It is an honor and a distinct privilege to serve the King of Kings in the Brotherhood. Our Vision in the BCBP – to bring Christ to the marketplace and win the marketplace for Christ – focuses on the marketplaces … presently in the Philippines and in the United States. This is well and good, but we need to update ourselves on how the global marketplace is shifting. Let’s take a look at the larger picture.

– The marketplace, however, is fast changing. In fact the global marketplace is now shifting from the West to the East.
– The Asian Development Bank, ADB, is projecting that by 2025 (optimistic scenario) that more than 50% of global GDP estimated at USD 148 trillion will be generated in Asia.
– This will be brought about by economic drivers like Technical Progress, Communications Revolution, Capital Accumulation, Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation among others.

However, it is a sad commentary that this projected remarkable economic progress in Asia will be supported by economic powerhouses like China, India, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia as lead economies.
– It will be supported by high-income developed economies like Hongkong, Singapore, Taiwan, Macau, and Brunei.
– A third group of support economies are the so called Asian miracle: like Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Cambodia and Vietnam (all former communist countries!).
– And the last group of countries supporting the Asian growth are 30 low-to-modest-growth economies including the PHILIPPINES!

We have the lowest tax effort in the Asean region, with significant tax leakages.
– This can be partly explained by the recent survey of BIR. We have around 1.7 million professionals and last year they paid P9.8 B in taxes or something like P5,764 per capita??????
– On the other hand, we have around 11 million compensation employees and they paid P115 B in taxes, or around P10,454 per capita.

Our EVANGELISTIC BATTLEFIELD is both in our home-front, and in the emerging global marketplace at our doorsteps where Gospel Values and Corporate Values will surely collide!

Our NSPR 4 (National Strategic Planning Retreat in 2010) has initially provided us medium-term strategic pathways, but we still need to draw up detailed sets of programs and activities. We need to pursue them with vigilance in order to further nurture our community into becoming evangelized- evangelizers.

We also need to put more flesh and face to our advocacy for HONESTY and EXCELLENCE. The demand and challenge becomes doubly compelling considering that we are the only predominantly Christian country in Asia !

I believe that we have some strategic openings on our advocacy considering we have BCBP members and similarly minded officials from our PARTNERS IN MISSION occupying key government positions now. How do we engage them? Or, How can we be engaged? Such engagements, though they may start as a time-bound project/activity, must explore a more strategic and institutional collaboration. Can this be a part of our NSPR 4? Indeed, we share with our partners in mission the same evangelistic commissioning as eloquently articulated in the theme of our recently concluded CATCH FIRE RALLY “One King, One People, One Mission”.

This evangelistic initiative is to me a Divine inspiration and signals the future collaborative evangelization efforts in our part of the globe.

Asia by year 2020 would account for almost 50% of global GDP, thus it would become BCBP’s global marketplace where potential conflict between corporate and gospel values would be more pronounced. Indeed this enormous challenge to all of us Christians will be right at our doorstep; thus the need for greater collaboration with our partners in mission.

By year 2020 I envision BCBP collaborating with partners in mission in the following Asian countries: Hongkong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, India and China.

The task ahead appears daunting, but the Lord has always been faithful, as shown in the early evangelistic initiatives of the first apostles, and He continues to assure us with His comforting words: “Go … I am with you!”

God bless the BCBP!”