Rev.
and Mrs. Robert A. Woosley
Rev.
and Mrs. Robert A. Woosley
North
Park Baptist Church, 4401 Theiss Rd, Humble, TX 77338
P.
O. Box 191, Springfield, MO 65801
Cell
Phone 281-844-5724
Email:
bobwoosley@bbfi.org
Overview of the
Bob Woosley’s work in the Philippines
When I was in the
Philippines in August-September of '99 I was seriously invited to come on a
permanent basis and help with the Asian Baptist Center for World Missions,
attached to the new L.D. Woosley Bethany Colleges. It will essentially be a
missions major in the under grad level and a masters program in missions, with a
view to helping Asians become missionaries to Asia. I have waited six months now
and the thing just won't go to sleep and won't go away. I did not want to make a
decision based on adrenaline and enthusiastic emotionalism, so we waited. But
the Lord, has kept the vision alive.
A fellow would
almost have to be an idiot to pick up and go to the mission field at age 60! His
wife would have to be a worse idiot to agree to it. That is who we are! We are
have passed the point of decision and commitment.
The cancer
experience is life changing. I should have been a dead man a year ago. God gave
me back my life. The physical strength is gradually returning. Now my question
is, what will I do with the rest of my life? We believe the Lord has answered
that question with this call.
I was absolutely
overwhelmed by the response I got from a few personal friends I have told.
Everyone was totally encouraging, not one soul said a discouraging word. I value
that from people I respect.
John Gross and
North Park Baptist in Humble (North Houston) is our sending church and we are
commissioned from there. John has been a great encourager to us through all of
these considerations, and has been a dear personal friend to us ever since we
have been neighbors.
A few of my Pastor
Friends, including many from the East Texas Baptist Bible Fellowship, of which I
had been chairman the past year, have already committed some support. I will
have to raise as much as any other missionary with a ministry to sustain. It
would be a special blessing if many of my friends from the Internet would trust
our ministries enough to support us without having us come to visit. We could
greatly shorten our deputation and preparation time. Please pray about becoming
one of those. We have a pretty good PowerPoint presentation we can send you for
use in your church if you would rather have that than have us come and save a
lot of expense for both of us. (We could apply your honorarium, motel and food
bill to some equipment we will need.) We are willing to come visit your church
if necessary, though. Some churches have policies about that and we honor them.
Harvest Time
I am excited to be
a part of what I see as a "paradigm shift" as the places we have had
such wonderful results transition to becoming "sending" nations. The
Philippines has 50 foreign missionaries. They are wonderful people who are
highly dedicated. We aspire to help them become trained as well as dedicated.
That is the vision of the Asian Baptist Center for World Missions. I do not
envision putting anyone out of work by being there. This will be a new project
under the leadership of Bethany Baptist Church.
It is harvest time
now in the Philippines and the rest of Asia after a lot of good men and women
sowed a lot of seed for the past half century.
Bethany Baptist
Church in Makati sponsors the college. My father, L. D. Woosley, built up the
church over the years. (I preached his funeral there in 1990) They have a Bible
College with 170 students and 450 graduates since 1967, in addition to the new
liberal arts college. They also sponsor a Christian Academy, have approximately
27 mission churches and countless granddaughter churches. They are having their
Millennium Missions Conference and Pastor's meeting May 23-28, and expecting 500
Filipino pastors to attend. They want me to come then, while all the provincial
preachers are in town, (they expect a couple of hundred men) and help set up
some things for the College with them. I think it expedient to go. There are far
too many details to explain here and now. Gay will not attempt to make that trip
with me. It will take about $1500.00 to do it. Please help us pray about that
need.
Gay's parents remain a prime concern, but we are going to have to move on by faith and trust the Lord will resolve that problem when it has to be resolved. He is 89 and suffering from Alzheimer's. She is 85 and not understanding a lot of what is going on around her. Both are in a nursing home in Shreveport, LA.
My love for the
Philippines has never abated, since I was a teenager there. We have always
wanted to be missionaries, but, quite frankly, I knew far too much about
missions and missionaries to attempt it without a clear leading of the Holy
Spirit. Why it did not come earlier remains a mystery, but it is here now, and
we must respond.
Thanks for
allowing me to be your pastor friend, and I hope I can continue to be your
missionary friend.
The
challenges ahead:
There is a tremendous phenomenon going
on in the Philippines right now. 50 years of planting have come to harvest
in a beautiful way. Not only are the Christians maturing and doing their
own indigenous church planting in the Islands, they are going to neighboring
nations as missionaries in Asia.
The church my father built during his lifetime ministry there
is a leader in that movement.
In 9999 they opened a new degree granting liberal arts
college and named it in my Father’s honor. They have approval for degrees, in
several fields of study, from the Commission on Higher Education of the
Philippine Republic. One of those bachelors’ degrees in "Ministry."
Within that field we plan to install a school of Missions and add to it a
graduate program in Missions so we can give these national missionaries the kind
of valid, recognized degrees they will need for access to their neighboring
countries.
That will be our job. We are calling it the Asian
Baptist Center for World Missions. We will do much of it in short term
modular courses, bringing teachers in who have specific experience and
credentials in specialized fields of study. It will be my task to coordinate and
plan all of that, and do a great amount of the teaching.
We think Bethany is ideally situated for the job because we
can have actual lab situations for training candidates and students.
Within Manila we have 16 million people, and we don't have to travel far to be
in very rural and primitive places as well. We are expecting to attract students
from other Asian nations as well.
Another feature we will be working on is to take the
three-year Bible College degrees that the local preachers have and upgrade them
through various courses of study to valid Bachelors and Masters degrees.
Bethany Baptist Church already has a Bible College with 180
students. That will be incorporated into the program. I have already an
agreement in principle with Dr. Leland Kennedy to share all the syllabi from BBC
Springfield so we can bring the Philippine College into compliance with BBC and
create reciprocity of recognition. It will be a big project and take
several years. We plan to spend the rest of our productive lives at it.
We will need to develop and probably print/publish textbooks,
teach technology for missions, and coordinate the creation of other Bible
Colleges in the surrounding countries for locals.
Needed Resources
We will have to raise as much as any
other missionary for living in a large foreign city. For the work it will
be necessary for me to travel to visit the surrounding countries where we will
be sending Filipino missionaries to learn what they need to know in the missions
courses. We will also have to write and publish textbooks and syllabi for
various courses in the college. We will need a starter set of every text book
recommended in parallel courses at Baptist Bible College, Springfield, MO.
One obstacle we will have to surmount is that the common
custom is to pay rent on a house or apartment one year in advance plus first and
last month, plus "key money" (or a damage deposit) of one month. So
before we move in we have to pay 15 months rent! Choke! It is quite common
there for the missionaries to have to pay $1,000.00 per month rent.
We will need some educational equipment, including video
projector and computers, software for many applications.
Any further details that will help you understand our mission are readily available on request.