ELI Asia & Community Bible Church of Marikina: The Fruitful Partnership
by Reena Mendoza

Pastor Raul Caguin is the Senior Pastor of Community Bible Church of Marikina (CBCM). He is an ordained minister duly licensed by the Republic of the Philippines.
Pastor Raul’s exposure to ELI Asia was through its Founder President Dr. Nicky Joya, who is a good friend and mentor of his. When Pastor Raul established CBCM in 2015, from then until 2020, he was the only pastor of that church. His goal was always to equip homegrown members in CBCM for the next generation of leaders. With this in mind, it is important that the next leaders would have theological and doctrinal beliefs based on sound Biblical truths.
In reality, it was not easy to find seminaries that are truly reformed in their theology. As Pastor Raul continued his search for the best fit training ground for the next leaders of CBCM, he learned about ELI Asia through Pastor Nicky and found it to be the best choice for the church. By God’s grace, ELI Asia and CBCM became ministry partners during the pandemic and CBCM held the first onsite ELI Asia classes in 2022.
ELI Asia provides pastoral and leadership training that emphasizes sound biblical theology and performs like a bible seminary in which classes follow a formal syllabus, provides textbooks, and provides set requirements for the students such as oral and written tests and reports. Each series runs over a span of 10 weeks for two hours each session.
The uniqueness of ELI Asia that Pastor Raul particularly pointed out was how each class is held in the respective local church campuses, where the teachings are tailor-fit to the specific needs and preachings of the local church the class is being held at. It acts as an in-house seminary as a way to bring the seminary to those already serving in the local church.
Pastor Raul has nothing but praise and gratefulness to God for bringing ELI Asia to CBCM as it has been tremendously fruitful and beneficial to the church. Although CBCM was only established less than 10 years ago, ELI Asia was of big help in carefully selecting qualified homegrown leaders with like-minded theological persuasions because of the classes they underwent at ELI Asia.
Before 2022, there was no pastoral board at CBCM as Pastor Raul was the sole Senior Pastor of the church, leading the church with the help of his older brother (an Elder Missionary of Community Bible Church of Vallejo, CA), and his son Elder Ron Caguin. Back then, CBCM’s exposure to reformed theology was mainly focused on the doctrines of grace (TULIP) and the Five Solas. Pastor Raul remarked how Pastor Nicky, indirectly through his teachings at ELI Asia, paved the way for CBCM to update and review the doctrines of the faith, church governance, statement of faith, and church discipline for CBCM, which in turn made ELI Asia more established in the church as a means to properly equip the pastoral team that was to be formed.
CBCM is now blessed with an 8-man Elders team; with Senior Pastor Raul Caguin, Pastor Jared Navarro, Pastor Ian Isiderio, Pastor Ray Caguin, Pastor Justin Sabado, Elder Chris Morales, Elder Ron Caguin, and Elder Teonas Tolentino. Because all the pastors in the Elders team now have taken or are now currently taking ELI Asia classes, this gave the ability to discuss their insights through the biblical lens of true interpretations, making their individual views aligned with the Bible. ELI Asia facilitated so much change in CBCM and was of great help to Pastor Raul in leading this change.
Pastor Raul is eager to continue partnering with ELI Asia in CBCM, but he also envisions great plans for the future. His dream is for ELI Asia to provide an integrated Bible course in CBCM’s partner school: Berean Crosspointe International Marikina (BCI). The aim of this course is to develop Christian leaders that are nurtured and inspired to be the best versions of themselves as God wants them to be, instilling the correct biblical teachings of God.
This proposed ELI Asia course would have to be compliant with the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Commision on Higher Education (CHED), as this is meant to be a collegiate level of study for the career pursuit of future Christian leaders after finishing senior high school. This aims to offer a bachelor degree in Theology and Pastoral Ministries, among the like. As of the moment, there are still some hurdles to overcome in this process of acquiring legal accreditation, and we continue to pray for God’s grace in order for this proposal to come to fruition for His glory.
Overall, ELI Asia is a great blessing that Pastor Raul described as anointed by God, and is greatly helpful especially for the churches that don’t have enough resources to send their leaders to take on formal biblical seminary training. ELI Asia goes to the church, it is right there for the further equipping of God’s word.
ELI Asia is indeed a blessing given by God, and it is our prayer to see it continue to grow and spread to more campuses in order to help many more truly learn about the Bible and stand firm in their biblically-sound beliefs. May God continue to bless the teachers and pioneers at ELI Asia, so that ELI Asia may continue to be God’s vessel of truth, for God’s glory.
