Why we are Conservative Baptist?

The Conservative Baptists, one of the many Baptist groups all over the world, got its name at a time when the term "conservative" was used to describe those who accepted the historic views of Scripture's inspiration and inerrancy, and Jesus Christ's unique deity. They came to the Philippines in the 50’s and began as a church planting movement.

In 1955, there was a group of Filipino Baptist laymen who used to meet regularly for prayer. Their main burden was the evangelization of Laguna. At the same time, they started an outreach in the town of Sta. Maria, Laguna, which later became a church. That was the beginning of many answers to their prayers.

The laymen, Brothers Jose Galuego, Castro Quimba, Felonito Sacapaño and Esteban Salcedo, claimed Laguna for Christ and the Lord sent laborers to His field in the person of the Conservative Baptist missionaries and Filipino Christian worker.

In 1951, Rev. William Simons came with his family, although they did not engage in Church Planting until after 1954. The first joint effort of the missionaries and the four laymen was the work in Lumban, Laguna. In a period of four years, more CB missionaries and Filipino workers joined in the work, resulting in the organization of

five churches on November 9, 1958, which formed the nucleus of what was then called Fellowship of Baptist Churches in Southern Luzon. These were the churches in Paete, Sta. Maria, Victoria, Sta. Cruz and Pagsanjan. Since then, the Lord has expanded the vision of His laborers to include the whole Philippines so that the name was changed to Conservative Baptist Association of the Philippines on December 29, 1961.

Throughout the years, the Lord proved His faithfulness as CBAP grew both in number of churches and membership. In 1972, Operation 200 was born which was the first church growth program with a goal of having 200 CB churches after 10 years. To celebrate the fulfillment of Operation 200, the Pista ng Papuri was held at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) on November 30, 1981. During the celebration, a new program was launched aiming 20,000 members in 200 churches in four years time, known as Harvest 20,000. After reaching Harvest 20,000, came a new challenge toward a more accelerated membership growth. the Mission 60,000. The goal was to grow from 21,417 members to 60,000 by December 1990. Although the goal was not realized, the association did not stop striving to keep on and win the lost for Christ.

On November 1992, Vision 600 was conceived. The year 1993 was the year of preparation and the vision was officially set on its voyage beginning 1994.

The CBAP family trusted the Lord to see 600 CB churches in the year 2000. This is a God-sized task and human efforts alone will never be sufficient to fulfill it. How can it be fulfilled? The strategy was for each church to give birth to two other daughter churches, thus the battle cry "Bawat Iglesya, Manganak ng Dalawa!" Since the CB movement was born out of prayer closet, there's no other way that Vision 600 will be fulfilled than through our prayers and hard labor. The grand culmination was held at he Cuneta Astrodome on November 30, 2000. During that festive celebration, CBAP offered to the Lord the fruit of its labor 147 local churches established and about 150 on-going outreaches. Praises were lauded to the Lord!