Pastoral Piracey

The last time we were in Gingoog we found out that Pastor Cezar has another side-line besides fixing watches. It turns out that he, and a number of the other mountain pastors we support are buying pirated VCDs and renting them out up in the hills and mountains for a small fee. Pastor C. uses his new motorcycle in the afternoons to zip up to these areas to collect and exchange the VCDs. I guess he is doing quite well, financially.

Dodong Avila was ready to get into it as well and mentioned it to Jimmy, who was horrified by the idea. He told Dodong he could end up in jail or with a huge fine, and convinced him not to do it. Evidently Cezar heard the same but wanted to do it anyway, after all, the head of the BBM mission and his son are doing it too, and making money.

I had a look at his catalog of movies and they are mostly English and Tagalog, war and violence, action flicks. Jimmy said he was there one day and one of the pastors was watching one with his 10 year old son, and a lady disrobed and sat there bare-chested... he was pretty upset that he was seeing this at pastor Cezar's house. He said that when they come together for the pastor's seminars, after all the teaching is over, they watch these movies. One time they watched until 4 am. Ugh.

So now, instead of going up to the mountains to bring the Gospel, they are peddling the world's garbage to people who need the Gospel. Can they then say, "Would you like at Bible study in your home?" And they are breaking the law. And then, when the movies have all been viewed, they will buy more and more of them, which will be freely available for their kids and anyone at the churches to watch.

We talked to Pastor Cezar about it briefly and he said he would just not do it... Because it is wrong and a bad testimony? Or because the Americans (with support money) don't like it? We are planning to talk to the board of BBM. We do not want to support any of the pastors who are also renting out pirated videos, but the issue is more about discernment and about money.

This is something that really grieves us and we are heavy hearted about it. We need wisdom and increased love.