, the area needs new churches. For his part, Yanes is working specifically to catalyze ethnic church planters to reach the growing number of people groups in the area.
“My ministry allows me to build great relationships with our ethnic pastors,” Yanes says. “Having relationships and support can be such an asset because their position can be very lonely and very tough at times.”
This is a feeling Yanes knows firsthand. After pastoring a church in the Philippines, he and his wife, Irene, made the move to the United States in 1998 and began the work of church planting in Philadelphia. He has spent the better part of the last 14 years serving the growing ethnic population in Philadelphia. He supported the now thriving Philadelphia Bible Church International in its early years in an effort to provide a place of worship for Filipino transplants living in the city. By taking on his current role, Yanes can share his experiences in ethnic church planting with others like him looking to reach their own diverse communities.
“Philadelphia is a very diverse city with many ethnicities and nationalities,” Yanes explains. “Anything that I can do to help planters build relationships with their people groups and eventually share the message of the Gospel in cities like Philly is important. It takes a great relationship with all of our ethnic pastors around the area to see this happen.”
One such person he is pouring his leadership into and building a relationship with is fellow Filipino church planter Noel Geniza. While serving as both worship leader and deacon at Philadelphia Bible Church International, Geniza’s heart for ministry caught Yanes’ eye.
“Noel has been a faithful member of our church for so long,” Yanes says. “Back home in the Philippines, he was a pastor and it’s clear this is his calling. It was just a matter of time before he stepped back into it here.”
Having settled in Pottstown, a suburb some 50 miles north of Philadelphia, Geniza and his family were traveling every Sunday to attend Philadelphia Bible Church International and worship with a Filipino community. However, the continuous commute proved taxing on the Geniza family and Noel began to see the need for a church like this closer to home.
- Page:
- 1
- 2
- Full Article
- Next Page
You must be login before you can leave a comment. Click here to Register if you are a new user.