Koinonia is the life of the Triune God from which proceeds the communitarian dimension and dynamism of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente. Koinonia inspires the Iglesia Filipina Independiente to the vocation of diakonia. Koinonia, which is fellowship, and diakonia, which is service, is our ministry rooted in the words and works of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the source, medium and message of our ministry. Jesus, as the Scriptures attest, is foremost a prophet in the tradition of the Old Testament. Heir to this tradition, he ‘lived in the midst of his people’ (John 1.14) sharing their pains, anxieties and hopes; as a testimony to his liberating love for his people ‘he offered his life’ (John 15.13) for them.

Jesus the Prophet announced the Reign of God, not only consoling, but challenging the people to surrender themselves to the requisites of its presence and power in history and human situation. Jesus proclaimed the Reign of God  ‘bringing good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, setting the oppressed free and announcing the year of the Lord’s favor’ (Luke 4.16-19).

The Iglesia Filipina Independiente, professing and proclaiming faith in Jesus, affirms her pastoral and prophetic ministry to all People of God in a situation of socio-economic and socio-political crises arising from a semi-colonial and semi-feudal frameworks operating in the country. She shows concerns and commits herself to the plight of the poor whose fields have been added to another field to constitute one hacienda, whose houses have been joined with another house to become homeless wanderers and unemployed in the streets (Isaiah 5.8). She shows concerns and commits herself to the predicament of the righteous who are sold for a silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, the poor who are trampled at the head into the dust of the earth, and the maiden whom a man and his father went into (Amos 2.8)

The Iglesia Filipina Independiente cries out against who possess power but perverse the poor of our land. She calls all to do what the Lord requires; to do justice, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6.8), and to observe the weightier matters of the law; justice, mercy and faith (Matthew 23.23).

Jesus entrusted his ministry to the ekklesia. Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Go and preach, ‘The Reign of God is near! Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leprous and drive out demons’ (Matthew 10.8). The Iglesia Filipina Independiente submits herself to this mandate of servanthood to the people, especially to the poor. Jesus associates the Reign of God, not with the salvation of souls, but with the restoration of the well-beingness and wholeness of the human person. Our ministry affirms the well-beingness and wholeness of the human person, thus our advocacy for the basic rights of the peasants and workers.

Our ministry is consistent with its solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are marginalized and made poor by systems that nurture oppression. The Iglesia Filipina Independiente is conceived through the advocacy and aspiration of the people to liberate themselves from slavery for hundred of years. The present socio-economic and socio-political maladies stemming from half a millennium of foreign political control and landlessness, compel the Iglesia Filipina Independiente more than ever to live out her national and democratic heritage and her ministry of koinonia and diakonia, that the People of God may experience Jesus offer of an ‘abundant life’ (John 10.10).

Our ministry is for the service of the Reign of God. Our ministry is rooted in spirituality, nonetheless, not the spirituality that is passive asceticism, rather the spirituality that proceeds from an animated anticipation of the Reign of God. Our spirituality is what leads us to the progressive ministry of renewing the human person and of rebuilding the human community. The Iglesia Filipina Independiente carries out her ministry in the guidance of the Spirit of God who anointed Jesus ‘to proclaim the good news to the poor’ (Luke 4.16). It is the one Spirit of God that is inspiring and inciting her to commit herself to the coming of the Reign of God.

We, your bishops and Priests, acknowledge our ministry as your servants in the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, for even he who leads us to liberation and life comes ‘not to be served but to serve’ (Mark 10.45). We rejoice in God for calling and consecrating us into this vocation, and yet, we recognize and remorse over our frailties and failures. We humbly confess before God, and to you, God’s People, of our sinfulness, unworthiness and unfaithfulness, and we ask you to pray for us that despite our weakness we may continue to witness to the life giving and liberating love of Jesus, our Lord and Liberator.

Today, brothers and sisters, we renew our commitment to the ministry of Jesus, the Prophet, to the ministry of koinonia and diakonia; and as we pray for the Spirit of God to renew our nation and the whole of creation, we also pray to Him to recreate in us, and in all of us, chaste and clean hearts.